Hannah's Hero - Ruby Dixon Page 0,22

You’re trying to get control in a world where there’s no control. Girl, how I know. But there is a lot of testosterone in this camp right now, and you need to lie low. You know anything about hunting? Deer hunting?”

“What?” H’nah looks confused. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“Deer go into rut in the fall,” L’z continues. “They’re so fired up with wanting to mate and filled with testosterone that they’re unpredictable and dangerous. They destroy all the trees and foliage in the area and run out in front of your car. They challenge just about anything in sight all because they want to impress and impregnate females. That’s what it feels like in this damned camp right now—deer rutting season.”

“How do you make it stop?” H’nah asks.

L’z snorts. “You get all the females pregnant, duh.”

“That doesn’t help me!”

“Doesn’t it? I mean, look at your situation. You and Callie are fighting the good fight, but you can’t win against resonance. Trust me, I tried. It always wins. I’m not saying this is one of those ‘lie back and think of England’ situations, of course. Sex and mating gets messy no matter how you look at it, and I totally get needing to make your own decision. Problem is, your cootie isn’t a great listener. Ignoring the situation doesn’t help. The best thing you can do is sit down and have a calm, logical conversation with J’shel.” L’z pats H’nah’s hand. “But since you’re like me, I don’t imagine that’s going to happen. So just lie low, all right? This camp’s already full of drama and we don’t need more.”

She gets to her feet, her kit cradled against her body, and then puts a hand on H’nah’s shoulder. She pats her and then heads inside her hut, leaving H’nah alone in front of it.

I want to go to my mate, to ease the frustration from her face, but she looks miserable. I do not think she would appreciate it if I were to shake off my camouflage, show myself—naked—and confess that I had been listening in.

I do not know much about H’nah, but I know she does not like for others to see her as weak or afraid. So I walk away, even though it is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I hope that she will come and seek me out, talk to me, tell me of her worries, so I retrieve my pants and wait by my tent. Perhaps we are getting somewhere, her and I, and she will come to me with her problems and her sadness.

But H’nah does not show.

6

HANNAH

Two days later

“Look at this good weather!” Brooke exclaims as she braids my hair. “It feels positively warm compared to the last week or so. This is awesome.”

“Is it? It doesn’t feel very awesome,” I grump to her. The tips of her fingers dance along my scalp as she pieces my hair out, tugging on one lock at a time. The ice planet sucks, but I admit that with Brooke here, at least we have nice hair. She’s obsessed with braiding all of us and she’s got so many different ways to do it that it’s a pleasure to sit by the fire and have her make you pretty. She told me she’s crafting my hair into a triple reverse-braid crown. I’ll have to take her word as to whether or not it’ll look nice, since there are no mirrors here, but Steph’s sitting across from me and her long, herringbone braid looks gorgeous, so I’m not worried.

“Well, this is warm for the brutal season, or so Taushen tells me. All this crazy weather. First we’re freezing our nuggets off—not that we have nuggets—and now it’s warming up. I don’t know why, but I’m grateful for it.”

“I should be too,” I say, and then can’t resist adding, “Maybe people will stop snatching up all the skins in the supply tent.”

Steph rolls her eyes at me, threading her bone needle. “Oh my god, let it go, Hannah.”

“I can’t let it go,” I protest. “We’ve been going through two baskets of kah—the hard tack—a day. At this rate, we’re not replacing it fast enough and we’ll be completely out of stores in a week.”

Brooke yanks on my hair, making me wince. “It’ll be fine,” she says. “There are plenty of caches around.”

“But if the weather’s too bad we can’t go out to the caches,” I protest. “I’m just saying we should think logically before