Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 1

Samara

I t’s another brisk morning in camp, one that freezes the tip of my nose and turns my fingernails white.

Like every morning, the urge to bury my head under the furs that cover me is nearly impossible to fight.

I feel the pull of the warmth beneath, the silent darkness where I can pretend, for just a moment, that I’m still home.

If I focus hard enough, I can almost hear my roommates singing in the kitchen while they cook, I can almost feel the vibration through the floor of their movements. It’s my day off, and I can actually sleep in for once instead of rushing to make the early train for my shift. The pancakes will be chocolate chip, and they’ll taste like being twenty-five in Toronto, like student loans and burnt synthetic coffee and Sunday lethargy.

But I’m not in my apartment, and soon the rough fibers of the furs over my head will remind me of that, soon the crisp air will tell me that I’m outside, and soon I’ll hear the sounds of the tribe beginning to move around.

Nobody sleeps in here, and nobody takes days off. Even on my busiest, most exhausting days at the hospital I got to clock out.

It’s been a month since my bunker nearly burnt down, sending its female inhabitants onto the surface of the earth. A month since we were thrust, not into a world fifty years after the nuclear war that we entered stasis to avoid, but instead two hundred and fifty years into the future. It’s been a month since we sat in the wilderness, for days, with nothing and no one, slowly starving. A month since we were introduced to a primitive future, with no cities, no electricity, no running water, and no other women besides us.

I haven’t clocked out since.

When the all-male tribe finally found us, we had been days from death, a grim fact that had remained at the front of my mind the whole time, like some horrific countdown clock to starvation.

They brought us back to their camp, a small spread of tents around a large central fire pit, beside a rushing river, tucked in a small valley. They were happily living like it was the Stone Age, and they were overjoyed by the sudden discovery of women in the forest.

For the most part, the tribe has been welcoming, I note begrudgingly, in my borrowed animal leather clothes, under my borrowed fur comforter, in my borrowed tent, before I head to eat the meat that I didn’t have to hunt for. For the most part, they are kind, they try to understand our customs, our needs, our way of life, even while we try to make a place in theirs.

They are more patient than we could ever have expected, but the terrible reality of our situation hasn’t stopped stinging.

At least… it hasn’t for me. For the fourth morning this week, I exit my tent to the sight of a couple enjoying their first meal, all warm gazes and soft caresses and secret giggles. Ugh.

Grace and River were the first to get together, and she was the one to bring us back to the tribe, and it’s them I groggily stare at now as I shiver at the opening to my tent.

The weather is even worse out here, and I reach back to wrap one of the fur blankets over my shoulders, while I duck my gaze to avoid some unabashed kissing.

I make a beeline for a pot that bubbles over the main fire, for our morning meal of broth and tea, and am relieved to see another friendly face.

Cassandra, my closest ally in the tribe, armed with tea, has her long legs stretched out in front of her. Nearby, men hover, hoping at best to accompany her on her hunt and at worst to repopulate the earth with her. Cass ignores them all. Maybe that’s why I love her so much.

I secure my own carved flask of tea and take a seat beside her, and we regard each other with a rueful smile in our bedhead and fur shawls.

“Fuck, its cold,” Cass mutters, scooting closer so that we share more body heat. “I thought spring was supposed to be over, but my eyelashes were frozen shut when I woke up this morning.”

I glance over at Cass’s angular features and note that there is the tinniest hint of white dusting on her lashes. “Come into my steam, here.”

We grin as we bury under my furs, seeking out the warm cloud that lifts off my fresh mug of tea, the sharp smell of pine, peppermint, and cloves meeting our noses.

In a world without coffee, the tea is about as good as a warm beverage could be, and for now it brings feeling back into my frozen fingers.

“Ash was looking for you,” Cass tells me, her eyelids closed in pleasure from the steam.

I release a sigh, hard enough to blow away the smell of tea. “Figures. Pretty soon I think he’ll start just coming into my tent and shaking me awake.”

Cass snorts. “Don’t jinx it. Wolf and Falcon floated the idea to me last night. They asked if,” she pauses, and puts on her best impression of the men’s deep voices and their stilted way of talking, “‘you would like us to rouse you before the sun has risen over the great mountain. It is when the deer drink along the river’s shore.’ I told them that if they ever came into my tent to ‘rouse’ me I’d punch them in the face.”

I let out a shocked burst of laughter, imaging the stoic, cavemen-like tribe reacting to such a threat of violence.

