The Tyrant's Daughter: Book One of the Legends of Pangaea by I.D. Marie

Author:I.D. Marie [Marie, I.D. & Marie, I.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2023-12-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32: Arianne

Waking up was next to impossible.

Rain greeted Arianne as she stirred awake, pain lacing up and down her spine. She didn’t dare to stir from her spot on the ground; everything hurt. She looked up, noticing that their gray tarp had been hung above her head to protect their hastily constructed camp from the rainstorm. Jack must have erected the roof while she was asleep.

Jack. She turned her head. The bounty hunter was seated with his back to her as he stared out across the meadow beyond their camp. With so much mid-summer humidity, the rain had become a constant that watered the forest and turned it a vibrant green.

Arianne wished she could appreciate the beauty, but all she felt was hopeless.

Jack turned when he heard her stir. “How are you feeling?”

She winced, but she didn’t attempt to move. “Like hell,” she muttered.

The bounty hunter clenched his teeth and offered her some jerky. “I know, but we need to keep moving.”

The thought of continuing on made her shake her head. “What’s the point?”

She could hardly survive in a forest, what would she do when the real test came? Arianne winced at the memories from the night before that still haunted her. For all she knew, there were more awful memories to come when she returned to the city. She felt helpless with the fear that she couldn’t even trust herself. What made it worse was that she had just started to believe that she could handle herself on her suicide mission.

“We took a hard hit last night.” Jack nodded in agreement. “But we can’t give up now. We’re so close.”

Arianne gritted her teeth as she forced herself to sit up. “About last night,” she murmured.

Jack turned to her, and for the first time, she felt like he was actually looking at her instead of simply tolerating her presence. Her stomach flopped. “We don’t need to talk about anything if you don’t want to,” he replied slowly.

Arianne nodded curtly. “Thanks.”

Where would she even begin? With the fact that Jack knew that she was a Fera? Or maybe how he acknowledged that he was going to double-cross her? She was still trying to figure out why she wasn’t pissed at him for that little confession.

She sighed. When did it all become so complicated? When she left Pacific, there were her allies, and there were her enemies. And now, as she analyzed the bounty hunter she had been strapped to for the past few weeks, she realized that a gray space existed that she didn’t like to think about.

“It’s okay to feel overwhelmed,” Jack continued, “I know how I felt those first few months in Joker training. I was lost and terrified… and alone.” His shoulders slumped. “What I’m trying to say is: you’re not alone. You don’t need to fight this on your own.”

The breath caught in her throat, and she felt tears begin to sting her eyes. She had been fighting this alone her entire life: the memories of

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