Page 56 of The Hero Within
"CJ," she demanded. His skin felt feverishly hot beneath her hand. "CJ?"
Nnedi knelt at her side, sniffing delicately. "He's been poisoned."
Eden gasped. "Poisoned?"
Nnedi hauled up his shirt, displaying the angry red scratch on his side. "Shadow cat poison."
"But it's just a scratch. I checked it out, it barely even broke the skin. He was fine. Colton was the one who'd been cut up." But CJ had been the first to collapse on the ground when they made camp.
And the welt was angry and red now.
She should have been paying more attention.
Nnedi sank back onto her heels. "Come. The sooner we get home, the sooner he can be treated. He too is going to have a very long night."
"What doyou think they intend to do with us?" Eden whispered as she followed him through the winding canyons the Shadow Rock pack led them to.
Johnny's nostrils flared. "Don't know. They're all wargs though."
Which meant nothing good.
Usually.
He glanced back at the makeshift stretcher some of the wargs had rigged up. Cole was on it, his hand slumping off the edge as they carried him. Eden saw the direction his gaze traveled in and dropped back to check on her charge. She pressed a gentle hand to Cole's forehead, frowning with concern.
Mierda.
One tiny scratch and the kid had gone from laughing and shrugging off the shadow cat attack, to passing out. It hadn't even been a full wound. Merely a scratch. Eden looked guilty, but fuck that, because he hadn't noticed the kid getting sicker either.
"The boy will be fine," Nnedi said, falling in beside him. "We have healers who can see to him, and they are used to dealing with shadow cat poison. He's lucky we came along when we did."
Johnny didn't fully understand Nnedi's position in the hierarchy of this pack, but she seemed to hold enough power to make even the most grizzled warg back down. They'd wanted to tie his hands behind him, knowing who the dangerous one was, but she'd countermanded the proposition.
"They are under my protection,"she'd spat instead,"which means they are my guests. And we will treat them as such."
Then she'd given him a look that clearly said,don't fuck with my trust.
"So how does this work?" he muttered, examining the narrow canyons that soared above them. Torchlight played over the rose gold of the sandstone, and striations of color lay exposed in the bedrock, revealing years and years of different types of rock layered upon each other. "A group of wargs living together here in the Divide? I'd have expected that to get messy."
Nnedi strode at his side with a loose-hipped grace. "Not at all. We are not like those scavengers that prowl the plains. We are pack. We are stronger together, and weak links are removed to keep the pack safe."
Weak links meaning... wargs who had an issue with their inner beast, he guessed. "How long have you been down here?"
"Since the Darkening, in one way or another. And yourself? What brings you down here to the Divide? It's a place few strangers dare enter, so we're not entirely used to having company. You'll have to forgive my wargs their manners. Life is dangerous."
How much to reveal? "We're heading for Cortez City. Want to do a little trading there."
"A dangerous supposition, for the chances of paying the price of your lives is more likely than that of receiving any gains. The Confederacy rarely deals with outsiders." She snorted. "They don't like any outside views corrupting their sheep-like populace. Too hard to keep feeding them lies. And they don't like wargs."
"Sounds like you've had some experience with them."
"Some," she admitted, and her dark eyes shifted toward him. "What are you hoping to trade for?"
His shoulders stiffened. Nnedi was far from stupid, and she had to scent the doubt swimming off him. He forced himself to breathe slowly, his racing heartbeat slowing to a crawl as he brought his omega side to the fore. Calmness slid through his veins like a drop of oil landing on a pool of water. It could spread across the surface of him, enveloping him in its shielding embrace, but deep inside the furnace burned.
"Medication," he admitted, watching her eyelids soften as she subconsciously breathed in his pheromones. "There's a virulent disease afflicting the humans in the Wastelands. Eden seems to think the Confederacy have antibiotics that might treat it, perhaps even a vaccine."
"The Confederacy don't give anything away for free."
