Free The Fugitives, A Dystopian Vampire Novel: Book Four: The Superiors Series by Lena Hillbrand Page B

this one outfit that she’d already worn. It was too cold in winter for just a summer shift, though she could wear it when summer came.
    She stood outside her sapien house looking at the Superior house, whose stones reminded her of the mountains, grey and glittery. On the back porch of the house sat two potted plants, now dead for winter. The house was almost the color of the sky. Even the air seemed grey. She turned and went back inside her new brown house. It wasn’t much, but it was her own. And she felt right in it, like she had done the right thing, like she belonged.
    Draven looked in that evening, eyes widening when he saw her in the dim house on her straw pallet. She had nothing much to do in the winter.
    “Why are you here?” he asked.
    “I wanted to be. There’s a sapien house, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t stay in it.”
    “Cali…I am sorry.”
    “I know,” she said, trying not to let anything show in her voice. “But it’s near the outhouse, and I don’t have to worry about locking myself out when I go out, and besides, I like having a place that’s mine.”
    “I swear that I’ll never touch you again. I’d put a stake through my own heart before I’d hurt you. Please don’t do this.”
    “It’s not about that,” she said, although of course they both knew it was.
    “It’s cold out, and we haven’t any fuel. If anyone stays out here, it should be me.”
    Cali looked at him, not able to hide her shock. The thought almost made her laugh. Her in a big Superior house with a hot shower, and warm air, and all the electronics she didn’t even know how to use, and him out here in the dirt house with nothing.
    “That’s madness,” she said, but she smiled when she said it. “Besides, I like it out here. This is how it should be. You in your house and me in mine. I have clothes, and food, and supplies.”
    “I don’t like you out here by yourself. I can sleep on the couch and you can have the bedroom…”
    “Draven, it’s fine. I’m fine. Let me do this. The other sapiens live in these houses, right? And they’re fine. I’m not going to run away, and nothing is going to happen to me. I have the knife, anyway,” she said, pulling up the side of the mattress to show him the wooden dagger he’d made, now stained dark. “You can come out and check on me and eat whenever you want, and I don’t have to worry about waking you during the day. I’ll come inside if I get cold. I promise.”
    He frowned at the sky.
    “Well, don’t just stand there,” she said. “Close the door, it’s windy. Why are you standing out there?”
    Draven looked at her and then at the doorframe. “I…I can’t come in.”
    “Don’t be silly, of course you can. I’m not going to knife you. Close the door and come eat.” She tightened the blankets around her. Draven sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, pulled up her sleeve, and studied her arm for a long time. He’d taken all the bumps out of the other arm and had began working on this one. But after a while, he pulled her sleeve down without biting and stood up.
    “Not tonight. I ate last night when I was out.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and stood looking down at her for a minute before he turned and left without saying anything else. Cali pulled the blanket up around her shoulders and lay with her eyes open, a sadness as bone-deep as the cold settling into her. She thought it must be almost time for her woman’s days. She wasn’t usually so emotional.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER twelve
     
     
    For a few days, it seemed almost like the tracker’s pod knew Byron was following it. Byron was sure it wasn’t on Draven or Cali, and he cursed himself for telling Draven that was how they’d tracked Ander together in the desert. Now Draven knew to leave his pod. But he didn’t know they had other ways of tracking him.
    The device stopped moving the fourth day Byron spent in the woods, and two days later, he found it on the