For the first time in her life, Hadley was free!

Free from Compound Rules.

Free from shock collars and chains.

Free from expectations borne of legacy.

Free!

But this freedom had come at too high a cost. Her daughter had lost everything – a safe home, a vibrant community, an incredible knowledge base, friendships she would have held for life and the chance at living a life outside the influence and rule of vampires!

"That was awful," Hadley said when she finally stopped coughing up water from her trip down the worst water slide in existence. She walked to the edge of the new cave they'd dropped into towards a pile of camping bags.

"Prison escapes usually are," Kade replied, laughing. "Grab one of the blue bags. Brielle and I stocked bags for everyone and smuggled them here a few weeks ago. Blue for the girls and pink for the boys."

Weeks ago.

They'd been planning this escape for a while.

Hadley still didn't understand why Kade and Brielle would give up everything they had known from birth to free her – no, wait – this was all for Drew, which is the reason Kade and Brielle had given when Hadley had asked. Once they were safe, Hadley would ask them to elaborate on that. Not that she was complaining about being brought along for the ride.

Hadley grabbed one of the blue, fully stocked camping bags and rummaged through. Among the more standard supplies – clothes, food, first aid kit and the like – Hadley breathed a sigh of relief when she found Gram Lee's set of whittling knifes in their leather bundle. However, right next to the set of knives was another blade clothed in a leather sheath. Hadley pulled it out and studied the garishly massive hunting knife that looked more than awkward in her small hand.

"Kade, what's this?"

"Brielle showed me that weak set of your knives as she packed them for you and, no offense, but those things won't save you from anything." Kade said with a shrug. "I thought I'd show you what a real knife looks like. That will take down an army of vampires, with enough blade left over to face a whole pack of vampire dogs."

Hadley chuckled and put the hunting knife back into the backpack. It wasn't her machete, but he was right – it'd do in a pinch.

Kade reached into his own pink camping bag and pulled out a leather-bound book. He handed it to Hadley. "This belongs to you."

"Thank you." Hadley replied, accepting Aunt Zee's journal, grateful that the river water still dripping from her hair camouflaged the tears falling down her cheeks. With her apple seeds gone, this was the only other thing Hadley had to remember Aunt Zee.

"No worries." Kade smiled. Before he moved to help the next person who'd shot out of the water slide tube, he looked up at the cave ceiling. "That's not good."

Hadley followed his gaze. They were in a cavern system, but unlike the main Caves where the Wildlings lived, this cave was small, and had a low rocky ceiling riddled with holes, through which the sky was visible. It was late afternoon, but those skies looked much darker than they should have.

"Are those storm clouds?!" Jamila asked nervously, speaking up so she could be heard above the soughing wind that suddenly whistled through the holes above them. She'd just waded out of the river and was still wringing the water out of her long single braid and her clothes.

"We better get moving before we get caught in that!" Brielle called out, pointing at the dark sky. She was the last to join them. She quickly waded out of the water, immediately grabbed the last blue camping bag, hitched it on her shoulders and started scrambling along the cave's rocky edges, following along with the stream, not even taking a second to recover from the water slide from hell. "You do not want to be in here when it rains unless you can grow gills! So, keep up!"

They scrambled, climbed, and crawled through the cave, slowing down only when they needed to scale boulders, rocks and crags that happened to be on their path or to belly crawl through small passages where the cave ceiling and the cave floor almost met. Eventually, they walked out of the cave and onto a ledge that looked into a gorge that split the earth as far as the eye could see both to their right and left. The walls of the gorge were steep, rocky outcrops and slivering trails reaching the top of the ridge, created by water rushing over the sides for eons.

Even in the grey of the stormy early evening light, the gorge was magnificent! The stream they had followed fell as a small waterfall into a crystal-clear pool below them. To their left was a much larger waterfall also crashing into the pool, covering the air in its spray as the water churned below them. Large swathes of mosses and algae covered most of the rocky outcrops that made up the gorge's walls, and adjacent to the larger waterfall, was a jigsaw of large boulders and outcrops that went all the way to the waterfall's head, begging to be climbed just so you could jump off them again into the pool.

"We need to get to the top of that waterfall and as far up this ridge as we can before the storm starts!" Kade yelled above the water's roar.

Hadley kept looking back, expecting Uriko and her men to pop out of the tunnels and drag them back to The Caves. This couldn't be that easy. Heavy ozone from the storm settling around them didn't help her anxiety, raising the hairs at the back of her neck straighter. Maybe a deadly storm was the shoe drop she was looking for in this so far, kind of flawless plan. She turned to the others. Everyone was wet and nervous and cold and uneasy and downright miserable. Fitting mood. They were outside The Caves, heading back into the jungle wilderness, and that just meant one thing.

