Helpless (Steel Demons MC #5) - Crystal Ash Page 0,53

to give modern women any ideas.”

“How did you learn about it?”

“My parents told me,” I said. “They told me about their grandparents. How women couldn’t even vote almost two-hundred years ago, back when we could actually choose our leaders. They couldn’t get divorced, get paid the same wage, or control their own money for a long time, either. It was like that and worse going back hundreds, even thousands of years.”

“That…explains a lot of my upbringing.” He drank deeply from his own mug. “The anger toward me and other men. I never knew the true reason for it. Now I have an idea.”

I gripped my mug and food bowl painfully tight so as to not drop them. He seemed relaxed, completely at ease to be talking about himself with me. His long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles and his back propped up on his saddle bags. Of course the picture wouldn’t be complete without Freyja at his side, eyeing his bowl of pheasant.

He was opening up by his own choice, and not while under any distress. After how withdrawn he was when I first met him, did he have any idea how groundbreaking this was?

“Nothing justifies what was done to you,” I said. “Hurting you, keeping you isolated—no one with a normal amount of anger does that to another person. It’s completely wrong, and I’m sorry you were a target of that.”

Shadow didn’t answer for a few moments, but just ate his food quietly. Once finished, he set his bowl aside and turned toward me, making my heart jump.

“Thank you for saying that, Mariposa.” He reached into a saddlebag pocket and pulled out the orange bottle of sleeping pills. “Hope you sleep well,” he added, shaking one into his palm.

“You too,” I answered, lowering my back onto the ground. I glued my eyes to the starry sky, because if I looked at him it would feel too much like we were lying next to each other. “Good night, Shadow.”

Seventeen

SHADOW

I wanted to stay alert on the road, so I only took half of a sleeping pill. The fire died down not long after Mariposa went into her tent for the night. Like me, the guys preferred sleeping under the stars. Unlike me, the world around them went dark at night, and they kept solar lanterns on low power nearby so they could still have some sight if needed.

I dozed off for a couple of hours, waking up with a start and my heart pounding. Looking around quickly, my surroundings told me whether or not I went “ape-shit” in my sleep again, as Jandro put it.

Much to my relief, everything was in place and the others were still in their bedrolls. Even after Mariposa started me on the pills, I’d wake up paranoid that I’d destroyed my room again, or worse, hurt someone. So far it hadn’t happened, but overnight rides like this made me nervous about it. That was why I also made drinks before bed, to knock out my subconscious a little more.

Anything to keep the monster at bay.

Mariposa alluded that I needed to confront the source of my nightmares in order to be truly free from them. That I should talk to a brain doctor when I was ready. The thing was, I wasn’t sure if I, or a doctor, would survive the full brunt of what lurked inside me.

Taking a pill, having a few drinks. That was an easy solution I felt comfortable with.

I went to the fire pit and knelt down to blow on some embers. Just enough heat to make some coffee would suffice. Carefully disassembling Grudge’s meat spit, I replaced it with a grate and a metal percolator.

Something caught my eye just past our camp as I waited for my coffee to heat up. Several bright white things, roughly shaped like stars, stood out against the muted tones of the landscape. I squinted over the fire, my hand drifting to my holster as I saw more of them emerge slowly out of apparently nothing. They seemed to cluster on rocks or tree trunks, dozens of them in one place.

A memory struck me like a fist to the chest, one buried under years of loss, loneliness, and so much blood.

But this one didn’t hurt. This one didn’t send me spiraling into darkness and fear. The memory surfaced like a seedling breaking through the soil. It was from that time, but I was still here. I was okay, and witnessing something