Page 119 of Malachi
Scrapes, cuts, and smatterings of blood covered her body. Some of the blood was clearly hers and some wasn’t. She’d gotten blood on her cheeks, somehow. Clear down to her massively swollen ankle that was turning blackish purple as we sat there on the ground.
Seeing that she was in one piece, and as unharmed as I could have hoped for in any sense of reality, I pulled her back into my arms.
“Eden,” my voice broke with a sob of my own. My fingers clutched at her, digging into her skin, nuzzling my face into her neck. “Oh my god, Eden.”
“They’re alive,” she sobbed, crumpling into my arms like a rag-doll. After a moment, she suddenly began trying to push away from me and get up.
“I need to get to them. Are they okay? Talia is okay. I saw her, but Ruth and Delilah and —”
“They are all safe, love,” I muttered, reassuring her.
“And you.. you’re alive,” she whispered, her eyes so wide and filled with tears.
“You think you’d get rid of me that easily?” I said, attempting a bit of levity that was completely false and neither of us believed. She seemed to appreciate it, anyway.
“Your brothers?” she asked, her fingers still clutching at me as though she thought I would disappear if she let go for even a second. I understood. I felt exactly the same.
“Look,” I whispered, shifting to the side, as I showed her the scene unfolding.
Agents crouched around Reverend Jacobs’ body and tended to all of us in various forms. But what stood out were the couples.
Zeke with Talia.
Levi with Ruth.
Ollie with Delilah.
And Naomi, cradling the weeping, crumpled form of my youngest and most broken brother, Gideon.
“Oh, Gideon,” Eden whispered, her tears renewing again.
“We’re all alive. That’s what matters. And this? This is over. It’s over,” I whispered over and over like a mantra.
These tears were not the first we had cried over the shit show of a life Zion had given us. And they would not be the last. Not by a long shot. But for now, for right this very instant, we were alive, and we were together.
We had made it.
We had survived.
CHAPTER28
MALACHI
My eyes scanned over the room, fatigue washing over me and settling deep into my bones in the late night hour. Agents that had filled the house only hours before had long since packed up, leaving us to the quiet and solitude of our home. But everything had changed. The group of us, minus Zeke and Talia, had just returned from the hospital, having been checked, poked, and prodded and finally deemed well enough to return home for the night.
Eden sat beside me, silently. I wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in my arms and take her away from this nightmare, but I felt it wasn’t my place or the right time, to press for any more details. We had all given our statements and simply sat around the living room quietly.
Instead, I simply moved an arm behind me and touched her thigh. I could instantly feel her body release tension, her muscles relaxing against my touch.
She was safe. She was here. And we would be okay.
“Jesus fuck?” Levi whispered, slumping over in the chair beside the sofa.
“Yeah, no kidding. But at least we are done with statements. For tonight at least,” I sighed heavily.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this tired in my entire life.”
“Me either, brother.”
