Chapter 108: Lead and Steel

Brooke had beaten Yuki to Dean’s bedroom. In fact, she had beaten Dean there as well. By the time the man arrived, he found the young woman sitting on the bed, one leg crossed over the other, wearing a provocative negligee.

Despite the suggestive attire, her averted gaze, flushed cheeks, and stiff posture told Dean all he needed to know. She was forcing herself to do this, and because of this he simply took off his turtleneck and tossed it aside, hoping onto the bed, and pulling the covers over him much to the shock and dismay of Brooke who instantly pouted, and slapped his body as he pretended to sleep.

“There’s no way you’re ignoring me like this! I have finally worked up the courage to for this, and here you are pretending to sleep!”

Dean didn’t open his eyes, he didn’t roll over or hop out of bed, he simply commented on Brooke’s fury with a relaxed tone in his voice.

“if you have to force yourself to do this, then it kills the mood.”

He went right back to trying to sleep, that is until Brooke bit her lip in frustration, staring at the man who had done nothing but infuriate her and play with her heart since they first met.

But she didn’t slap him, instead she leaned over his side and forced a kiss upon his lips, and in doing so caused him to instantly become alert.

She whispered in his ear a single word. “Dummy….”

Yuki arrived some time later, witnessing the scene while the two were far too busy to notice her presence. She stood there stunned into silence for a moment ,before wandering off to her old room.

She showered, climbed under her covers, and placed a hand on her heart. Feeling the beat blasting in her ears, it was a normal rhythm, yet it felt all encompassing. She stared at the ceiling while whispering beneath her breath a thought only she could hear.

“I didn’t expect to feel like this….”

—

The next morning nobody spoke of the nights previous affairs… Katherine was already down at the table, breakfast made, Yuki arrived later than normal, but Katherine didn’t say a word about it.

And the last comers were Brooke and Dean, and the change in the atmosphere was immediately and keenly picked up on by Katherine who stared at the way Brooke clung to Dean, a wide smile on her face, and a glow in her eyes and cheeks that Katherine had seen many times before, but never in her own mirror.

Her mouth opened ajar, she was about to say something, but the words dispersed within her own mind, scattered to each end of the labyrinth that was her own thoughts, completely escaping her ability to find them.

Dean didn’t seem to notice, he drank his coffee and shoved Brooke off him, but to no success at all while commenting on her behavior.

“If I had known you would be a clinger like this, I would have never proposed to you, you know that?”

Brooke pouted, her eyes furrowing in a bit fury, not overwhelming and genuine, but playful as she scoffed before stating the words that made Yuki spit out her own coffee.

“This is your fault you know, you have to take responsibility!”

Katherine looked over at Yuki, who awkwardly scratched the back of her head and forced a smile. And that was it, Katherine immediately knew what had happened, or one should say could no longer deny it.

She stood there in awkward silence, not knowing how to deal with the deep gnawing in her own chest, saying nothing. She was about to flee the scene as she suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to be anywhere but there until Dean spoke up, freezing her in place with his overwhelmingly authoritative tone.

“We have problem… and I can’t keep it from you all.”

Brooke suddenly stopped her relentless attempt to maintain physical contact with Dean, and sat upright and silent in her seat. Even Yuki stopped awkwardly lounging as Dean continued.

“After the recent intelligence brought to me by the peltasts, I’m about almost certain that my suspicions have been proven true. I believe now it is highly probable that the Union of Columbia and its armed forces have survived in some capacity. And they have sent their scouts into our territory. They know we exist now, but I’m not sure how much they know about us.”

Katherine was absolutely stunned by this information, any feeling she had towards the sudden progression in Dean and Brooke’s relationship was immediately thrown out the window as she looked over at the man gripping the edge of the counter intensely with her fingers.

He silently nodded, understanding her thoughts, and her anger… Because when the long winter first began and the emergency services were overwhelmed, the National guard, and FEMA were nowhere to be found.

They were abandoned, the assumption of course being that the government collapsed so rapidly as a result of many of its ongoing failure points brought to maximum stress instantly by a never ending storm.

But… if what Dean had said was true, they survived in some capacity and simply chose to preserve themselves while abandoning the people.

Katherine’s glare shared the same sentiment that Dean harbored deep in his heart since he first confirmed that his suspicions based on compounding circumstantial evidence were true.

Unforgivable!

Yuki who was the youngest of them all and a foreigner was still a bit naïve of what this meant and was quick to pose a question in an almost hopeful tone.

“Does that mean the government is coming to help us soon?”

Dean, who was immensely aware of the leviathan that was government, and its own selfish interests, shook his head and glared out the window towards the ever frozen wasteland beyond.

“There are no words more terrifying than ’I’m from the government and I’m here to help you’… No, we are on our own. And when they come for us, we will meet them with lead and steel.”

Yuki couldn’t begin to grasp what Dean meant, and why he saw the government of the old world as adversarial, but Brooke and Katherine knew… And they both nodded their heads in silent solidarity with Dean’s intentions of total war.

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