Cruel World (The Tribe Book 1)

19. Drama

I wake up during the night to Bob barking upstairs, and decide its a good idea to get up and see why. I put on some leggings and a large top, running upstairs to see Amber come out as well.

"I think Ebony got out," she tells me.

"I don't have an issue with her leaving, but I was gonna let her out in the morning, once everyone was okay with the fact that she won't try anything against us," I tell her sighing.

"Guess we gotta find out why she's out," Amber mutters.

"Who's on watch?" I ask, as she drew up a roster for guard duty, while we walk to the storage bay.

"Lex."

We both look at each other and rush to the storage bay to see Lex locked in the cage.

"Get me out of here," Lex demands. Amber moves to do so but I stop her.

"No, I wanna know why you got in the cage and why Ebony left before I let her out," I counter, glaring him down. He stays silent, and I notice smudged makeup on his face that definitely isn't from Zandra.

"Amber you can go back to bed, I'll handle it," I tell her, she nods and heads back to her room.

"You tried to sleep with her," I state, knowing exactly what happened. "And judging by the way you're cupping your jewels, she kneed you in them and then rushed out, locking you in here and leaving."

He stays silent, looking at the floor of the cage.

"What happened to the fact that not even 6 hours ago you were about to marry Zandra, huh?" I ask. "And now you've gone and cheated on her."

"It was just kissing!" Lex insists.

"Lex, that is still cheating, because it wasn't with the person you are engaged to," I sigh, pinching my nose.

I let him out and head back down to bed to see Martin still asleep after I tired him out earlier. I smile at the sight and take off my leggings, leaving me in just the large shirt, and crawl back into bed. Martin senses me get in bed and unconsciously rolls over and pulls me in for a cuddle. I sigh happily and snuggle into his chest, drifting off peacefully.

------

"I want to know Lex. Tell me!" We can hear Zandra shouting from where she and Lex are in her room. The rest of us are in the café having breakfast. I'm currently feeding Brady a bottle while Trudy sleeps in.

"You're sure she won't come back with others?" Salene asks me.

"Yes," I sigh. "I know Ebony, apparently better than Bray does and he dated her once. As long as she doesn't feel threatened by me, she'll stick to her word, and I don't intend to give her any reason not to trust me."

They nod and accept that.

"Even so, Jack and Dal, can you guys work on the security system, make it more sensitive to humans but make sure the rats can't trigger it?" I ask them and they nod.

I thank them and then everyone splits off into their own conversations, and I burp Brady and she starts sleeping on me.

I head into Trudy's room to lay her down for a nap to see Trudy up, but curled into a ball crying. I quickly put Brady down in her cot and move to Trudy.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I ask softly, pulling her in for a hug. Her crying calms down to gentle sobs as she wraps her arms around me.

"I want to get over Bray, so badly, but it still hurts so much!" she cries.

"Oh honey," I sigh. "It's gonna hurt, but you gotta feel it and go through it, and you'll get to the other side quicker. But the more you torture yourself for it and the more you think about him and suppress the hurt, the more it prolongs the pain. You have me and Martin here to help you, you can always come to us if you need help or just wanna talk or cry."

She nods, sniffling and wiping away the tears.

"It's just so frustrating. I'm so over crying about him when he doesn't give a damn about me," she tells me.

"Trust me, boys suck. Gotta find you a man," I tell her, making her giggle. "You know Flynn from the Vipers is quite cute, and he thinks you're very pretty. I could set you guys up sometime," I suggest, and she blushes.

"He is very cute," she mumbles. "Maybe once I'm fully over Bray."

--------

I'm cleaning the café while everyone else helps block off the market lift when I hear screaming, making me jump. I rush over to the balcony overlooking the market stalls so that everyone can hear me.

"What the fuck was that?!" I shout, startled, as the tribe turns to look at me.

"It's to scare off the locos. Any time they trigger the alarm, we can play it through the mall's speaker system, just have to keep it rigged to a charged car battery," Jack puffs as he and Dal run over.

"A little warning next time, boys" I sigh, pinching my nose and leaning on the railing.

"Great action and horror movie sound effects!" Dal says, telling us what the CD is. "Track one - volcanoes erupt. Two - attack of the squealing flesh biters. Three - alien terror cries," he reads off, everyone slowly starting to smile and chuckle a bit.

"It's brilliant! We'll blast them to death with noise," Jack smiles, proud of their idea.

"I'll freak you, you moron, if you do that again," Lex jokes as he and Martin grab Jack and start gently wrestling with him, and Jack runs away laughing with the rest of us watching on, also laughing.

I notice Bray slip out through the sewers and make a mental note to ask about it later, while the boys wander off and talk about rigging up a microphone system so that we can talk to each other in an emergency from a couple different parts of the mall.

An hour later, we're all crowded in Lex's place while they chat about it when Salene rushes in.

"Has anyone seen Bray?" she asks.

"He was down below with us, haven't seen him since then," Ryan says.

"He ducked out through the sewers while everyone was talking about the scare tactic," I inform them.

They all sigh, disappointed.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Salene asks, getting bratty.

"Because everyone was laughing and it's not that big of a deal. Besides, I'm letting him think he got away with it, but he's gonna get an earful when he comes back," I tell her and a few of the boys shudder, knowing that it isn't pretty when directed at them.

She storms off in a huff after calling us stupid.

"Maybe he's out looking for Paul," Cloe suggests, trying to be optimistic.

"What if he let Ebony out and has gone to join her?" Lex tries to stir the pot.

"Somehow I don't believe that considering she locked you in the cage after kicking you in the balls Lex," I scoff. "Besides if he did that, we would have seen him wandering about since you guys only know about the one entry to the storage bays, I'm the only one who knows the others."

They mull over that thought while Lex looks down at his hands, embarrassed.

-------

Later that night, we're all sitting in various spots of the mall listening to Lex and Zandra's arguing over the mic system the boys set up, Lex unaware the microphone in his place is on. I'm sat with Tai-San, Amber, Salene and Trudy while we listen to them, curled up with blankets.

The girls and I giggle as he admits that he got kicked in the nuts, but we must have been too loud and the mic picked it up as all of a sudden we heard Lex's turn off, signalling he heard us and figured out why we were laughing.

"Well shows over guys, I'm off to bed," I tell them, getting up and slinking downstairs, changing into my pajamas and crawling into bed.

I fall asleep quickly and faintly register Martin crawl in behind be, spooning me and tucking his face into my neck, leaving gentle kisses and holding me close to his chest as if I could disappear.

Sorry if this was a short one guys, there's a lot of changes to this one because of the alliance between Ebony and Alleia, so there's no overhanging threat of war with the Locos, but I still wanted to include the microphone system they set up.