Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 12

I feel as if Thorn has ripped my lungs from my body, as if he has reached inside of me and buried his fist in my stomach, and now my insides churn and coil and spit venom throughout the rest of my body.

I feel as if I am seconds from throwing up, or maybe crying, or maybe both at the same time.

I stare up at his callous face in dawning horror, so shocked that I barely breathe under his furious gaze.

A part of me, a small, traitorous part, waits for him to tell me it isn’t true, waits for him to say that he’s just as shocked as me, that he never knew there were others, that he never would have lied to every single one of us.

But he doesn’t.

He glares down at me, chest heaving with angry breaths like some vengeful warrior.

His fingers dig into my wrist, not enough to bruise but enough that I can feel the tension in his body, hard like marble and unyielding as iron.

“Tell me that you didn’t know,” I plead, before I can even stop the words from crossing my lips.

That small part is desperate, it begs for him to tell me that I’m wrong about this whole thing, for him to wrap his arms around me and soothe the awful feeling that now crawls under my skin like poison racing throughout my veins.

“Please, tell me…”

“I… Cannot.” Thorn says, finally, and his voice is as frail as mine.

I can almost believe that he wishes it was the truth, I can almost believe that he feels bad about this.

Almost.

I tear my arm from his grasp, yanking my wrist painfully in the process, and back away.

I feel like I can’t breathe, like I can’t pull in the air that I need, like I’m choking and gasping around smoke again just as I did in the bunker.

“God. Fuck. Thorn-…Fuck,” the words come up my throat and pass over my tongue like bile, bubbling up from deep inside of me.

The betrayal is like a sickness, wiping out my body quickly, aching and stinging on every part of me as if my skin had been scratched raw and Thorn has just submerged me in a bath of salt and lemons.

The betrayal is a weight, pressing down on my shoulders, my pounding head, causing my feet to stumble as I continue to back away, until I bump into a tree and have nowhere else to go.

And all the while he stands there, still, silent, not apologizing, not taking it back, not telling me what I want to hear- what I need to hear. That I have the wrong idea. That he is still the person that I thought he was. That I didn’t just waste my time falling for him only to realize that he’d been lying to every single person in the tribe.

I raise a shaky, blaming finger towards him. “You knew… God, Thorn, you knew and you… Do the rest of them kn-know? Has… Fuck, has everything been a lie?”

He shakes his head. “No. Only I knew.”

Jesus Christ.

I have to gulp in mouthfuls of air around my words, “You-...You let everyone believe that we were the last…They trusted you- I trusted you… I let you… Fuck. Damn it…”

Thorn’s eyes widen in worry, and he takes a step closer. “Samara, you must breathe.”

My horror quickly turns to fury, far surpassing his, far outreaching the anger that had been in his eyes before.

I release a laugh, callous and crazed. “Don’t you dare fucking tell me what to do. You aren’t-…You lied… you lied to everyone!”

“You must let me explain,” he insists.

And he has the nerve to look pleading, to look upset by my reaction. As if this is all just some big misunderstanding, some confusion that he’ll easily straighten out.

I could almost laugh again.

“Explain what?” I shout, gripping the tree behind me for support.

I feel like my knees might give out.

I’m bombarded with memories of the last month, times the tribe warned us to be careful, times I was told of my responsibility for continuing the human race, times that Thorn spoke of the weight on all our shoulders knowing that we were the last, the relief in the eyes of the hunters when we first arrived and they thought that their prayers had finally been answered, everything Grace faced as the first woman they found… The words don’t stop coming out of me, and I make no effort to quell them.

Anger is safe compared to the agony of knowing that he lied to me, that I trusted him and shared something with him that none of the others did.

I continue to shout, “You fucking bastard. You lied to those men, for all those years they thought they were all that was left, they lived in-… God, in despair. You could’ve told them so many times!”

Thorn flinches, pulling back as if I have slapped him.

I hate that it doesn’t bring me joy to shout at him, that when I see the unveiled pain on his face, I feel it too.

He croaks out, “I know this… But I could not have told them, no matter how desperate we got.”

I throw my hands up. “Why? Why on earth would you lie? Was it… fuck, was it for power? For control? Did you do it to keep them all to yourself, to make sure that you stayed the leader?”

He gapes at me, and anger lances through his features.

Thorn advances on me, his mouth twisted in distaste. “Do you really think so low of me? Do you think I did not suffer along with them for all those years? I grieved for what we did not have!”

“That grief wasn’t yours. You were the one who caused it!”

He shakes his head again. “No. I fought to keep them from giving up hope entirely. You could never understand the position that I was in.”

“You’re damn right about that,” I spit. “Because I would never lie to the other women. I would never keep anything from them. I care about them enough to not lie to their fucking faces!”

“It is because I care that I could never tell them,” Thorn snarls. “That I could never tell you . Samara-” he reaches for me, gripping me by the shoulders, his touch both making my head spin and my blood boil “- I did it for you, for the tribe. This…burned my soul to keep secret, especially to you. But you are my responsibility, whether you like it or not. I will not allow anything to happen to you.”

