Deacon by Kit Rocha

Author:Kit Rocha [Rocha, Kit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kit Rocha
Published: 2017-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

The soft glow of dawn had barely kissed Ana’s window when her tablet chirped an insistent reminder to get up. Moving carefully, she reached out to silence it before turning under the arm Deacon had flung across her.

He’d slept through the sound, a sign of just how weary he was--or how safe he felt curled in her bed. His arm tightened reflexively, tugging her closer, and she couldn’t help but smile as she stroked the hair at his temple.

Vulnerable Deacon. Every day truly was an opportunity for miracles.

It had been a long time since Ana had enjoyed the luxury of showing vulnerability. When she was fifteen, she lost her temper when the son of a guard suddenly decided that Ana, with her growing curves, was a girl-girl now, and no longer a fit sparring partner.

Ana had kicked his ass, of course. And when she was kneeling on his back, her fist in his hair, rubbing his stupid face in the dirt, her father had arrived on the scene. He’d plucked her off her opponent, marched her to the stables, and unceremoniously dumped her into the water trough.

Stunned by the betrayal as much as the shock of cold water, Ana had dripped and shivered in silence as her father laid out the hard truths of her future life in stark, uncompromising terms.

People who wanted to challenge the status quo didn’t get to have temper tantrums. They had to be smarter, and calmer, and faster, and better. Beyond reproach, beyond critique. As perfect as a human being could be, because you could whine about fair and unfair all you wanted, but at the end of the day, you did the extra work or you failed.

With humiliation burning in her gut and water dripping down her back, Ana had made a tactical error. She’d channeled all the fifteen-year-old petulance she possessed to snap, “What would you know about it?”

William Jordan had never been a soft man, but the hardest parts of him had never been directed at Ana before. Not until that afternoon, when he’d crouched down to put himself on eye level and delivered a blistering lecture that remained carved into her mind.

You don’t know how good you have it, girl. You don’t know how lucky you are to have been born into a sector where the color of your skin will never hold you back. Your grandparents and every ancestor who came before them had to fight every day for the life you take for granted. And some people in other sectors are still fighting.

She’d been too young to fully understand what he meant then, even as she’d sheepishly taken his lessons to heart. She’d learned to leash her temper, control her emotions. To focus on smoothing away any rough edges that someone could point to and say--see, she’s not good enough. She doesn’t deserve this.

When she grew old enough to accompany her father into other sectors, she saw the truth of his words. Some people still dealt with prejudice and hate over the stupidest of things--how they looked, how they dressed.

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