Chapter 0197

Jackson works hard for a smile when he sees my reaction to my story, though he kind of fails at it. “I

take it,” he murmurs, “that you have parents? And you like them?”

“Well, yeah, Jacks!” I reply, staring wide-eyed into his face. “They’re kind of great!”

Jackson laughs a little, tightening his arms around me. “Well, if you don’t know that parents are a

thing, you don’t really notice them missing, do you?”

I tilt my head, considering this, as Jackson goes on with his story, telling me about being a little boy

growing up in a Community and sleeping in what was essentially a bunkhouse full of little boys just

like him. The youngest babies, he knew, were raised in a nursery, and every year a new batch of

boys was brought to the bunk house when they were very young.

And from that young age, they were trained to fight.

“Just every morning,” Jackson murmurs, his face distant as he remembers, “we’d troop out of the

bunkhouse and get to work – running, learning to fight, sparring with each other.” He shrugs. “It

wasn’t so bad. As we got older, the guys who weren’t as good at it – they stopped coming to

practice and I’d see them out in the fields and stuff, or training for a new job. But, I mean, I was…

good at it. So. I just kept going.”

“You could see them?” I ask, trying to picture this world. “But not…talk to them?”

“The bunk house was for men and boys in warrior training,” Jackson explains, turning his face back

to me. “If you were sorted out of that, you…moved to another bunk house, I guess. I could see our

little community – the main part of it, with the council house, and the mess hall. And the women’s

barracks, too.”

My eyebrows raise at this but I press my lips together, wanting him to tell the story any way he

wants to. He notices, though, and smiles.

“Yeah, the women lived all together too. And we could see them, from where we lived on top of the

hill.”

“But weren’t you curious?” I breathe, fascinated.

“Of course we were,” he laughs, smiling at me. “Especially as we grew older and…noticed them

more. In a different way. But you have to understand – it was forbidden. We were taught our roles

very, very well, and we were never, ever supposed to talk to anyone in town, especially the women.”

I shake my head, baffled by it, and especially by the fact that these kinds of attitudes towards

gendered difference and communal living exist within my own nation. It sounds, like anything, more

Atalaxian than native to Moon Valley.

But, honestly, who the hell am I to judge? Just because Jackson grew up differently than me…does

that honestly make it worse?

“Were you happy there, Jackson?” I ask, my voice worried. Because while I desperately want him to

have been…I just don’t see how a little boy could be, growing up in a world with that much

restriction.

He takes a long moment before he answers. “No,” he whispers, shaking his shaggy head, and I

raise my hands to his face, stroking his cheeks with my thumbs and murmuring soft nothings. “But

you have to understand…I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t even know I was unhappy for…for a

long time. I thought that was just…life. I thought everyone lived like that, and that everything was

hard, and…a little sad.”

“Did you have any friends?”

“Of course I had friends,” he replies, smiling at me. “They still live there – Cristof and Zachary. I

spent pretty much every day of my life with them until I left. They were…well, they were the best

part.”

“Why did you leave?” I ask, fascinated. Honestly, I could listen to Jackson talk for days about this

world – and he probably has enough information to fill those days.

“Because I was assigned to,” he answers instantly, perfectly honest. “I was sent…um…” he

hesitates now, glancing away, and I can see that he’s suddenly measuring his loyalty to the

Community against his new loyalty to me, his mate.