Chapter 98

Chapter 98

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.

I wait, trying to be patient, letting him decide what to tell.

“I was….sent to learn things,” he murmurs, hanging his head a little. “New fighting techniques, new

technologies. And then, when I’ve decided that I learned enough, I’m

supposed to….desert. To go back and teach the Community what I learned.”

I tense in his arms, my hands again taking fistfuls of his shirt, suddenly terrified by the idea that he’s

going to leave and go back to that…that place.

But Jackson just laughs and shakes his head. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, leaning forward and pressing

a kiss to first one of my cheeks, and then the other. “I already decided that I’m not going back.”

“Oh,” I say, surprised, even as the tension lessens in my shocked muscles. “Why not?”

“Because,” he murmurs, “I learned….enough, in the few months that I lived in Capital, to understand

that what they’re doing is…well, I mean, it’s a cult, right? They control people, give them no choice in

their lives. They…take their children away.”

–

He sighs, shaking his head, and I press myself closer against him, wanting to fix it all – heal it all,

instantly.

“I mean, I don’t know…anything about having a family,” he murmurs, raising his eyes to mine. “But I do

know that if I had found you, somehow, when I lived there? They…they wouldn’t have let me keep you

wouldn’t even have let me see you. And there’s something wrong about that, Ari wrong about all of it.

It’s not right I can’t go back. I can never go

back.”

My eyes fill with tears as I study his face, as I see that his own heart is broken with the realization. And

I’m overwhelmed, suddenly, with the strength it must have taken to come to that decision

To decide to leave, forever, the world in which you were raised? Everyone you’ve ever loved, no matter

how badly they’ve treated you?

God, my mate, he’s…he’s so much stronger than me. So much stronger than I’ll ever be.

“You can have a home here now, Jacks,” I say, speaking fast and earnest, pressing a desperate hand

to his cheek. “We’ll be really nice to you everyone will! And you can have my mom

–

she’ll take care of you, she loves being a mom –”

Jackson just laughs, his eyes crinkling as he turns his head to the side and presses a kiss to my palm.

“You’re my home now, mate,” he murmurs, the words simple and true.

And I can’t help it. I sit up, and wind my arms around his neck, and hold my mate tight to me as he

wraps his arms around my back, pressing me to his chest like he’ll never let me go.

“Damn right I’m your home,” I growl, possessive, ready to rip into anyone who’d try to say otherwise.

He laughs, I think pleased by the ferocity of his little mate. I pull away then. looking into his eyes, willing

him to see it and believe it. “You stay with me now, yeah?”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he replies, the corners of his mouth turning up as he raises a hand,

stroking it down the length of my hair, letting his fingers get tangled in the rose–gold lengths of it.

And I can’t help it, then. Even though we’re supposed to be talking, even though there’s so much more

I want to know, I kiss Jackson, wanting him to feel the promise in my words as well as hear it. Because

he’s mine now, and I’m not letting him go, not for anything.

And as my mate kisses me back, I feel it happen – feel our perfect silver bond snap into place between

us.

I can feel it, in my soul, shining just as pretty and bright as my other bond, that points…. oddly in the

other direction.

Towards Luca, wherever he is, out there in the night.

While I’m wrapped up here, in Jackson’s arms.