They were all going to die.

"Woohoo!" Drew suddenly yelled as he launched himself into the pool about nine feet below them. Brownie immediately followed. The little boy popped up out of the water in a fit of giggles shattering the suffocating cloud of misery. The dog's wagging tail, and happy grin as he covered his young master in kisses made it even better.

Kade laughed. "At least one of us is keen!"

He jumped into the pool after Drew and Brownie, then the three of them swam towards the larger waterfall. Hadley couldn't keep the silly grin off her face as she jumped in. Jamila smiled down at Hadley when Hadley had popped back up and waved at her, then jumped. Brielle, Jael and the others followed. With Brielle's and Kade's guidance, the group clambered up the crags and boulders shouldering the waterfall, only to find a whole other set of rapids, rocks, and waterfalls at the top with more sheer walls bordering the gorge.

"How far back does this river go?" Hadley asked Brielle, a little worried as the skies continued to darken above them.

"We'll make it!" Brielle replied steely.

Hadley squeezed the straps of her backpack and swallowed her next words.

Brielle was never that serious.

They gorge-walked for another fifteen minutes, wading upstream through shallow rapids, scrambling up rocks, laterally scaling walls, hugging them tight to keep from falling back, crawling through small rock tunnels, and running along flat rock beds. It was exhausting, but they couldn't slow down. The skies were darker. The air heavier. And whether they wanted to admit to it or not, the racing waters beside them were rising and getting murkier by the second. The rain may not have started falling above them, but the storm had already broken elsewhere and a lot of it was draining into the gorge's river.

"We can't stay here, Kade!" Hadley called out over the river's howl.

"I know! I know!" Kade yelled back. "We're almost there!"

A drop of rain hit Hadley's nose.

It was too late!

"Let's go everyone! Keep up!" Brielle yelled, her voice tinged by a touch of hysteria.

They finally made it to a section of the gorge where the walls weren't too steep, and they could try climbing to get out of danger. Kade was already scaling a section of the gorge's walls, about to reach the section of rainforest above them. Brielle and Jamila were right behind him.

The rain started as a heavy drizzle.

The rocks became slippery, though most of the outcrops made for solid hand and foot holds. The stormy skies were fully grey now and, despite the solar powered headlamps that Kade had packed in every bag, they could barely see past a few feet through the darkness and the curtain of rain. Even if they made it out of the gorge, they wouldn't be able to hike through this weather!

Hadley was in the middle of the pack, climbing the wall as fast as she could dare. Kade was now at the top helping pull the others up, with Brownie the dog snug in his camping bag, after he'd emptied most of its contents into Brielle's and Hadley's bags a while back. Rumbling thunder joined the howling wind. Hadley counted the seconds between lightning and thunder, grimacing as every new count became shorter. She wasn't surprised that leaving The Caves was leading her people to death once again, but she hadn't counted on death coming so soon. Everyone was trying their best, but the conditions were atrocious.

Something was bound to give.

At that thought, Hadley's foot slipped on a rock, and she scrambled to hold on.

"It's getting worse! Everyone, hold on!" Kade's voice reached Hadley as a whisper, most of it swallowed up by the howling wind.

Hadley found three more foot and handholds before she froze.

Despite the deafening storm, she'd heard a sound that stopped her heart. But she didn't just hear the sound, she felt it too. Felt the ground shake against her body. She gripped her handholds tight and pulled herself against the rock as tightly as she could. From above them came a loud crash, and then the whole forest was melting and pouring over the gorge's edge and onto their heads! Mounds of earth tumbled into the gorge, along with the trees and plants that clung onto it. Already unstable before the mud slide, Hadley slipped and fell!

For the second time in her life, Hadley felt death's clawed fingers eagerly reach out for her.

But in the swirling chaos, and against all odds, it was another hand that found Hadley's, just before she was lost to the churning mud below!

A bolt of lightning lit the space above her.

It was no more than a two second flash, but she saw the face.

Ruqwik!

Hadley had been drowning in ice cold rainwater and murky, muddy river water, but now she was drowning in something else. Her mind lit up brighter than a sky filled with stars, and though the sudden rush of emotions rocked her, the vampire's hand kept her steady, even as the forest fell around her. Hadley's body painfully tingled to the tips of her toes, and it took a while before she realised that these feelings weren't all her own. The vampire's open mind poured unhindered into Hadley's, sharing everything, and Ruq was ecstatic! Taking a few breaths to steady herself, as much as she could with the water, mud and debris showering her, Hadley was finally able to speak.

