Resist (The Harvest Saga Book 2) (4 page)

Gretchen was our leader. Though our group was one of the smallest, she preferred to keep it that way, since I was involved now. She began our training. We would need to strengthen our bodies, sharpen our minds, and prepare. For what, exactly, I was not sure. But I was told that we would strike after Marian and I were wed. We would wait until all citizens were high on love and hope before jerking those feelings of security out from under them.

I just hoped that after all was said and done, I could find my way back to Abby. She was my forever. And if helping the resistance got me back to her, I would do whatever it took.

Kyan worked into the night
, and as soon the stew I made over the fire was finished, I wolfed it down, cleaned myself as best as I could, and collapsed into bed.

He was after me. Norris. I ran through the foggy orchard, branches grabbing at me in the eerie moonlight. The sound of hoofs pounding the dirt behind me filled my ears. He was getting closer. I was almost out of the trees. I only had to make it to the fence. I pumped my arms and strained to run as fast as I could. My calves screamed and my lungs burned. Only a few more feet! A snake coiled around my waist, poised to strike. It’s stark white with eyes the color of fresh blood. It bears its fangs and I tense up, waiting for the inevitable.

“Abs, wake up!”

Someone was shaking me. Hard. I opened my eyes to see Gray. I hadn’t seen him since he left this morning. I tried to figure out where I was. What was going on?

“Gray?”

“Yeah, I’ve got you. You’re okay.” He held me against his chest and rocked me gently.

After a few minutes, my heart and breathing slowed so I let loose of him a little. “You scared me,” he admitted.

“I’m sorry. I had a nightmare.”

“Must have been some kind of nightmare.”

I nodded. “It was.”

I never slept in pants, so I tried to cover up with the blanket still hovering around my waist. Gray glanced at me and then looked away with a slight smile on one side of his mouth.

“Shut up.”

He chuckled. “You’re very modest.”

“And you aren’t?”

Shrugging, he looked back over at me. “Not particularly.”

“Well, I am. So, how was your day? What’s your assignment?”

He sighed and lay back onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t belong here. But I don’t feel like I belong in Olympus anymore either.” He paused. “I’m overseeing the teams pruning the western orchard.”

“I think I’m supposed to prune again tomorrow, but I’m not sure where. I’ll be assigned in the morning. They’re shifting teams daily. What time is it?”

“It’s just after midnight. My shift just ended. I needed to talk to you for a minute.”

“What’s up?”

When he pulled the small communicator out of his pocket, my stomach sank. Memories of the words and pictures from yesterday flooded my mind. Gray typed something into the small keyboard. The screen illuminated. His eyes met mine as he held it out for me. “I thought you should know before anyone says anything about it tomorrow.”
Not again. How could this possibly get worse?

I took the tiny device. I read the words twice, just to be sure of what I’d seen. “Is this true?”

He nodded. “Yes. It was announced today.”

I threw the communicator back to him as if it were a hot coal in my hand. “I don’t believe it. The engagement was only just announced yesterday!” Not only was Crew getting married in
two days
, his bride-to-be was reported to be pregnant with their first child. The photograph on the comm showed a glowing and enamored couple, Crew’s hand resting gently on the side of her stomach.

“His father is powerful.”

“Yes, but he would never go along with this. He wouldn’t do this. Not after everything that happened. The only way she could be pregnant would be if she had the procedure.”

Gray nodded in agreement, as he tucked the comm back into his pocket. “Perhaps something he loved was threatened, or someone.” He looked up at me with that last word.

“Do you know that?”

“No, but I wouldn’t put it past the King. He is famous for getting what he wants regardless of the method.”

Warm tears slipped from my eyes, carving jagged trails down the planes of my skin. I wiped them away harshly. “I can’t believe it.”

Gray pulled me to him. “It’ll be okay, Abs.”

“What’s okay?” I pulled away from him. “This is not okay! Crew marrying someone else is not okay!
I
am not okay! The village is not okay! People are being dragged away at the slightest scent of what they call ‘resistance.’ How is any of this okay?”

