Chapter 8

"So you're the new Warlord of the Santa Fe Sanctuary." Scorn drips from my words.

Wolfe would make a good Warlord; he's a good choice for securing a city that has fallen to the Primitives. He's strong, decisive and brutally efficient. But there's something about him, about the situation, that angers me. He's stepping into the role that belonged to my husband, and I hate the reminder of how much my life has changed.

Wolfe shrugs. "Temporarily."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I demand.

Before Wolfe can answer, if he was going to answer, we're interrupted by an approaching woman. "The requested rooms have been prepared for your guest."

Before Wolfe can acknowledge her, she turns and starts to walk away.

I'm shocked and say out loud, "Hannah?"

Could it be possible? Is this the woman who took my place at Silas's side one year ago? The last time I saw her, she was standing next to our husband, her hand on his shoulder as I was dragged away kicking and screaming.

The woman stiffens and turns her head slightly. "Skye." She says my name in cool acknowledgement and then continues walking.

"Wait, Hannah..." I take a few steps after her, but Wolfe catches my arm and holds me in place.

I look sharply down at his hand, but he doesn't remove it. He tightens his grip until I tilt my head back to look up into his eye.

"Let her go," he says quietly. "She's not the same woman you used to know."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I say, letting the frustration leak through in my voice. "What's going on around here? What happened when we left? How could she possibly have survived?"

Wolfe begins walking, giving me no choice but to follow him or fall, since he still has hold of my arm. I hurry to keep up with his longer strides.

"She can answer all of your questions, but you need to give her time. She's not the same woman."

I growl my frustration. "Yeah, you said that. What kind of a woman is she now? Half zombie?"

Wolfe doesn't say anything, but I see a slight shake to his shoulders telling me he's laughing. He'd better be laughing at my joke and not at me.

I realize that I need to calm down, process what's happening. I'm standing in a place that used to be my home, but everything has changed. My husband, the man who I shared this palace with, is now dead. Even if he somehow managed to survive the Primitive attacks, like Hannah did, he wouldn't have survived the neuroblastoma in his brain.

I try to relax my shoulders and follow Wolfe willingly. I know I can trust him with my safety. He might be frustrating as hell, a soldier to the core, but he would never willingly leave me in danger. As long as I'm under his roof, I should be safe.

I'm surprised when he shows me to the harem. "This is where you plan on keeping me?"

"For now." He nods at one of the guards who opens the door.

Nostalgia hits me hard as I step through the opening and into another world. I can't help but look at everything with new eyes.

The large common room is tidy, everything put in its place, as though the women of the harem hadn't fled in a panic, leaving everything where it fell. I suspect Hannah must've had the place cleaned up. Where it used to be bustling with a dozen women and servants, it's now devoid of people.

Bolts of fabric line one of the walls where seamstresses used to measure us and create beautiful outfits. Next door is the kitchen, where our chef created amazing meals out of limited resources. The bedrooms are in the back. Each wife had her own room, privacy being a prized commodity at the time. We were among the lucky few. We hadn't been turned out to starve, to fight for our livelihood, to endure the hardships that other citizens would've had to endure. The only expectation was that we please the Warlord when summoned.

"Thought you'd be more comfortable in a familiar place," Wolfe says from behind me.

I raise a skeptical brow and turn to look at him. "Since when do you care about anyone's comfort? No, I think there's another reason for putting me in the most secure room in the palace."

Wolfe's expression is hard, his gaze icy as he looks me over, his eye drifting down my body. "Indeed."

Anger begins to rise at his one-word response. "Since you wish to secure me separate from my people," I say, swinging my hand around to indicate that my people are not with me, "I must assume that you have a reason. Are you trying to lock me in, or lock someone out?"

Again, he pauses before answering. "Both."

"Can you give me more?" I ask in frustration, pacing away from him. "Why am I here? I have a mission to complete. We can stay for a maximum of a few days, long enough to teach your doctor how to replicate and administer the vaccine, then we must move on."