Now it’s my turn to gape, to stare in furious awe up at him.

This was all for me, for the tribe? He lied for our benefit? What the hell does he expect me to do, get on my knees and thank him?

I try to shake him off, unsuccessfully, and the movement makes my words come out choppy and sharp, “It was never your fucking decision to make, Thorn, who gets to know the truth and who doesn’t. You… you manipulative, tyrannical, lying motherfucker!”

“Call me any names that you like, little female.” He gives me a shake, hard enough to stop my ranting. “But I did this for your benefit too! It is the responsibility of the leader-”

“Responsibility?” I shriek. “Responsibility? You told us we were the last women alive! You told us our responsibility was to fuck your hunters and make babies- when you knew that wasn’t true! You would have tricked me - trapped me - into having your children, and all the while you would have been lying to me. Do you think that’s love? Do you think that’s caring for someone?”

I begin to smack my hands against his chest, slapping and shoving in a desperate attempt to get him to release me, to back away.

In my struggle, Thorn just tries to hold me closer, as if I’m panicking again and he’ll somehow calm me down.

To my own fury and embarrassment, tears begin to pour down my cheeks, big, hot splashes of them gathering under my chin.

Because I did care.

I cared for him… so much. I was falling for him, on this ridiculous, pointless trip.

I had, for a brief moment, glimpsed that future that he had painted for me. I had seen myself at his side, happy, safe. I had known that pleasure from his hands, even as blinding and searing as it was, wouldn’t be enough for long. I knew that I would want him in every way possible.

I had even seen myself giving him the children he had wanted so much, the babies with curly dark hair and his green eyes.

I feel like I’m going to be sick now, imagining that woman, that Samara of the future, finding out the man who walked alongside her in this life had been lying.

And for an instance, I feel immense relief that I found out now, before we could do anything more than kiss and touch.

“My intention was never to trick you,” Thorn pleads. “I am yours, Samara, in every way that I can be. I will have no other, and if you refuse me, I will spend the rest of my days trying to prove to you why I did this for you, for our future, for the wellbeing of the tribe.”

“Let me go!” I sob, my hands fisted in the leathers of his clothes, gripping, both pushing and pulling.

“I cannot!” He shouts, pressing the words into my face with his forceful breath, his despair like a shroud of smoke around him that suffocates me. “Do you not think it has… wounded me to keep this truth from you? Do you not think that I wished to tell you so many times, that I wished to share everything with you- my very life with you?”

I’m not sure what’s worse, Thorn when he’s angry or Thorn when he’s confessing his feelings for me.

At this moment, pinned before him, warring with the parts of myself that hate him and the parts that still, even after the lies, want him, I wish that he would be cruel.

I wish that he would toss me to the ground and tell me he didn’t care about lying, that he doesn’t care what I think anymore.

But Thorn, begging with me, pleading with me to understand, is torture.

“Let me go, Thorn!” I emphasize the shout by raking a hand successfully over Thorn’s collarbone, scratching into his neck hard enough to leave a mark.

Shocked, he drops me for a second, and I scramble backwards, slumping against a tree and clinging to it.

God… why can’t I stop crying? Why can’t I suck up my emotions and fight him with chilly detachment and seething hatred? Would it even be possible to hate him?

I feel such a sickening mix of emotions for him now, such a painful tangle, that I don’t know if I could survive adding another to the mix.

“Please listen to me, Samara,” he begs. I don’t look at his face, I don’t think I can stand seeing it any more right now. “Let me explain, and you will not be so angry.”

I look up instead, where the darkness creeps in and the setting sun paints the sky an angry orange-red. “Explain? You want to explain? How could I believe anything that you say now?”

“Please, Samara.” His voice is raw.

I hide my face from him as another wave of tears escapes, cutting out, “There is nothing that you could say that would make this alright. There is no explanation that would change how I feel.”

“I cannot apologize,” he says from behind me. “I am sorry that it had to be this way, that I had to lie to you… But I would do it again, and I will keep this from the tribe when we return. In some time, you will understand why I did this. You will forgive me, I am sure.”

I turn to look at him, to glare up at his pained face, and I feel nothing but conviction.

Thorn is a wreck.

He stands before me like a man facing his own demise, like a man being torn in two.

Why does it still hurt to see him so unhappy? Why does a treacherous part of me still want to comfort him?

I take that part, that small, stupid hope and longing, and I shove it so deep down that I will have to fight to ever feel it’s light again.

I thought that I would once, but now I know that I could never love this man. Now I know that I could never trust him, that I would rather die than spend a lifetime with him, resenting him, never understanding him, never trusting the words that come from his lips.

And I let these emotions show clearly in my expression, I let him see just how much I despise what he’s done, just how hurt I am by this realization, just how betrayed I am and will always be.

I make the vow to him and to myself, pushing up from the tree and standing tall, “I will never forgive you, Thorn.”