Free The Wilds: The Wilds Book One by Donna Augustine Page A

only briefly when something caught my ankles and I was falling face first into the water.
    I found my footing quick enough and came up invigorated. Dax was staring in my direction like he was pissed off. “What the hell? I tripped. Not a big deal,” I said, getting stiff.
    I pushed my now wet hair back from my face, feeling utterly refreshed even as the tension in the group seemed heightened. I was going to have to do some serious adjustments in my thinking, because these people in the Wilds were strange. That really said something considering I’d come from a place that housed all the crazies of Newco.
    The raft was finally dragged up onto the shore and the last bike was rolled off when I saw Dax round on the pirate who’d punched me.
    “You got water on my bike,” Dax said to him as we hit the shore.
    It was sort of a ridiculous statement, since they’d just been transported across a shitload of water, but the pirate seemed to take the question seriously, compounding my belief that people in the Wilds were just plain old weird.
    “There’s no water on your bike,” the pirate replied.
    He was bigger than Dax but looked soft where Dax was hard. There was another difference between them too that I couldn’t quite figure out. Something in the way they stood, maybe? The way they talked? What was it that I sensed that was so different? This was really going to bug me.
    “Don’t tell me what I see,” Dax said, and then hauled off and launched a fist straight into his face. The pirate fell like a ton of bricks.
    Aaah, that must have been the thing I couldn’t figure out. Dax could kick some serious ass and the pirate just pretended he could.
    I turned to Scar, who seemed to stay within a five-feet perimeter of me now. “Dax really doesn’t like water on his bike, huh?”
    He grunted before he answered. “He doesn’t like when people fuck with his stuff.”
    Dax helped the other pirate load his friend onto the raft and shove off back into the water toward the larger boat. That was one huge stretch of water I would have to get back over when I enacted my plan.
    “There any other way across this?”
    “No. Their gang runs this bay and most of the Atlantic in these parts.”
    “Runs the Atlantic?”
    “Crossings. You don’t get across any of the large waters around here unless you go through them. Only other way to do it is to go west first and add a ton of travel time.” He turned away from me as Dax approached. “We heading out?”
    “You two go ahead. Make camp at the place and we’ll catch up within the hour.”
    Scar nodded and walked over to where Patches was. They got on their bikes and took off.
    “Come on,” Dax said, as he pushed the bike over to an alcove that was hidden from view. He stood the bike up and put out his hand. “Give me your sweatshirt,” he said.
    The dark fabric was hanging almost to my knees with the weight of the water as I took it off and handed it to him. He grabbed it and wrung it out vigorously before laying it across a fallen tree.
    He turned back to me and froze for a second. I looked down to figure out what had thrown him and saw the now wet white of my dress hadn’t left much to the imagination. I crossed my arms in front of my chest as he seemed to be making a concerted effort to act like he hadn’t just seen all of my goods on display. The way his eyes had frozen on me and then turned away, as if he didn’t want to see me, again confirmed what I’d feared. I was deformed in some way. That was why the guards never touched me. It wasn’t because I was a Plaguer. They knew after being around me so long that I wasn’t contagious. Dax hadn’t seemed to fear catching anything from me either. So it was something else. I thought I looked like everyone else, but something was obviously wrong with me. Whatever; he didn’t have to look at me if I was so ugly.
    He reached a hand back and tugged the t-shirt he wore over his head and then held it out to me. I’d never