"No!" Hadley screamed at Ruqwik. She turned to look at where the others had been only seconds before. "Not me! Them! Save the others!"

Another lightning strike.

In the flash of light, Ruq pinned Hadley with a steely gaze.

"I'll come find you!" The vampire promised. It wasn't just words. It was a feeling too. One that reverberated through every part of Hadley.

Hadley nodded carefully finding a foothold on a boulder that jutted out of gorge's wall, which was where the vampire was leaning over. Ruqwik let her go, stood up and disappeared into the drizzly darkness way past Hadley's solar headlamp's range, which was honestly abysmal in this weather. Hadley suddenly felt lonelier than she'd ever had. The rain had lessened, earth and mud weren't pouring over the gorge's side as much as it was before, and the boulder Ruq had pulled her onto wasn't greatly affected by the mudslide, but Hadley was struggling to hold herself up. After what seemed like hours, her fingers seized from exhaustion, slipped from her holds, and she fell.

Hadley was surprised to open her eyes. Surprised that she was still alive after dropping into the dark, muddy depths of the rockslide's debris.

But she was not surprised at how much everything hurt! The left side of her body was mostly buried under the mudslide.

Hadley catalogued her injuries as best as she could.

Her right leg was snapped at the shin, the fractured bone pressing against her skin. Her right shoulder was dislocated, the pain blinding. Her left arm was stuck under the mudslide debris she'd dropped into, and it was slowly crushing her arm. The rain had petered out, but it was still dark, dreary, and drizzly. Hadley tried to use her right hand to reach down and set the broken bone of her shin, but almost passed out from the pain of moving the dislocated arm an inch. Almost. She was too cold and miserable to have the pleasure of passing out. In minutes, her body was trembling uncontrollably. She stayed like that, alone and cold, her teeth chattering painfully, for an unbearably long time.

I'll come find you.

The words kept Hadley from shutting her eyes and just floating away. That and the little kicks and shifts against her belly. At some point, there was a rhythmic jerking to the motion. Hadley smiled into the murky darkness, focussing on her daughter's hiccups to banish the pain and the awful boredom. It took her a while to notice that she no longer wanted to amputate her broken leg to stop the pain. Was she too numb because she was losing blood and all feeling? Or was she healing? It was hard to tell.

I'll come find you.

She couldn't stay here. She would die if she did. Her daughter would die if she did. The shivering was now hard enough to fear that she would shatter her teeth soon. Her heartbeat was skyrocketing, and she couldn't stop herself from hyperventilating. She'd also bruised her ribs in the fall and two fingers on her left hand were broken, bent backwards against the stone she lay on. The adrenaline and cold had kept the pain from punching through for a while, but she was really hurting now.

The worst part was that the broken fingers of her pinned left hand were trying to heal but were failing because they were facing the wrong way, pulsing pain through her with each attempt at healing.This was happening to a few of her other injuries too, where they were trying to heal against the pressure of mudslide debris and continuously failing, causing perpetual pain. Like her right shoulder. The way her arm was pinned, her dislocated shoulder was having trouble pulling itself back into place, failing to heal then slipping off the socket again. Over and over again. Her eyes stung with tears of frustration.

She wished it all to stop!

To her dismay, no matter how desperately death clawed at her, it just couldn't get a grip!

"Found you!"

A circle of light fell on Hadley, and a bout of sobs burst forth from her. Ruqwik was suddenly there with her, with one of Kade's flashlights in hand.

"My shoulder," Hadley whispered, her throat thick with thirst, fear, and pain.

Ruqwik knelt next to her, shining the light over Hadley's body.

"It's a lot more than that," the vampire whispered back. "You're stuck, Hadley. It's not good. I don't know if I can get you out safely. Your left hand... you won't be able to pull that out. It's completely pinned at the wrist."

Hadley closed her eyes. She'd been thinking about her left wrist for a while in the maelstrom of pain. If she could pull her hand past where her wrist was stuck, her left arm would be free, then she could shimmy out from under the debris, pop back her dislocated right shoulder, then work on setting her broken shin bone.

All she had to do was free that left wrist.

"My thumb," Hadley said. She kept her eyes closed and focused on her breath to keep the pain at bay. "I need you to break my left thumb."

"What?"

