Love and Decay

Love and Decay: Revolution

Volume Two

By Rachel Higginson

Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2016

This publication is
protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other
applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all
rights are reserved, including resale rights: you are not allowed
to give, copy, scan, distribute or sell this book to anyone
else.

Any trademarks, service marks, product names
or named features are assumed to be the property of their
respective
owners,
and are used
only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if we use one
of these terms.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes.

Any people or places are strictly fictional
and not based on anything else, fictional or non-fictional.

This eBook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com
and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author.

Copy Editing by Carolyn Moon

Cover Design by Caedus Design Co.

Other Books Now Available by Rachel
Higginson:

Love and Decay

Love and Decay, Season One

Love and Decay, Season Two

Love and Decay, Season Three

The Star-Crossed Series

Reckless Magic

Hopeless Magic

Fearless Magic

Endless Magic

The Reluctant King

The Relentless Warrior

Breathless Magic

Fateful Magic

The Redeemable Prince

The Starbright Series

Heir of Skies

Heir of Darkness

Heir of Secrets

The Siren Series

The Rush

The Fall

The Heart

The Five Stages of Falling in Love, an Adult
Contemporary Romance

Every Wrong Reason, an Adult Contemporary
Romance

Bet on Love Series

Bet on Us

Bet on Me- coming soon

Magic and Decay, a Rachel Higginson
Mashup

The Forged in Fire Series

Striking

Brazing

To the best Community Group.

For good talks and pipe organs

And The Continentals.

Episode Five

Chapter One

He sat down in front of me and crossed his
legs, mimicking my pose. He was the cutest boy I’d ever seen. His
untamed hair fell over his forehead and his bright eyes had that
adorably sleepy slant to them. And he looked at me like he cared
what I said, like whatever came out of my mouth was important and
worthwhile.

I loved that.

And him.

It was pretty obvious I was more than
obsessed with him.

He was life and happiness and everything I
fought for.

And my nephew.

“Auntie Page, when is my mom coming
back?”

I leaned forward and ruffled Lennon’s already
wild hair. “Soon,” I promised him. “She just needed… to talk to
your dad.”

King grunted behind me and Harrison made
kissing sounds.

Gross.

I didn’t want to think about why Hendrix and
Nelson had asked me to babysit for an hour. I didn’t need to know
the details.

Besides they deserved a little… alone time
with their wives. Especially after the last six months of rough
travel and constant risk. We had survived the Darien Gap- no small
miracle. We had survived the road and settlements from Colombia to
Mexico. We survived Mexico City and even picked up someone new.

And now we would survive the Territories.

We would survive because that’s what we did.
We survived. We always survived.

We
would always
survive.

My younger nephews ran wild around us. Stevie
cuddled into my side, playing an intricate string game Adela had
taught her. She wove the string in and out of her fingers making
elaborate patterns and pictures. It was pretty impressive.

Adela had tried to teach me once, but I kept
knotting the string and getting my fingers stuck. I was better with
a blade.

We were seated on a hill overlooking the
stretching Mexican desert. In my memory this land was familiar, but
colorless. I remembered it as drained of color. Black and white
tones to a gray sky.

In reality the desert was a mixture of rust
and auburn dotted with pale green cacti. The pinkish sun glowed on
the horizon and the wide open sky was a pallet of rich purple, soft
pink, deep indigo and burnished red. The hills in the distance
looked violet from here, their colorless vegetation reflecting the
sky in a breathtaking way.

The Mexican desert was beautiful. And it
shocked me.

I remembered Zombie armies and slavers,
cannibals and fighting for my very life. I remembered kidnappings
and being helpless…

I remembered darkness and evil men and hell
on earth.

But sitting on our hilltop while the children
ran and played and laughed I felt something more than hopelessness
and despair.

Significantly more.

There was more to this life than death. More
to living than decaying. This life I fought for was beautiful. And
this world I fought for soul-moving. The freedom I would soon fight
for would be worth it. The family I fought to protect
deserving.

I looked around at these people I loved more
than anything. Harrison and Miller chatted quietly with Santi and
the other Colombians. Adela and the scientists stoked a blazing
fire and worked on dinner.

And King sat on the edge of our little area
laughing with his new friend, Joss. He stared at her like she was
the only thing he could see, like she was sun and light and
breath.

A pang of something ugly and lonely hit me in
the stomach and I had to lean forward, squishing it with my balled
fists and sheer willpower, to get rid of it. I turned away from
King and focused on Lennon again. I was happy for King. Really.

I had often wondered if King would ever find
anybody that interested him. Sure, I’d seen him flirt with girls
before, but he was just naturally outgoing. He was funny when he
wanted to be and our lifestyle had forced him to take an interest
in every single person out of necessity. Either they were an enemy
or he was in charge of their safety.

But I had never seen him care about anybody
but our family.

Joss was good for him. Even if she didn’t
plan to stick with us forever.

I wondered if that was what my wacky emotions
were about. I felt bad for King. I didn’t know if anyone would
catch his attention quite like Joss had. Plus, there just weren’t
that many eligible females in our world. Hopefully there would be
more once we got back to the States. But it was hard to say.

