Page 145 of Fangs
“Yeah.”
“You have a problem with us, Ember?”
Kai’s sharp voice startled me, and I turned around to see him staring at me with a fierce expression.
“What?”
“Kai,” Sable murmured, but Kai ignored him.
“Do you have a problem with me and Sable bein’ together?” he asked.
I glanced at Wolf, bewildered, but Wolf was also looking at me sharply.
“No?” I got out, confused.
“Why do you keep avoidin’ us, then?” Kai pushed. “Lookin’ away like you can’t stand to see us?”
Oh.
“I know what sorta bullshit Carth shoved down your throats,” Kai continued. “About what kinda people can be together?—”
“No,” I interrupted him, guilt and pain twisting together in my chest. “No, I don’t believe in that shit.”
All of them silently stared at me, waiting.
“It’s just… hard… hard to…” I swallowed and turned back around to the hutch. Maybe if I didn’t look at them, it’d be easier. “Seeing the two of you makes me miss my… my…” I fiddled nervously with the label on a bottle, my eyes welling up. “My person.”
I sensed the energy in the room change, but I didn’t turn back around.
“I’m sorry.”
Kai’s low apology startled me enough to glance back. I’d half expected him to make a joke or be an ass, but his expression was solemn.
“I shouldn’t have assumed,” he added, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“I don’t think Ember ever did anything the way Carth wanted her to.” Wolf’s voice was quiet but heavy.
I met his gaze, and the emotion there made my stomach flip nervously. I wasn’t entirely surewhatemotion I was looking at on his face, but he paused, and all of me went still and quiet, waiting to see what he was debating telling me.
“Just a few days before… Dune,” he faltered slightly, “one of the Arbiters came by and told me if I didn’t make you fall in line, they would do it for me.”
Do it for him?“What does that mean?” I whispered.
“Probably some sort of public humiliation. Maybe a caning. If that didn’t work, they would have taken you away from me so they could fully break you.”
His tone was so steady—like he was talking about the weather.I stood frozen in place, staring at him as my mind raced. The Ministry had always scared me, especially the enforcers in their black robes and faceless masks, and I’d tried to avoid them as much as possible. I didn’t remember a kid ever getting in trouble like that before. I had vague memories of adults chained on their knees to a platform, a scroll or something around their neck for everyone to read their transgressions. Wolf never let me go near them, and I’d never seen a caning. I’d never heard of a kid being taken away, either. Where would they be taken?
“They took kids?” I heard myself say.
“Yes,” Wolf said, holding my gaze with unwavering focus. “If the parents were unfit or noncompliant, they took them, and then they sterilized both parents so they couldn’t have more children.”
The edge of the bottle I held was digging into my palm, but I couldn’t move.Sterilized?His entire pack was quiet and watching, but none of them looked surprised, so they’d obviously heard this before.
“They made a special exception for me,” Wolf continued, his voice flat. “The Ministry, in their infinite wisdom, deemed me unfit to ever have offspring and sterilized me before they sent me out lookin’ for you.”
I scanned everyone’s faces, trying to figure out if this was some sort of trick or manipulation to get me to do something. But they just stared back at me, their faces grave.
“Why?” I got out. “Why you? What about Pa?”
