Outpost Read Online Free PDF

minded the rules much less.
    “Well, not everyone’s meant to be a scholar,” she went on.
    “Were you?” I asked.
    Her answer surprised me. “I left at sixteen and married Edmund. I’m an excellent needlewoman and a fair cook, but I was never much for books.”
    “Me either,” I muttered, pushing away from the worktable. “Do you mind if I visit Tegan?”
    She smiled, apparently pleased that I wasn’t going to sit and stare with a surly face at a pile of mending. “Of course not, Deuce. Be back by supper, mind.”
    At first, she’d questioned calling me Deuce, because it was nothing she’d heard for a girl before, but when I showed her the bloodstained card and explained its meaning, she stopped hinting I should pick something else. I toyed with the fragile card in my skirt pocket, a relic of the enclave and the naming ceremony where I got my scars.
    “I will. Thank you.”
    I went out the door at a run, heading for the doctor’s office. Tegan was in the surgery cleaning instruments when I arrived; she smiled but didn’t stop her work. Without speaking, I commenced washing up beside her. It wasn’t hard, but cleanliness was important, particularly in her foster father’s work. Once we finished, she turned to me.
    “What brings you here?”
    With a shrug, I answered, “I just wanted to talk.”
    “About what?”
    “How you’re doing.” I might’ve put that more tactfully, but I felt responsible for her, since I’d rescued her and dragged her out of the ruins. I’d also put a weapon in her hand and she had been injured—almost died—because I hadn’t taken the time to train her properly. Swinging a club didn’t make her a Huntress.
    “So you’re checking on me.” Her eyes crinkled in amusement. “That’s sweet.”
    “Are the Tuttles looking out for you?”
    “They’re great,” she said. “Helping Doc, I feel important, like I’m doing something that matters.”
    “You are.” That wasn’t even a question in my mind.
    “Rest easy. We found a good place. I’ll always be grateful to you for getting me away from the Wolves and out of the ruins.”
    One thing I’d always wondered but there was never a chance to ask, so I said, “Tegan, did the Wolves mistreat all their females?”
    It was possible, of course, that they had been stupid and savage and that they didn’t realize harming the mother could damage unborn offspring. Just because my people understood something, it didn’t mean the gangs knew it as well.
    Her breath caught; and her face dimmed with remembered pain. “The girls who were born into the Wolves didn’t question their roles. They didn’t try to run. So they weren’t punished.”
    I nodded. “It wouldn’t occur to a female Breeder in the enclave to protest her situation, either.”
    “They haunt me,” she said softly. “The two cubs I lost. I was only thinking about getting away so I could protect my little one like my mom did me. But instead, they beat me until—” Her voice broke and she curled her hands into fists. “I know why they did it—to break me so I wouldn’t fight them anymore.”
    “They shouldn’t have hurt you,” I told her. “There were ways to hold you that wouldn’t harm the unborn brats.”
    Tegan swiped away a tear. “So your people wouldn’t have beaten me for trying to escape?”
    She wanted reassurance that I came from better folk than Stalker. When I first met her, I’d thought that the enclave would punish anyone who treated a girl that way. But that was reflex, wanting to think the best of them. With the benefit of time and distance, I realized something; safety only applied to those who were born among us and who followed the rules blindly. Just witness how they treated Fade and a Builder named Banner. At first, I’d envied her apparent closeness with Fade, but then the elders killed the girl over her quiet discontent with their leadership; they made an example of her and framed it as a suicide.
    Terrible things