"If you break my left thumb, I can pull my left hand from under the branch pinning it down," Hadley said. She opened her eyes and looked up at the vampire. "I can't do it myself, Ruq! Please."

"Okay," Ruq breathed the word.

The vampire stuck a hand into the mud, found Hadley's left hand and grabbed the thumb.

"Wait! Wait!" Hadley said suddenly. Her eyes pleaded with Ruq's. "I need something to bite down!"

Ruq dropped the flashlight in her other hand, quickly undid her belt, folded it several times and carefully placed it in Hadley's mouth. Hadley bit down and nodded for her to continue.

"On three..." the vampire said. Hadley nodded again, closed her eyes, and waited for the countdown.

Without starting the count, Ruq broke the thumb.

Pain shot through Hadley like a bolt of lightning at the exact same time that one flashed through the sky, lighting up the world for a few seconds. Her muffled scream was lost in the thunder that followed a second later. Hadley spit out the belt and tried to think past the pain. If she waited too long, her thumb would heal and then she'd have to do this all over again. She slowly pulled her arm from underneath the mud-glued branches and rocks. Hadley's heart almost stopped when her hand got stuck at the wrist, but that lasted only a second as the broken thumb join buckled inward, allowing her hand to slip past the constriction, freeing her hand.

With her left arm free, the vampire was able to pull Hadley out of the debris.

"My shoulder," Hadley said, pointing at her right shoulder.

Ruqwik nodded, helping her sit up. Ruqwik popped her right shoulder back in place, again without a count or anything. Not even the belt to bite down on this time.

"Argh! A little warning next time!" Hadley said, cussing and gnashing her teeth against the pain.

"Hurts less when you don't know it's coming," Ruq said, helping Hadley to her feet.

Hadley's leaned on Ruq, trying to get her balance and hop over to a safer place to set her shin bone, but Ruq suddenly shifted Hadley's body away from her. Hadley looked up to find the vampire's eyes pinned to her belly before she reached out and gently placed a palm against it. It was a slow, thoughtful gesture, and Hadley held her breath, realising she'd desperately missed the vampire's touch.

But the moment didn't quite go as Hadley imagined.

It was like Ruqwik had grabbed onto the wrong end of a campfire log!

The vampire jerked backwards, pulling away from Hadley and forcing her to land on her broken leg.

"No! Stop! My leg!"

Hadley's partially fractured shin snapped as her weight fell onto it. Part of her right tibia was now sticking out of her leg. She crumbled to the ground.

Ruq was frozen for a few seconds, her eyes glazing over eerily as she stared into nothing, before snapping back to reality just as fast.

"Shit! I'm sorry!" Ruq cussed at seeing the wound. She lunged forward, causing Hadley to fumble again as she tried to help.

"Stop! Please!" Hadley pleaded, hopping back a step on her unbroken leg.

"I need you to drink my blood, Hadley. It'll heal you." Ruq said, pulling up the right sleeve of her jacket, lowering her fangs and preparing to break the skin on her arm.

"No!" Hadley replied, much louder and harsher than she'd intended. She could tell her tone hurt Ruq's feelings, but too much of her body was already changed. She didn't want to risk messing it up anymore by gorging herself on vampire blood!

"We have to do something, Hadley!" Ruq insisted, holding her close. "Please!"

"No! Nothing! Don't do anything!" Hadley was finding it hard to breathe through the agony. Her voice was all whispers as darkness hemmed in around her. She lay back in Ruqwik's hold and closed her eyes, her breath raspy and shallow. "I just... I just need to rest... just... rest..."

Hadley sighed and then everything went dark.

*

She woke up with a start and looked around in alarm, hoping not to find a woman with an austere afro ponytail sitting next to her with a glass of wine and vampire blood, or a Healer with an eyepatch replacing a sedative IV bag.

Or worse yet, a wall of muddy debris crushing the left side of her torso.

"It's alright, Hadley. You're okay."

Hadley's head whipped to the voice.

"Ruqwik?"

Hadley whispered the name as if speaking any louder would shatter the illusion. Because this was the only thing it could be. An illusion. There was no way that Hadley would have her head on the vampire's lap, with a thick blanket wrapped around her naked body, next to a roaring fire warming her to her marrow. Her wounds were also healing and all her friends were still alive, standing and sitting around the same fire, engaged in happy banter as they sipped on bowls of hot soup, the smell of which made Hadley's stomach growl.

There was no way this was real.

This was a dream.

She was still stuck at the bottom of that gorge, buried in debris.

But it was a good dream.

She'd play along as far as she could before being slung back into reality or disappearing into the nothingness of death.

