Free Bad Bloods by Shannon A. Thompson

exit, I shot forward and slammed the door shut
before she could open it far enough to slip through.
    My hands were on either side of her body, her
back pressed against mine, and her hair smelled sweet, like
expensive soap, like she could actually wash the outskirts of
Vendona off her. I laid my forehead on her shoulder because I
couldn’t look at her anymore, not even at the back of her head.
    She didn’t budge. “I need to leave, Daniel.”
Each word was taut.
    When she tried to open the door again, her
back bumped into my chest, but I kept the exit shut. “I need you to
leave,” I agreed, but in a totally different way. I needed her to
leave with the Hendersons, not to leave and return to the Southern
Flock. “I need you to go with them.”
    “No.”
    “Serena.”
    “I said no.”
    I grabbed her shoulders and spun her around.
Her once moonlit eyes were now the dark sides of the moon, but the
ID remained in her hand until she shoved it against my chest.
“Take. It. Back.”
    “I—” I shook my head, refusing to take back
her safety ticket out of here, the only winning ticket bad bloods
had to survive the election. Instead, I thought of the last way I
could convince her to go. “I love you.”
    I was desperate—so desperate—to see everyone
survive, to see her survive, to know we all meant something, that
our suffering meant something, but Serena was the only one who had
the opportunity to prove it. I had waited to prove it my entire
life, but I never considered my only option would come in the form
of a bad-blooded blonde. And as much as I wanted her in my life, I
had to give her up if any of us were going to live at all. That was
how bad bloods’ lives went. We sacrificed everything to survive,
and anything we didn’t sacrifice ourselves, we lost anyway. I
should’ve seen it coming from the moment I met her. But all I could
say was “I love you.”
    “What?” Her glare disappeared, replaced with
a furrowed brow and a shaking head. “No.” She pointed at my chest
and tried to back up even though she was already against the wall.
This time, I stepped away to give her more room, but she didn’t try
to leave. “Don’t you dare.” Her voice shook as much as she did.
“You’re not going to use that against me.”
    “Use it against you?” My heart pounded in my
ears. “I mean it, Serena.”
    “You can’t,” she said, now pointing at
herself. “You’ve known me two weeks. Two weeks, Daniel. You can’t
love me.”
    “If I can die in two weeks, I can love you in
two weeks.”
    All the color in her face drained out. The
election was in two weeks. It would decide if Vendona could ramp up
their execution rates on bad bloods, and if Logan II won, I would
surely die. So would my flock. So would Serena’s flock. If I were a
regular human, maybe I wouldn’t love her. I probably wouldn’t have
even met her. But my life was short, and my feelings happened fast.
I wasn’t going to waste the rest of the little time I had
pretending we had the chance to fall in love gradually. We didn’t.
She was it, and she was in front of me, and she could survive, and
that opportunity—her ability to care despite everything—was why I
loved her, and it was exactly what I was also taking advantage of.
I hated myself. But I had to do it. Survival did that to people.
Love did that to people. And I needed her to feel both of those
things to remind her why she needed to do this. Her loved ones
would get to live too.
    Her aggressive expression crumbled, and she
touched her face like she could force her glare to remain, but it
didn’t. “Why would you say that?” she asked, covering her eyes with
her jacket’s sleeve and arching her neck to face the sky. The idea
of any of us dying would push her. I knew that much about her.
Maybe she was right. Maybe she did absorb our souls.
    “You can save them,” I added, quieter this
time. “No one has to die.”
    Her face lowered, and she peeked over her
forearm at me. “Is