Fable of Happiness (Fable #2) by Pepper Winters

Her head snapped up, eyes flashing. “Why?”

It was my turn to drown. She was my new oblivion, and I wanted to tumble. “Because, Gemma Ashford, unfortunately for you, when you entered my valley, I didn’t want you. I hated everything you represented. You forced me to remember how to be human. You woke me up from the comforting monotony I’d found. You reminded me that loneliness isn’t just a word but a disease that I’ve suffered from for eleven unbearable years.”

I swallowed hard as bile lashed up my throat. “You stomped into my life and ripped away my forgetfulness. You showed me that if you could find my valley—a complete stranger with no business being here, then my family...” My voice cracked. My vision went black, then gray, then a kaleidoscope of reds.

Pinching the bridge of my nose again, I spat, “The fact that they never came back... It means they left me, and I can live with that. It’s what I wanted. My entire existence in this place was sacrificed so one day we could all be free. I’m grateful. I’m glad they’re out there, living lives away from here. Safe, hopefully. But the thing is—” I looked down at the girl by my feet, at the leash tethering us together, at the holes in my vegetable patches and the blatant lack of regard for winter prep, and I felt ancient.

I felt like the bear who had to gather and feast, a ticking clock in its soul, pushing it to eat more, forage and harvest, because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t survive hibernation. It would die in the dark, hungry and alone and in pain.

I was that bear.

And this naïve, belligerent girl had raided my pantry.

“The thing is...” The world flickered in and out. My grip on sanity slipping. “You owe me my life. I didn’t want it anymore. But you...you’ve gone and claimed it.”

My knees buckled, sending me crashing before her.

She gasped and tried to catch me, succeeding only in tangling our bodies together as we kneeled in earth as if we were about to be executed. And who knew, perhaps that was exactly what would happen.

Thanks to her, we would go hungry. We would be in pain. But the difference between me and that lonely bear was...I had her.

As grayness slithered over my vision, I mumbled the most honest confession of my life. “I can’t let you go because I’d rather die with you at my side than alone.”

Her arms trembled as she lowered me down, down, down.

My head hit dirt and my eyelids closed. Concussed nightmares dragged me deep, but not before I whispered, “I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I’M NOT LONELY WHILE you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Kas’s voice repeated over and over in my head, distracting me.

He was unconscious and I had a parrot inside my mind.

Focus.

Gritting my teeth, I shoved away his agonizing confession and kept my mind on urgent things. Things like getting him back into the temporary ward where I’d been treating him.

The stretcher.

I’d left the stretcher that I’d hauled Kas from the cliff almost two weeks ago intact. The ropes were still tied into a hammock, the scuffed tree trunks resting around the side of the house. Abandoned but now gratefully back in use.

It was a case of déjà vu as I rolled his unconscious form onto the stretcher, gathered power in my legs to lift, and heaved myself forward to drag him over the threshold.

He didn’t make a sound as I dragged him through the kitchen, past the lobby, and back into the library where he belonged.

Sweat rolled down my temples by the time I tucked him into the blankets, fluffed a pillow behind his head, and hauled the transporter back outside—hopefully not to be used a third time.

During the entire process of bringing him inside, tending to him, and worrying for him, I locked down my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t go over what he’d said, what he’d done, or the numerous emotions I’d read on his face.

I didn’t let myself analyze anything—not a single eyebrow quirk—until he was safe, breathing calmly, and I managed to get two painkillers past his lips when he roused a little.

“I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”

Gem...stop it.

I sat beside him, brushing back his hair, cursing the way my heart hadn’t figured out how to beat correctly in his company. How could a man make me livid one moment and then liquid the next? Why had I felt ashamed when he was the one who locked a cuff around my ankle?

The way he looked at his vegetable garden? Ugh, the guilt almost crippled me. I should’ve taken more care. Had more respect about the value of each edible plant.

Dusk fell.

I stayed beside him, contemplating my options. If only my PLB still worked. A convoy of helicopters could arrive to fly him to a doctor.

Seeing as he’s too pig-headed to go to them.

Stars came out, twinkling through the library window. My mind raced with his fury that I’d helped myself to his supplies, the loneliness in his voice when speaking of his family, and the twisted mess left of a boy who’d been stolen so many years ago.

“I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”