"Hi, Hadley." the vampire said with a soft smile and tender gaze. "How are you feeling?"

"Where are we?" Hadley asked, craning her neck to see how far the dream architecture ran.

"We're waiting out the storm," Ruqwik explained. "Kade found us a shelter. Ruins from before the Human Error. We'll be safe here until the storm passes."

Hadley took a moment to process the vampire's words. If this wasn't a dream, then that statement was false. They weren't safe out here. They would never be safe out here. This wilderness was going to kill them. And it was her fault that they were out here.

As always.

Under the blanket, her hand went to the bump of her womb. A tinge of pain passed through her. She'd lost the perfect home for her daughter. This was never the plan. This was not why she risked everything to leave the Compound.

What was she doing?

"You saved me." Hadley said, looking back at the vampire.

"I promised I'd come back for you," Ruq replied with a soft smile.

It suddenly felt like it was the very first time Hadley was seeing the vampire. Really seeing her. Every moment they'd shared played back in her mind, each memory rich with emotions previously muted or completely stolen by that old darkness in her mind.

Hadley paused on the memory of that first time in the forest.

Her heart had skipped a beat when she'd turned around and seen the devastatingly beautiful Ruqwik. Fighting Aunt Zee's training, she'd chosen to save the vampire right after slicing open her arteries to disable her. And even knowing she'd been in danger of losing her tongue, falling asleep on the vampire's bed in that quaint cabin in the woods had instantly etched itself in Hadley's mind as a cherished memory.

As the reformed, emotion-rich memories continued to play through, there was now such a soul crushing depth to the heart twisting pain that hit Hadley as Ruq's was ripped off by the vampire dog, that Hadley had to look away from the vampire as she struggled to keep herself from bursting into sobs. Hadley was tempted to stop walking down memory's lane, but her mind pushed back, obstinately guiding her through all the memories of fighting beside the vampire. Traveling the world. Surviving evil. Dancing. Laughing.

Their first kiss.

The first time Ruqwik fed on her blood...

Hadley turned back to the vampire, her heart racing.

The potency of this thing between them rocked her to the core and frightened her more than death itself, but Hadley was desperate for it. With her newfound ability to feel everything, this was an uncharted connection that begged to be thoroughly explored. It was more than mere attraction, although that was definitely there. Attraction, chemistry, compatibility... those had never been in question. But every attempt at finding the deeper meaning of it all had always eluded her, sideswept by the unexpected vagaries of this damned path they were on from the day they walked away from the Compound.

If only they could find one moment in time to just be.

To just exist.

Hadley's mind felt heavy. Everything was too bright, too loud, too much! All of it swelling to a crescendo! This was it – the dream coming to an end. She was dying. There was no other explanation. And that was okay. But before she disappeared into the ether, she relived one memory she adored more than most. A memory that made her grin like an idiot every single time she thought about it. A memory that embodied an innocence she'd lost forever.

Hadley lifted her head and kissed Ruqwik.

She was plunged into a moment of total, absolute, complete bliss...

...and then her mind exploded!

Everything spilt outwards in a chaotic swirl. She watched in awe as the vampire's mind joined hers. There was no longer a separate mindscape they shared, where emotions showed up as a jumble of coloured smoke. They were now fully connected. Hadley tentatively walked into Ruq's mind, an immense, intimidating palace filled with hundreds of thousands of memories and feelings and secrets. Her mind was just as open to Ruq, and she could feel the vampire's hesitant footsteps imprint in her mind as she explored Hadley's mindscape.

"The link!" Ruq's surprised voice came from everywhere and nowhere, both loud and a whisper, made stranger by the fact that Hadley could still feel the vampire's lips against hers – soft, slow, and sensuous.

Hadley broke the kiss.

Ruq's eyes were still closed. Hadley watched as the vampire breathed in slow and deep for a few seconds before she opened her eyes too. The vampire's gaze reached Hadley's vulnerable core, but that was okay, because she saw just as much when she looked into Ruq's eyes.

"Ruq?" Hadley whispered.

"Yes, Hadley?"

"What was that?"

The vampire didn't immediately answer. She just looked back at Hadley, her gaze holding a tome of unsaid words. Finally, she replied.

"A lot more than I thought it would be." Ruqwik whispered back.

Hadley's eyes suddenly felt heavy. All energy inside her drained away, leaving her exhausted, and barely able to hold her head up.

What was happening?

"Ruq...?"

"It's okay, Hadley," Ruqwik said, gently touching Hadley's face. "Just rest."