“They like you; you know. My dad would have told you to let them down easier.”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, my dad would’ve liked the punching idea.”

We both fall silent then.

It’s hard to talk about family. We were all young, single, unrelated women in the bunker, and our families were scattered over the world in various bunkers of their own.

Either they woke when they were supposed to and are long dead, or they’re still frozen in stasis. I hate to bring up anything that upsets the other girls, but the fact is that it’s always there, our memories of our past lives, haunting every second of this strange, prehistoric future that we’ve landed in.

Thankfully, neither of us can feel too sorry for ourselves, because across the camp I spot Ash leaving his tent.

“Incoming…” Cass warns under her breath. I’ll only have a couple minutes to wake up before I’m dragged into the day-long task of training him.

My first week here, the slightly older “Healer” had been my mentor, showing me which plants could be used and how to formulate the best medicine with only the forest around us. However, after our first actual medical emergency, he’s deferred to me, and has since become a real pain in my ass.

It made sense for me to tell Ash basically everything I knew about nursing after our near-fatal incident two weeks ago. If something happened to me, I wanted to be certain that at least one other person knew how to handle medical emergencies.

But now that it’s been two weeks of daily lessons, my patience is wearing thin, and bitterness surges when each morning I’m greeted with Ash’s patient dark eyes.

I shouldn’t have to do this. I shouldn’t have to tell someone everything I know for fear that I’ll die and leave all these women unprotected.

“Likewise,” I tell her.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the hunters approaching, and feel a little relief that, at the very least, I only have to deal with Ash. Beautiful, athletic, and wilderness-ready Cassandra has to fend off the attentions of at least two or three men every day.

Not that it’s…entirely terrible, that is.

Wolf and Falcon walk over from the other side of the fire, already dressed in their warmest hunting clothes, spears and bows in hand.

They’re both dramatically tall, like all of the men in the tribe are, broad and strong, built for a life in the woods. They’re also uncharacteristically handsome, a trait that again applies to most of the tribe.

I glance over to find her pointedly ignoring them, carefully taking delicate sips of her tea.

“I should get going,” I tell her quickly, not wanting to get caught into one of Cass’ roundabout arguments with the hunters.

She wants to go alone, preferring the solitude of the forest, whereas they believe in strength in numbers, and, of course, making an impression on her.

I smirk to myself as I pull away from Cass facing off with the two gorgeous giants, and can’t help but feel that their looks always fall just a little shy of-

Thorn, the leader of the tribe, locks gazes with me from across the camp.

He’s come up from the lake, carrying a basket of nets and some twine, the sleeves of his leathers rolled up to reveal forearms laced with scars, and corded with ropes of thick muscle. Icy water splatters the front of his animal skin shirt, where the collar is pulled down to allow for the smallest glimpse of tanned skin and auburn chest hair.

He towers above Ash’s son, West, who races around his knees with a primitive toy in hand, chattering away in childish excitement.

Even from this distance, his hazel eyes seem to pierce through me, like a spear that pins me to the ground.

I feel frozen to the spot, staring at all the harsh lines that make up his features.

The heavy, lowered brow that always seems disinterested yet discerning. The strong, capable jaw beneath a thin layer of ginger scruff, the heavy cheekbones that curve up from it. The wide mouth made of a thin, caustic upper lip and the lower, with a gentle, sweeping fullness, in complete contrast with each other. The delicate smattering of freckles over the angular nose, slightly askew from being broken.

The thought that occurs to me: I could have set it right, but I wouldn’t have. Everything about Thorn is intentional, is breathtaking in its harshness and sincerity.

His hair, kept shorter than most of the men in the tribe prefer, curls at the nape of his neck and the crown of his head, and with the gently lifting yellow sun in the valley, appears like some sort of halo, even when everything else about his features are strength and violence and cruelty.

I haven’t breathed since I saw him, and when he moves again, towards me, I suck in a huge mouthful of air.

I look for an out, breaking away from that trapping gaze to cast my eyes around for someone in need, someone distracting.

For maybe the first time, I curse Ash for not being at my heels, bothering me with a million questions.

When Thorn approaches, he seems to suck all the air out of the forest, his presence like some enormous black hole.

I don’t hear the crackling of the fire or the voices of the others waking up or the hollow knocking of carved wooden utensils against bowls.

I don’t want to talk to Thorn, and not just because he’s so handsome that it makes my breathing stop, a dangerous fact in my current circumstances, but because with Thorn, everything turns into a fight.

