“Where’s Mal?” Brandon calls to the woman behind the counter.

“Still with Harry, I think.”

“How about you get us—”

“No.” I look at Helen and Silver. “I’ll get you in a bit so we can leave. But me and Brandon need to have a private talk.”

“Dennis,” Helen starts, and I can tell by the tone she isn’t happy. “He’ll just—”

“I can deal with him,” I cut her off, harsher than she deserves, but I’ve been holding my tongue the entire way here. Silver leads her out of the club. “The room,” I tell a smirking Brandon.

I close the door behind us and lean against it, arms over my chest and trying to order my thoughts. Yelling isn’t going to help.

“Look at you,” Brandon says gleefully, “putting my sister in her place like that. You know she—”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying that—”

“I said; Shut the fuck up!” So much for not yelling. I send him an invite to the party and I know he sees it by the raised eyebrow. “Accept it.”

“I think I should be the—”

“Get in the fucking party, Brandon!”

“Someone’s gotten a foul mouth all of a sudden.”

Before I snap at him, his name appears at the bottom of the list, where he is going to remain. “If you ever leave the party like that again, I am going to find you and fucking hurt you.”

“Dennis, there are things I’m going to have to do you don’t want a part of.”

“I don’t care. You want to go off on your own to get your jollies getting beaten up. You tell us, you go, and you fucking stay in the party. Do you have any idea how worried I was when I noticed you were gone?” How pissed I was I only noticed it once I stopped reading?

“What I was doing didn’t involve you. I would have been back once I had my mom’s necklace.”

I lose willpower not scoffing at that, but how important the necklace was to him deserves the respect. What doesn’t, on the other hand, gets full derision.

“Oh? You mean after Roy had you beaten to death, you were going to somehow come back from that and steal it in the night? Do they make something that defeats death on those so precious ruins of yours?”

“No, but I had—”

“You were worried, Brandon. I saw that in those cunning eyes of yours. Actual fear. Whatever you’d planned for hadn’t included getting strung up like that. If you’d stayed in the party, you could have called for help.”

“I was fine.” The dismissiveness in the tone does nothing to calm me down.

“You are so full of shit. Do you ever stop lying, even to yourself?”

He rolls his eyes. “I was fine.”

“Of course you were. That’s why I had to make a deal with Harry to track you down.”

“One Mal paid for you, I notice.”

“You think I wouldn’t have paid it?” The question comes out growled, and I realize that at some point, I found my answer. “I’d have fucking slept with that bear if Malcolm hadn’t offered. Don’t you get it? I’m going to do whatever I have to help my friends.”

He sighs. “Dennis, we aren’t—”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“System message, Brandon! You’re my friend. Fucking get over yourself and this ‘I’m too bad for friends’ and deal with it.”

He looks away and, for an instant, he looks in pain. I can’t be the only friend he has. Malcolm has to consider him at least a friend. Why else would he put up with the macho bullshit?

“Don’t, Dennis. I’m not—”

I glare at him.

“You’re going to end up hurt,” he finally says.

“Maybe you never found that out about life. But getting hurt comes with it. If what I wanted was to never get hurt, I’d have stayed in the bunker when the town had a monster wave. I’d never have trained to be a guard. I’d have bowed my head and become the carpenter my dad wanted me to be.”

“I warned you,” he says, sounding defeated.

“And I’m telling you that you are worth the risk.”

He shakes his head, but at least this time he keeps his mouth shut.

“So, it’s agreed? You don’t leave the party. You need to wander off on your own, you tell us. And if you get in over your head, you ask for help.”

“You think you’re going to be able to rescue me, if I can’t get myself out of it?” The disbelief in his voice baffles me.

“Excuse me, but what just happened back there? We went in and pulled your ass out of the situation you couldn’t get out of by yourself.”

“I was—”

“You finish that, and I’m going to punch you.”

He looks away again. “Okay,” he whispers. “I’ll do that.”

I finally relax. “Good. Now. While you were busy getting beaten up, I worked out where The Nox is. Or rather, where Fort Knox is.”

He looks at me in surprise. “Where is it?”

“Somewhere on Route thirty one, South of Louisville.”

He frown. “I know the city. No one ever mentioned a ruin in that area.”

I shrug. “According to Aaron, that’s where it is. So grab your stuff. We’re leaving.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Oh, trust me. I want out of this fucking city yesterday.”

“We leave now. We’re going to have to sleep somewhere on the south side of Detroit. You really want to sleep outside in the city? If we leave in the morning and we push, we can make it past the Rock Wood stop. Compared to Detroit, that’s outright safe. After that, all we’ll have to deal with is plain old regular wilderness.”

I sigh. Even one more night in this city makes me sick. But from what he’s saying, it’s one night in it no matter what. At least here I have a bed and breakfast. And I get to thank Malcolm for his help.

“Okay. We leave first thing in the morning. I’ll go tell Silver and Helen.”

“So…” he trails off as we head toward the dining room. “Any chance I can get my leader position back?”

“Not a fucking one.”

*

I wake up and Brandon’s bed is empty. My stomach drops, until I see his name at the bottom of the party list. At least he didn’t pull a complete disappearing act. I dress and head downstairs and Malcolm motions me over.

“Okay, just what did you do to Brandon?” he asks in a severe tone.

“Where is he?”

“In the club, but don’t change the subject, Dennis. That man doesn’t come knocking on my door, looking like he’s been kicked and then just asks to be held.” He narrows his eyes. “Out with it.”

“All I did was make it clear I wasn’t going to take bullshit like him cutting us off the way he did. I don’t let my friends do stuff like that.”

“Dennis, he—”

“Don’t you dare tell me he doesn’t deserve to be my friend. That’s my decision to make, not his or yours.”

Malcolm’s nod is somber. “He’s going to make it hard on you.”

“Trust me, if that was something I wasn’t willing to deal with, I’d have left him with the Railers. Thank you for your help with that. You didn’t have to pay in my place.”

“Honey, you weren’t looking all that keen on paying Harry.”

“No, but I’m an adult. I’m going to have to make hard decisions.”

He leans against the counter, elbow on it, chin on his palm, and smiles at me. “In that case, let me put that little head of yours at ease. I had the time of my life, and Harry’s going to think twice about taking me up on that if it comes up again.” He runs a finger against my arm. “But, if you feel like you need to make it up to me…”

I am…surprisingly not against the idea. “We’re leaving as soon as we’ve had breakfast. But if I’m ever forced to come to this city again, I’ll be here.”

He leans in and kisses my forehead. “I hope you do.”

I let Silver and Helen know over team chat to join me for breakfast and that we’re leaving right after. Not long after they arrive, Brandon shows up, freshly washed and with the kind of grin on his face that tells me he has someone scrubbing his back.

“So, what’s the plan for the day, boss?” he asks me, and Helen stares in surprise. A flick of the eyes to the upper right and they grow wider.

“We are eating, then hitting the road. I want us as far from this place as possible before the sun sets.

*

We only stopped at the caravan stop to eat, and camp for the night a few hours later.

I forgo hunting because the sun’s already touching the trees, but I practice my archery until it’s too dark. Then I read more of the book on the Appalachians. Silver spends time practicing magic with Helen, something that sounds like an exercise in frustration, before calling an end to that and filling the camp with gentle music. Brandon spends that time reading.

Not long after the sun sets, another group of travelers sets up on the other side of the road. There’s an attempt on their part to socialize, but none of us are receptive. They came from the north, which means Detroit.

I have no way to know if they started from there, or just traveled through, but it doesn’t matter. Just to possibility is enough for me to eye them with suspicion. No one on the team argues when I set up a guard rotation for the night.