“It isn’t. You’re right. I was just trying to comfort you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go all psycho on you. I just…I don’t know what to do.”

“Why is it up to you to do something?”

“Because I know what’s going on.”

He squeezed my hand and then held tight. “Don’t do anything stupid, Abigail.”

I looked up at him, sniffed and smiled. “Define stupid.”

I managed to work the
next day in South with no further run in with Ardis. It was probably a miracle. Gray didn’t visit that night and Kyan worked into the early morning hours. I covered his breakfast with a cloth and headed back into the cold. Gray was in the group of guards hovering over our work team today. He watched me carefully, often out of his periphery.

My fingers and toes were numb as sundown descended. My thighs were tingly as well. I finished pruning the tree I was in and then made my way down. When my feet found the earth, I almost dropped and kissed it. Ardis sauntered over. “Gray, you guarded this one didn’t you?”

Gray cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he replied, reluctantly.

“She’s quite spirited.”

Gray grunted a reply.

Ardis stepped up to me. I kept my eyes down and hugged my torso to stop my shaking. I still had the rusty pruner in my hand. Was it wrong that I wanted to stab him in the neck with it?

“The Crown Prince was smitten with you, huh?”

I refused to bite. He could fish all he wanted, but I wasn’t going to give in.

“Did he tell you he loved you? Wanted to be with you forever?”

I pressed my lips tightly together.

Ardis chuckled. “So, why did he discard you so easily? So quickly…like a piece of garbage?” He slowly circled me. “Did you not give him what he wanted?” I could feel his eyes on me; hear his smirk in the words he pierced me with.

Gray stepped toward me. I shook my head slightly.

The sound of shouting from across the orchard broke the tension. Someone yelled, “Guards!” Ardis, Gray, and the other guards went running toward the voice. I returned my pruner and crept closer to the disturbance. Brock Jennings, a boy of fourteen, was screaming. He lay at the bottom of a tree, his arm bent at an odd angle. Gray typed on his comm and then shouted into the device a request for immediate help from a medic.

While I watched the chaos unfold, someone grabbed my arm. I looked up to find Kyan. “Ky?”

“Hey. We need to talk.”

“Now?”

“While they’re busy.” He ticked his head toward the guards. “They’re keeping me away from you. That’s why I’m never home.”

“What? Why?”

“They want to isolate you. You’re less of a threat if you’re by yourself. There is no one to talk to, or tell your secrets to.”

He pulled me back into the orchard, away from everyone. Stopping suddenly under a tree, he pulled me to him. I hugged him back. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve got to tell you something.”

“Okay.” I pulled back a little, but he pressed me back toward him. His warm breath fanned over my ear.

“There is a resistance. The woman you saw pulled away from the depot wasn’t part of it, but there is one.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere. I think the guards are catching on. That’s why they’re working everyone so hard—so they’ll be too tired to meet and too tired to fight.”

“Fight?”

“We have to do something. What they did to you, to the other girls, we can’t let them do that ever again. But it’s bigger than that. They’re no better than we are. They have no damn right to rule over us. And we need to bring our girls home.”

“I know.” I held him, reveling in his warmth for a minute. “Where are they taking people?”

“We don’t know for sure, but I think it’s the old prison. Do you remember finding it when we were little?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the only place that makes sense.”

“How’d they find it?”

“They found everything. They’re taking everything from us. It was bad enough when they ruled from their city, but this is our village. It may have been bad before, but we can’t live like this.”

I nodded. He was right. This had to stop. We had to resist. It was bad enough when it was just Norris punishing people in the village left and right. Now, we had an entire army of bullies. We had to fight and get Laney and the others out of Olympus somehow. “What can I do to help?”

“A few of the leaders are meeting at three in the morning at the park. I need you to come. You have to tell them what happened to you and explain what they’ve done with the other girls. They need to hear it from you.”

“I can do that.”