I’m not sure we can get two sentences in without it devolving into an argument.

I square my jaw as he stops in front of me, the fresh smell of the lake filling my nose, and my neck craning up to see his face.

Thorn’s voice is like a slate cliffside, hard and smooth. “You are going to check on Leah this morning?”

It’s hardly a question and more like a demand, and immediately I fix him with a glare.

Leah is the one of us who had lasting complications from being in stasis so long. She almost died two weeks ago of hemorrhaging in her brain. She would have died in Ash’s care, but I was able to save her, with, though it frustrates me to add, Thorn’s help.

Leah was our first big medical emergency, and the first moment where I truly realized how fucked we all are here, how vulnerable. Leah could just as easily have died, and I would have been powerless. I haven’t just checked on her every day since because it’s part of some lasting care-plan, I’ve done it because I need to see her, sitting and laughing with her partner, a hunter from the tribe, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling.

I need that reminder each morning that she’s alive, that somehow, I was able to save her with none of my modern tools.

I snap, “I check on Leah every morning, with or without your helpful reminder. It’s my job.”

“As it is my ‘job’ to look out for everyone in this tribe,” Thorn reminds me, voice detached and gaze intent. Sure, he’s the leader, but he’d been appointed before any of us women arrived, and I don’t answer to him.

I fold my arms over my chest, momentarily ruffling the fur still wrapped around my shoulders. “I went to school for four years and did two years of on-the-job training, I think I can handle a morning check-up.”

“Just do not take too long. You must teach Ash what you know,” Thorn says.

He releases a distractingly deep grunt of effort as he readjusts the weight of the nets over his shoulder, and I blink twice before I register what he’s said.

If my eyes had been closed, that grunt would have sounded far more intimate that it should’ve.

“No worries there, I spend every waking hour teaching your healer how to actually do his job,” I scoff. “I can teach all of us some first aid if you want, then if I die, you’ll have tons of backup.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Thorn demands, and those pale eyes flash for a split second, so quickly that I could have missed it by being preoccupied by his powerful arm wrapped around the heavy nets.

“That’s what this is, right? Insurance? You want a backup healer in case I get eaten by animals or something?”

He steps closer, which only makes me take two steps farther away. “That is not why I encouraged Ash to learn from you. I do not have any plans of letting you, or any of the females, be eaten by animals.”

God, of course.

I turn my glare down at my feet, and the unspoken reality of our situation rests between us.

They need women, they need every single one they can find.

There were only men left before our bunker came out of stasis, and they’re now desperate to claim a woman for themselves, to fill her up with the progeny of humankind and repopulate the desolate forest around us.

It’s always there, in the back of our minds and the front of theirs.

Grace felt it, and I’m sure Leah did too, before they found a real connection with their hunters, that expectation to be the incubator for the future.

Babies are the last thing on my mind right now, even if childbirth looms ahead like some dark omen in this tribe of handsome young men, overwhelmed young women, and no birth control.

They’ll need me more than ever when these couples inevitably start to have children.

“You are upset,” Thorn remarks. “I know that you and the females are… sensitive about the topics of mating and young, but I am simply stating fact. You will have your hands full soon enough, little healer, you may be thankful to have Ash help you.”

I know this, I know all of it.

And maybe that’s why Thorn frustrates me so much.

He’s always finding me when I’m at my most miserable and laying out the grim facts of my circumstances for me in the most clear, unavoidable of terms.

He may have saved Leah’s life with me, but he’s been breathing down my neck ever since, and the last thing I need when I already feel like the safety of the camp rests on my shoulders is some distractingly handsome tribe leader telling me what to do all the time.

I lift my eyes from my feet, and match Thorn’s frown with my own.

Even though the top of my head barely comes to his chin when we’re standing in front of each other, and I’m one of the tallest girls here. I’ve never known anyone quite like Thorn, but I’ve dealt with a hundred bossy men who think they know better than me.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Now please step aside so I can get to work,” I know I’m being just as abrupt and abrasive as he is, and that it gets me nowhere, but Thorn brings it out in me.

Not to mention, when he’s right in my space like this I feel like I can’t pull in enough air, like the black hole that is Thorn is still pressing down on me, and I need to step away to feel normal again.

Thorn leans back, moving one huge shoulder aside so that I can walk past him.

As I do, he orders, “Have another helping of tea at lunch, Samara, you look tired today.”

I have to bite down on my tongue to avoid calling him a nasty name.