"No." He says it simply, as though that one word explains everything.

I'm beginning to have an inkling of what's going on in that big, brutal brain.

"Wolfe," I say slowly, "you can't keep me here. I have to leave with my team. I have to move on to the next Sanctuary, and then the next one after that. You understand that, don't you?"

He shakes his head. "No, you're needed here. You stay."

Horror begins to rise up, making me feel dizzy. If Wolfe has a strong hold on the city and he wants to keep me here, then I'm not going to be able to fight him. My team is too small to face Wolfe and his army. They won't be able to help.

This isn't the first time a Sanctuary has attempted to separate me from my team and keep me. Other cities had thought to leverage me for control of the vaccination. I learned quickly not to tell them about the origins of the vaccine. Not to tell them it was created using my blood. Warlords can't be trusted with that kind of information.

Of course, Wolfe already knows about my blood.

"You plan to use me to control the vaccine?" I ask him, wanting to be completely clear on what's happening.

"No, I don't care about the vaccine. It's a Band-Aid solution. It'll stop the rapid growth of Primitives, but it won't fix the world we now live in."

"There's more to it than that," I say angrily, pacing away from him, my arms wrapped protectively around my waist. "The vaccine doesn't just stop people from turning into Primitives. It's showing promising signs of turning Primitives back into people."

I can tell right away that Wolfe didn't know this piece of information. He seems to be turning it over in his mind.

"Does it work?" he asks skeptically. "Is it capable of turning zombies into humans again?"

I give my head a slight shake. "Not so far, but I'm confident that it will."

"Who's doing the research?"

"Dr. Bishop, from the Tucson sanctuary." There's no point in keeping the information from him. The more I talk, the more likely it is he'll let me go if I say the right thing. "After Emery was bitten, Taran's blood was able to turn Emery back. She died three months later from massive organ shutdown, but the possibilities inherent in this vaccine are huge. If we can just get it to work on the Primitives, we could eradicate the virus entirely."

A pang rushes through me as I remember Emery, my sister's caretaker for many years, a kind woman who'd treated me with the love she'd shown my sister. Her death was extremely hard on Taran and surprisingly difficult on myself as well, considering we hadn't had time to forge a close bond.

"The vaccine and a cure are two very different things. Vaccines can be created and distributed quickly. A cure can take years to create, if it's possible at all, and often has undesirable side effects. As your friend no doubt learned." His words are hard, but not untrue.

Emery had suffered right to the end, her organs failing one at a time a time. We did everything we could to keep her alive, but her body was just too severely injured from the Turn to recover.

After Emery's death, Dr. Bishop began experimenting with different versions of the vaccine in the hopes of finding a way to turn Primitives back into humans without damaging them too badly. They'd managed to test the vaccine on a few live Primitives. The younger the Primitive, the better its chances of surviving for longer. None of them actually survived though.

"Maybe so, but there's hope, and I'm part of that hope. You can't keep me here, Wolfe. This isn't where I belong anymore." I plead with him, hoping I'll get through.

He shakes his head. "This is exactly where you belong."

I throw my hands up in frustration. "What about the rest of the world? Do you not give a fuck about them? They'll die without the vaccine."

Wolfe takes a step closer to me until I'm forced to back away. He stares down at me, his single golden eye piercing. "I don't care about the rest of the world. Only you." He takes another step forward, gripping my arm as I try to step away from him. "You will stay."

I shake my head. "No, I won't. I have to leave. Why do you want to keep me here anyway? You left me, not the other way around. You don't need me."

He doesn't answer my question. He doesn't tell me why he wants me here so badly. He turns on his heel and strides through the open door, closing it behind him. It's a great big thick steel door that closes into a concrete wall. The entire harem is built to withstand anything from fire to a bomb blast. I hear the echo of the bolt slamming into place as Wolfe locks me inside.