Joss had her own future though. She had her
own destiny to fulfill, or whatever.

King would understand that.

He wasn’t like Harrison.

Or Hendrix.

Or Nelson.

Okay… maybe he wouldn’t understand. But that
was his drama. I had my own to deal with.

I smiled at Lennon and told him, “You were
born here, you know.”

He rolled his eyes in a way that only a
nine-year-old boy can. “I know. Mom and Dad have told me like one
million times.” His expression softened and he looked at me with
something different in his eyes. “I was born on the same day you
were kidnapped.”

I swallowed back blinding fear. It hit me
from out of nowhere and I had to blink for a full thirty seconds
before I could see again. My vision swam with terrifying memories
and dead men.

Men my brothers had killed, avenging me
without me even knowing it.

“Auntie Page?” Lennon’s voice drifted in
through the haze of my memories.

I struggled to untangle myself from the
spinning cyclone of my mind. “Yeah?” I still couldn’t really see
him. Instead I saw desert cages filled with starving Feeders and
kids younger than I had been and Mexican warlords and-

“Page.”

Not Lennon’s voice.

I lifted my head and met Miller’s intense
gaze. “Yeah?”

“You okay?”

I opened my mouth to say yes, but I shook my
head instead. He stared down at me, the wheels moving in his
mysterious head. He wore a pair of very faded jeans hung low on his
hips and a long-sleeved shirt just as worn. His blades were
strapped to a holster around his back and he’d picked up a baseball
cap somewhere. The hat hid his expression and I resented it
immediately.

Lennon stared at him too. As comfortable as
my niece and nephews were with everyone from Colombia, they were
obviously terrified of Miller.

Except for maybe Jagger. The little guy
didn’t know enough yet to be afraid.

“Out of here, kid,” Miller ordered. Lennon
jumped up and obeyed. Miller turned to Stevie. “You too, little
girl.” She stood up and sighed, dropping a kiss to the top of my
head before she joined Lennon and Vaughan by the food.

I looked back to Miller. “That was rude.”

He held his hand out for me. “You’re
surprised?”

I slid my hand into his bigger, rougher,
stronger one and let him pull me to my feet. My mouth was suddenly
very dry. Once I stood in front of him, he looked down at our hands
and I could have sworn he smiled. But when he lifted his face
again, it was gone.

“We’re going for a walk.”

“We are?” I licked dry lips and wondered
where my willpower had fled to.

He kept my hand in his and pulled me along
next to him. “This place,” he grumbled. “I can’t decide if I’d
rather get through it as fast as possible or never reach the other
side.”

My fingers entwined naturally with his. I
hadn’t expected him to open up so suddenly. My poor erratic heart
couldn’t keep up with the pounding of emotions beating in my chest.
I knew why he didn’t want to leave this place. America was waiting
on the other side.

His dad was just on the other side.

But I didn’t understand why he hated this
place so much. Other than the obvious reasons of desert heat,
danger around every turn and no shelter or food or water source.
Except Miller wasn’t the kind of man that stuck to obvious
reasons.

Or the kind of man that like… shared his
feelings.

We walked out of the small area we’d claimed
as our temporary dwelling place. It had been a picnic spot of some
kind, just off the highway- or what was left of the highway.

There was an open pavilion that had somehow
withstood the elements and war of the last decade. The sides were
open to allow the breeze through, but there was shade and shelter
overhead. Oliver and Fang had found a fire pit to use and we’d
managed to gather enough tinder to create something substantial. We
pooled what remained of our food resources and found edible cacti
to cook. Dinner would be meager, but enough.

“Don’t go too far,” Harrison called after us.
“We’ll eat as soon as the couples are back.”

Miller waved him off. “We’ll manage,” he told
me with a low voice.

For some reason that made me even more
nervous. Miller had been nothing but attentive over the last
several months, which was freaking me out.

He’d ignored me for nine years of my life.
Nine years. And now I couldn’t get him to leave me alone. He was
always close by. Whenever we fought, he battled by my side.
Directly next to me. I couldn’t even move sometimes because he was
so close.

And he was open and smiley and attentive.

And it was weird.

And it made me feel weird.

I didn’t know what to do with him or how to
talk to him. I’d spent almost a decade resigning myself to the
distance he’d forced between us, but now… now I didn’t know if I
should keep that distance or let him erase every inch of it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked once we’d moved a
good distance away from my family.

“How do you know something’s wrong?”

He turned me so we faced each other. The sun
dipped lower in the sky and a cooler breeze picked up and floated
over us. “Because it’s all over your face,” he told me.
“Something’s bothering you.”

“You’re-”

He cut me off before I could finish my
sentence. “It’s not about me.” His lips twitched. “I saw you
disappear back there. You went somewhere bad… someplace dark. What
were you and Lennon talking about?”

I cleared my throat and tried not to fidget.
I wanted to rip my hand out of his and fold my arms over my chest.
But that would be too obvious. I couldn’t give away how
uncomfortable I felt or he would pounce on me.

And if I’d learned anything over the last six
months it was that I was no match for this new version of
Miller.