A Little Left to Give (Forgotten Series #8)

Chapter One

I struggled to run, I had to use one hand to hold the bottom of my big belly and I cursed underneath my breath. My heart was pounding hard and fast in my chest, I couldn't help myself, the fear was all consuming. I cursed everything around me, wincing as my hip twinged and I had to start limping. I had wanted to wait, I knew I should have waited but I couldn't.

"I can smell you but I like the chase." His voice filtered through the trees, cold and mocking and I forced myself to try and run faster.

I thought I would have more time but the moment Kreegan went out with him and never came back, I knew there was no time left. His eyes were always hungry, always wanting, and they never left my form. It was an ugly and hot brand against my skin whenever he watched me. He was their leader, the worst of the bunch, and he always sampled every single female they took from their homes and packs.

Except me.

Kreegan had wanted me for himself and I had agreed because those cold eyes promised me a fate worse than death. I hadn't loved Kreegan, hadn't even liked him, but he was the lesser of two evils. Give him access to my body and I wouldn't have to lie in that fucker's bed. Except Kreegan was now dead, I was pregnant with his godforsaken spawn, and now I was being hunted.

I thought I had given myself a head start but pregnancy fucked with that. A lot. I couldn't run how I used to, couldn't move how I used to, and he had caught up. He was taunting me now.

"Juliet, where art thou my Juliet?" His mocking voice came from behind me, on my right, and I turned left, struggling to take in air as the child inside me pressed hard on my organs, making it almost impossible. I had no clue what I was carrying, or really how far along I was. We weren't allowed such luxuries as we shunted around from place to place so he could sow chaos.

That's what he was.

Pure chaos.

I missed being home. I wanted to go back, I wanted to go back to before all of this shit happened. I missed being with my brother, staying in our parents' old house, laughing with the other females in the pack while we tended to the garden. I missed how the world seemed so fair back then, before everything went to shit.

I hated Vera for that. I didn't choose Blake. It had been an unfortunate situation. I hadn't even wanted to be with him but the fact I had a claim on him and she didn't meant she had absolutely beat the shit out of me on challenge day. I could still remember how dizzy and ill I had felt that morning, could still remember how she had spit on me at the end and called me a whore.

It made me want to give a hysterical laugh. It turned out I was a whore. I had essentially sold my body for protection but how the fuck else was I supposed to do it? The illegal rogues didn't care about females and in a different way than the Old Ways. I had watched a female be dragged from her spot by her hair and beaten simply because the male had wanted to do it. No one helped her, no one stepped in. I had kept my head down and my eyes averted because I knew Kreegan wouldn't defend me if I put myself into a situation where I would be harmed.

But it didn't matter anymore. I had been with them almost a year, I was pregnant, and Kreegan was dead. No one would ever admit that he had done it to get to me, no one would ever admit that he killed his second in command. It was just how it was in this fucking illegal rogue pack. Death was common, expected even, and everyone knew Kreegan liked to test him.

"How about I cut that pup out and put my own in there." He was closer and I gasped, struggling to keep running. My hips hurt, they ached like a bitch, and my breaths were coming in short pants. I hoped I was running towards the territory lines of the next unfortunate pack that he wanted to cause chaos at. Not that it would stop him but I had a better chance of a patrol catching me, perhaps defending me, if I crossed the territory lines.

A part of me wanted to stop running, to simply give up and quit. It was all unfair, it had been unfair for years. I had learned that the world was unfair, that it didn't care, that it was sink or fucking swim. There was nothing I could do to change it and I wasn't that stupid and naïve female who believed in justice anymore. There was no justice, none. There was nothing fair about our world and I had learned that the hard way. The illegal rogues just cemented it in my mind.

Every single time I had to lay back, my eyes staring at the top of the tent while Kreegan used my body made me want to be sick. Where was justice in that? Where was the fairness? There was none because I had to do it anyway and I did it. Again and again and again because Kreegan was the lesser of two evils. I preferred him over me than the other alternative.

Laughter came from the woods, so close it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I cursed at my belly, at the baby hanging low and heavy. So many times I had wished I would wake up to blood between my thighs, that I would feel it just all stop and I wouldn't have to carry this... thing inside of me. I couldn't love it, not now, not ever. All I could imagine was it looking like Kreegan, looking like him and making me remember everything that had happened that I wanted to forget.

I didn't want it. I wanted it gone but not like that. I knew he would cut it out of me, toss it aside, and then rape me. It was just what he did. He was a sadist, he liked pain, liked imparting it on others. I had watched him brand a female simply because he wanted to. He had started small that night, cigarettes to her arms, and then he had branded her all over her back with a coat hanger twisted into a crude shape. He had enjoyed it, his cold and almost lifeless eyes, pits of void, shining with his excitement every single time he pressed that hot hanger to her back and she screamed, pleading with him.

She had been found dead a few days later. Found outside of the camp with her belly split open, her insides pulled out.

I had done nothing to prevent it.

None of us had.

Kreegan had shrugged and told me that I should be glad I had his protection because it could have been me. I still shuddered to think about it and I knew that could be me. It still could be because Kreegan was dead and I had no protection. Now he was hunting me.

"I like this game, Juliet. I like it when they run." I felt the air as someone swiped at my back and I let out a sharp cry of pure terror.

None of this would have happened if Mene hadn't bonded me to Blake. None of it. I would have been at home. I would have been safe. Instead I was in a futile run for my life I knew I was going to lose.

I just didn't understand why Mene's love was so fucking cruel.