Page 89 of The Hero Within
"His woman just rejected his help," Lincoln added, a little quieter. "We can all sense it, and it's igniting the tension. Maybe if you don't want him, then you should tell him. Make it clear to him there is nothing between you and never will be."
The words gave her a queasy feeling deep inside.
"I said... no kissing," she muttered. "Or anything else."
"Ah," he breathed. "You told him you had no feelings for him, and there was nothing between you, and he should move on?"
"I said...." Her voice trailed off.
I said... I didn't know.
And he said we'd talk.
Ahead of them, Colton paused at the top, looking back at them. For a second their eyes met, and her stupid heart started beating a little faster. Then his gaze shifted to Lincoln, his lips thinned, and he turned away from them, vanishing over the lip of the horizon.
"I know this isn't my place to say this," Lincoln said softly, "but you should be clear about your intentions. He has hope, Eden. Hope that something might be forming between the two of you. I can see it every time he looks at you as if you're his whole world."
"He looks at me like I'm his world?" she blurted.
"We have a saying in Shadow Rock," he said. "'When you know she's the one, not even the moon can tear your eyes from her.'So yes. He looks at you like you are the moon in the sky, and that is saying something, for a warg."
"It's complicated."
"Do you want him or not?"
He didn't understand. "There's so much about us you don't know."
"Do youwanthim or not?" Lincoln repeated.
"I don't want to be hurt," she snapped.
"None of us want to be hurt. It's a risk, to be sure. But what's your other option? Bury your heart until you can pretend it doesn't exist? What's waiting for you back home? Apart from the people you want to save?"
She nearly missed her next step.
Because the answer was clear.
Not a damned thing.
Reachingthe top of the escarpment left them standing in a foreign world. A forest of bleached white timbers stretched out before them for miles, looking like the crucified remains of twisted skeletons. The wood was rotting and nothing grew there. Ghost forests, Arik told them, before warning them to keep an eye out for mutos.
Eden's calves ached from the mountain of switchbacks they'd just climbed, but she resolutely set her pack and sucked in a deep breath. She could do this.
They weren't quite in a Dead Zone, where the radiation poisoned the ground, but close enough to come into contact with those poor souls whose bodies had been warped and twisted, the mutations handed down genetically from when the nuclear reactors burned down during the Darkening. The Confederacy enforcers hunted mutos down when they saw them and put them out of their misery, but there were enough of them around to make passing through the forest dangerous, according to Arik.
Wasn't much to eat here, after all, apart from unwary travelers.
"Lincoln and I will scout ahead," Arik shot over his shoulder, as the pair of wargs slipped into the trees.
"You do that," Johnny muttered.
And suddenly she realized she was alone with him, with Lincoln's earlier words echoing in her ears.
Johnny hauled out his battered flask. He'd managed to refill it in Shadow Rock. "You need a rest?" he asked, in a gruff voice.
She could read the tension in him now as if Lincoln's words opened her eyes to an entirely new world. Johnny didn't look at her. Just tipped the flask to his lips.
"I'm okay," she said quietly, dumping her pack off her back and reaching for her water flask. Sweat wet her back where the pack had rested, and she suddenly felt so weightless she suspected she could almost float away.
