Page 40 of Renegade Queen

Slipping from my grasp, she turned to the others, pulling down her hood and looked them over.

“Snap the fuck out of it!” she shouted suddenly at them.

Dean reared back like she’d slapped him, and Maddox stared at her comically. Well, not quite the tactic I’d thought she’d go with, but it seemed to work as they grumbled and shuffled awkwardly on the spot.

Only Tank seemed to hold up. His top lip quivered as his gaze moved from Fizzle to the bartender, who had smartly moved away from the rest of us to the other side of the room.

“Keep the bear in the cage, Tank,” Alyssa warned him low-toned. “Letting him out now will put us all in danger.”

His eyes slowly moved to her, almost like he was reluctant to let his prey out of sight, and it was enough to make me want to piss my pants. I’d seen him explode into his bear before, and it had scared the shit out of me then. But it was only now that I realised what little we’d be able to do if he did it again. How exactly did you stop an irate bear if it set its sights on you?

I was pretty sure the answer to that question was you didn’t. Not exactly a position I wanted to be in right now.

“I need you to do this for me,” Alyssa whispered, moving closer to Tank.

My fingers itched at my side with the need to grab Alyssa and pull her away from him. I knew it was the wrong move; it would only piss him off even more. But I couldn’t help but be terrified that he would hurt her. Yet, even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew it was wrong. This was Tank. We could all see how he felt about her, and he proved it as he practically deflated on the spot at the sound of her whispered plea.

“Drinks,” the bartender muttered. “We’re going to need drinks.”

He wandered behind the bar, and I could see the cold sweat on his forehead as he swiped it away. I wondered if he knew how close he’d come to dying tonight.

Fizzle jumped onto the table we’d been sitting at before, tucking his paws beneath him as he made himself comfortable. “It’s time to talk,” he told us grimly, and we all reluctantly returned to our seats.

I watched him warily as I did, realising I had no idea if he was actually on our side. Alyssa had been away from this place for a long time. How did we know he hadn’t turned his allegiances to whoever these people were terrified of while she’d been away?

Alyssa’s hands ran through her blond hair as she gathered it up and pulled it away from her face. She looked tired. She’d been through a lot to get us here, and seeing what this place had turned into had to be hurting her.

The bartender brought our drinks over, but instead of leaving, he pulled up a seat and joined us, nearly downing the sweet-smelling drink he had in his hand.

“What was that outside?” Alyssa finally asked.

So many questions, but it was an excellent place to start.

“A raid,” the bartender told us. “They come on the king’s orders. The children have a strong enough connection to Nymeria that he’ll put them in training camps. The woman will go into his harem, so he can try and breed more of them.”

Dean sneered at the way he phrased it. It wasn’t exactly something you heard of where we’d come from. The fact that he could state it so casually meant it had been happening here for long enough that people were used to the idea, no matter how much they might have hated it.

“Why would you stop us from helping them?” Dean spat out.

He was pissed. Hell, I was pissed. But it was the way Maddox sat there staring at his hands in shock that had my attention. Something was going on with him, and we needed to get him upstairs and away from anyone who could listen before we tried to sort it out. Nymeria didn’t seem like a place to start talking about your weaknesses, and Maddox freaking out right now wasn’t screaming strength.

“What would you have done?” the bartender scoffed. “Take on The Endless? You’d be dead in seconds and have a target placed on the rest of us. The drunks might talk about the inevitable end of it all, but that doesn’t mean we want to see it anytime soon.”

“You can’t all just sit there listening to your friends and neighbours getting dragged away. Someone has to do something,” Tank accused.

It was easy to judge these people when we’d just walked into this place. But they’d been living this for what could have potentially been decades. I had a feeling that hope had died out here long ago, and with it had gone any will to fight back.

“We fought back at first. We kept caches of weapons waiting for an uprising to take place. Waiting for someone to show us the way. And you know what happened? Absolutely fucking nothing. Because there aren’t any heroes here. And no one is coming to save us.”

His eyes went to Alyssa accusingly, and Fizzle stood, putting himself between them. The bartender raised an eyebrow at the move but said nothing. It was clear that he suspected something; the problem was I had no idea what it was. What was Alyssa’s connection to this place, really? We knew nothing about her apart from the fact that she’d lost her entire family. And I’d put my life on it, being this king who had killed them. But from the sounds of it, she wasn’t the only one that had been through that. So why did I think there was more to the story than we knew, and why the hell was I starting to think it was something she should have told us before we’d come here?

Alyssa picked up her drink and sipped at it as her face crumpled in thought.

She wanted to fight back. That wasn’t a secret. Her body language was practically screaming it. But starting a revolution wasn’t what we were here to do, and we needed her if we were going to have any chance of getting Damon back.

But this bartender was right. These people needed someone to fight for them.

Maybe we should start thinking about how we would do both?