Page 75 of Forsaking All Others

“No one told me,” I scowl.

“Would that have changed your strategy?”

I think about it for a moment before shaking my head.

“No, I had a plan.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Rising, he looks down at me, his expression thoughtful.

“Did you kill your best friend outside the Game, Catriona?”

“Who told you that?”

“That’s irrelevant. Given how you’ve justified your targets in the last contest, and our previous talk of honour, I’m going to assume your friend deserved his or her end?”

“Her,” I nod. “And yes.”

He gives me a long, long look.

“And do you have many friends outside this Game?”

“I think you already know the answer to that,” I snap. “Since it seems my temporary teammates can’t keep their mouths shut.”

“And if I asked you why?”

“I’d say I’ve answered enough questions.”

“As I mentioned before, my friendships are what drove me into this Game,” he says quietly, “I’ve lived a long, long time without them, here and there. Most recently thirty years, in fact, and I know how lonely life can get without the society you crave.”

“If your friends drove you into this Game then they can’t be worth your time,” I scowl. “No one can be trusted. The only person you need to answer to, and the only person you can ever really count on, is yourself.”

“Thorun risked her life to fight off the twin and pull you from the river,” he says quietly. “She told me she considers you a friend. I think she’s proven herself to be someone you can trust.”

“Thorun is a competitor,” I sigh. “And stupendously naive. If I hadn’t needed my team to get to the finish line I would have shot every one of them without compunction. If I considered her a threat I would have ended her before now. She’s not my friend. Is that helping you to understand me, Jaguar?”

“Yes,” he nods before turning to make for the door, “but I still have questions.”

“Who have you asked on the one-on-one?” I ask quietly as he reaches the doorway.

He answers without turning.

“Thorun.”

54

As we wander the shoreline together collecting rocks and shells, talking and laughing, I find myself actually enjoying myself for the first time in a very long time.

Thorun is an intelligent, articulate and beautiful woman. Even though I know she won’t last the distance in this Game, and even if she did she wouldn’t thrive in my world, I enjoy her company.

I know dating her might speed up her demise if others see her as a romantic threat, but I’ve been careful, so far, not to do anything that might intimate I have designs upon her.

When I’d asked her on the one-on-one date it was for a two-fold reason, three-fold, maybe. Firstly, as a reward for showing good values in saving other people during the last contest, secondly because I like her, and thirdly because of all people, I want to make her happy while I can. Wolf’s assertion that I should show the contestants a ‘great time’ had helped me embrace my position. To that end I’ve ensured that whatever the contestants have asked for, I’ve given — no matter how I might feel about their request. If they’ve asked for kisses, to sit on my lap, for slow dancing and caresses, I’ve obliged. After all, how could I deny them any warmth they seek when they’re willing to die for me?

I haven’t broken the Game rules and fucked any of them, although I can’t rule out that I won’t, if they insist. Outside my time with the contestants, the make-up woman has so far satisfied my more primal urges.

It occurs to me now as I walk with Thorun that I’m most comfortable in her company because she isn’t insistent upon intimacy. She, Catriona, and one or two other women, seemed more interested in getting to know me intellectually, although I had in some respects been more intimate with Catriona than any of the others. When her blood had coursed through my veins we’d momentarily become one, my body responding to hers as much as it did to her blood. But that was not something anyone knew about. I’m still grappling privately with it. I’ve gone so far as to have some of her blood secretly drawn and sent to Falcon for analysis.