He relaxed and leaned back against the tree trunk. Gruff voices began filtering closer to us. I pulled away. “Abby Blue?”

“Yeah?”

He pulled me close and lightly and quickly pressed his lips to mine. My eyes fluttered.
What was that?
I stepped backward, rubbing my lips.

“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I just...never mind. Sorry.”

Kyan walked away down the long row of the orchard until he faded from sight. My heart broke. When would he get it? He couldn’t keep doing this, not to me and not to himself.

“Back to work,” barked from behind me.

∞

Kyan woke me at two
-forty in the morning. I was still foggy from sleep as we made our way through the woods. We couldn’t risk the trails. That’s how the guards moved around. He tugged me through the crunching leaves, over fallen tree trunks, and held branches out of the way so they didn’t smack me in the face.

“Almost there.”

We made our way into the funhouse, which was still full of frightening memories. Three shadows emerged from the darkness. The first was Councilman Stephens, a younger man, probably in his late twenties, tall and thin with a short dark beard that matched the thick hair on his head. He was Paige’s new husband. Oh, how he would pay if she found out I was here.

Paige stepped out of the darkness to stand beside her husband.
Great.
The normal scornful look on her face had been replaced with one of strength. What had happened to her when I was gone?

Gray was the third to emerge. “Gray?”

“Yeah. I’m here to help. I joined up as soon as Kyan told me what was going on.”

“But if they find out—”

“I don’t care. It’s not right.”

Kyan squeezed my hand. “We don’t have long. Tell Michael what happened.” Michael and Paige stood together absorbing every word. I told them how Olympus had planned the ‘harvest’ and how Crew was a part of it. Explaining how he had lied to me was hard. Those wounds were still fresh.

I showed them my stomach. The bruises that were still fading away, explaining how I was told that I was infertile and then discarded like trash into the Lesser section. When it came time to explain how Crew helped Gray and I leave the city, the tears came. It was a silent cry. My voice was steady and strong.

Paige stepped forward. “I know you and I have had our differences in the past. But I’m actually glad for what happened. No offense, Kyan, but I’m very happy with Michael. And I want to help. We both do.”

Michael grabbed her hand. “We need you to lay low for now, but may need your help soon. For now, we need to figure out what to do about the resistance camp.”

“Camp?”

“It’s what they’re calling the old prison. They’re locking up anyone they see as a threat.”

“How can I help?”

Michael’s dark eyes bore into mine. “They need to know. Lesser and Greater alike. They need to know what’s happened, what’s still happening.” Realization sunk in. I would have to tell my story to everyone, guard and villager alike. I rubbed the back of my neck, remembering the warning issued by the council. Would I be taken away to the prison? Or would they just chop my head off and eliminate the threat altogether?

Michael cleared his throat. “You may be taken. Do you understand, Abigail?”

“Yes. I know they’ll take me away. But I don’t care. You’re right. They all need to know.”

Gray spoke next. “Kyan, you can’t jump in for her when this all goes down. I know how you feel, but we need you. We need your position to help with the plan.”

“What plan?”

“We’ll tell you eventually, but the less you know going in, the better for you.”

I nodded.

Kyan was tense beside me. “I’ll try.”

“You’ll do more than try, Kyan,” Michael’s voice boomed in the small space. “You have to control yourself. If you want to save her in the long run, you’ll let her go. It won’t be pretty. Everything in your body will scream at you to save her, but you can’t. You can’t be arrested. You can’t compromise everything we’ve worked on. We need you as supply coordinator. It’s the only way. The life of the resistance hinges on you.”

“Fine,” he said. He squeezed my hand hard and looked over at me. “I’ll stay back. But you have to be careful.”

I took a deep breath. “When?”

Paige spoke up. “Anytime you feel the time is right.” She smiled, glancing from me to her husband, who smiled back.

What am I getting myself into?
I felt like I was in an alternate universe. Paige Weaver and me, allies? Kyan as a resistance leader? Gray joining against his own? And me getting ready to jump from the frying pan into the fire.