The floor was dim compared to the brilliant ceiling so far above. It took a moment for my eyes to make sense of all the shapes.

A crowd. There was no other word for it—there was a crowd of humans standing stock-still and silent, all staring at me with the same burning, hate-filled expressions I’d seen at dawn.

Melanie was too stunned to do anything more than count. Ten, fifteen, twenty… twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven…

I didn’t care how many there were. I tried to tell her how little it mattered. It wouldn’t take twenty of them to kill me. To kill us. I tried to make her see how precarious our position was, but she was beyond my warnings at the moment, lost in this human world she’d never dreamed was here.

One man stepped forward from the crowd, and my eyes darted first to his hands, looking for the weapon they would carry. His hands were clenched in fists but empty of any other threat. My eyes, adjusting to the dazzling light, made out the sun-gilded tint of his skin and then recognized it.

Choking on the sudden hope that dizzied me, I lifted my eyes to the man’s face.

CHAPTER 14: Disputed

CHAPTER 14

Disputed

It was too much for both of us, seeing him here, now, after already accepting that we’d never see him again, after believing that we’d lost him forever. It froze me solid, made me unable to react. I wanted to look at Uncle Jeb, to understand his heartbreaking answer in the desert, but I couldn’t move my eyes. I stared at Jared’s face, uncomprehending.

Melanie reacted differently.

“Jared,” she cried; through my damaged throat the sound was just a croak.

She jerked me forward, much the same way as she had in the desert, assuming control of my frozen body. The only difference was that this time, it was by force.

I wasn’t able to stop her fast enough.

She lurched forward, raising my arms to reach out for him. I screamed a warning at her in my head, but she wasn’t listening to me. She was barely aware that I was even there.

No one tried to stop her as she staggered toward him. No one but me. She was within inches of touching him, and still she didn’t see what I saw. She didn’t see how his face had changed in the long months of separation, how it had hardened, how the lines pulled in different directions now. She didn’t see that the unconscious smile she remembered would not physically fit on this new face. Only once had she seen his face turn dark and dangerous, and that expression was nothing to the one he wore now. She didn’t see, or maybe she didn’t care.

His reach was longer than mine.