Edge of Mercy (Young Adult Dystopian)(Volume 1) (The Mercy Series) Read Online Free PDF

more chores, and I probably would only see him in the fields over the next couple of days, but there wouldn't be any long-term consequences.
    A few hours later, I paused to get a drink of water from a bucket and dared to glance into the forest. The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, and I shuddered, feeling as if someone, or something, was watching from the trees. The wind blew cold through my oversized jacket, and I thought I heard a keening cry, low and soft, carry out of the ominous branches. Sometimes you could smell the rotting skin of a Draghoul before it attacked, but as I sniffed the air, only the woodsy odor of the forest drifted to my nose.
    I gazed at the cloud-covered haze where the sun was descending in the afternoon sky and bit the inside of my cheek. My stomach tightened with the thought of long winter nights that would too soon be a living nightmare. I tried not to think of last winter, but I couldn’t forget the screams from the forest or the look on my mother's face as hope drained out of it, leaving a pale, sad stranger in her place.
    My father was gone at that point. He’d left months before because our supplies were all but gone, and he was determined to get help for my pregnant mother and me, but he never returned. Winter set in long and hard, and my mother decided we didn’t have a choice but to find help on our own. I stubbornly refused to leave, sure my father would come through for us. He would never let us down.
    “He’s not coming back, Charlie.” She’d started calling me Charlie at the beginning of the previous summer after my father completed our underground bunker, and we moved away from my aunts, uncles, and grandfather. My uncle John was the only person I’d ever known to leave safety and return to tell about it. He’d been gone two weeks when he came back and tried to convince everyone to leave with him. He said there was a massive fortress on the other side of some wall and we’d all be safe there, but my mother didn’t want to leave. Maybe still because I believed it, but she wanted to be in the bunker when my father showed. So we stayed, my mother and me, and all the others around us left. At first, I didn’t mind. Then, the supplies really were gone, and I worried we wouldn’t make it through the winter on the little I could gather from the area around us.
    My mother was growing bigger with the baby, and I grew anxious about the birth. I had no experience, and I was scared to be alone during the delivery, in case something went wrong. I needed help, but no one remained at that point.
    Finally, a familiar face showed up, but it wasn’t a rescue. It was an attack.
    “Charlie…Charlie!”
    A hand on my shoulder shook me free from the terrifying memory, and I heard someone call my name. My eyes focused on Thomas’s face, and my mind fast-forwarded to the present.
    “Hey, everyone’s gone. Are you trying to get shut outside the gates?”
    I glanced around with widened eyes at the nearly empty field. Only Thomas and a few guards remained, and I cringed at the sun’s low position in the sky. I knew better than to get lost in the past. I couldn’t change a thing now, and if I didn’t follow the routine, I wouldn’t survive an hour after the sun went down.
    “Zeke usually keeps me on track.”
    “He’s probably peeling potatoes about now, but he’ll be back tomorrow. You think you can manage the walk back without him?”
    My jaw gritted at the question. Why’d he have to make me feel so brainless? Getting angry at him was useless though. He was right. I had to rely on others less if I wanted to make it in this world of many horrors. Grumbles firmly in check, I set my gardening tool on my shoulder and nodded.
    “Good. Come on.” He waved his hand and walked in the direction of safety. I followed swallowing my anger but not ready to concede defeat so soon.
    “You know, you don’t have to be so mean to me.”
    He glanced over his shoulder, his eyebrows