Edge of Defiance (Edge of Collapse, #5)

by Kyla Stone

Hannah hoped love always came easy for him. Few people kept such big hearts. The world tended to beat it out of them.

She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing hard, pushing out the tsunami of memories that threatened to overtake her.

It was always there. It only took a thought, a smell, a sound, and it would all come flooding back.

Pike’s leering face, that red slash of a mouth.

The fear, helplessness, and pain.

Sometimes, what you wanted didn’t matter. Still, she could leave. Noah wouldn’t leave—she was certain of that. She didn’t know what the future held for her marriage; she only knew this place was no longer safe. As long as she could take everyone she loved with her, she would leave this place in a heartbeat.

“In this world, we make the rules. We get to take what we want. The strong survive. It’s how the world works, how it’s always worked. “If you want to live, you need to put aside your whiny morals and get with the program. Or you can sit in your cold, empty house with your empty belly

The despair that had permeated the bedroom like a sickness.

She didn’t blame anyone for choosing death instead. The way forward was rife with terror, violence, starvation, desperation, and grief.

Anyone who didn’t face that future with trepidation was a damn fool...

She’d seen the face of the devil, and the devil could go straight to hell.

She might have to live with the loss, but she sure as hell didn’t have to accept the cause—or allow the perpetrator to get away with it.

wanted things black and white. Right and wrong. Actionable intelligence he could do something about. Real life was messy and complicated.

“It’ll be ugly and violent. There will be collateral damage.”

he was a sheepdog. The ones who stood between the wolves and the sheep, who put themselves on the line, first, last, and always.

Bishop said people needed something to believe in, to hold on to. The worse things got, the more important faith became. Maybe he was right; that didn’t change her mind.

“You never know. Best be prepared for anything. Always monitor your surroundings. It’s called situational awareness.”

The light wasn’t a bulb, but a plastic two-liter pop bottle filled with water and a bit of bleach to keep algae from forming inside the bottle. Bishop had sawed a small hole in the roof, stuck the bottle halfway

the hole, and sealed the exposed edges. Sunlight entered through the top of the bottle, refracted in the water, and brightened the entire room.

“Before the collapse, we tried to protect our children, to shield them from the ugly out there. But it wasn’t just out there, it’s in here.” She tapped her chest. “It’s in all of us, all the time. It was a false hope before the collapse.

Saying we’re protecting them while keeping them from bettering the world? From finding their own way? It’s not helping them. We do it to make ourselves feel better. Not them.”

But a life worth living required risk. Otherwise, you were trapped inside a cage of your own making, like a dog too broken to notice that the crate door was wide open.

“There are two kinds of people. Those who rise to the occasion when tough times come, and those who don’t. Sometimes, people don’t come out the other side stronger. They give in to their fear and weakness and become something else, something worse.”

“Pain is a part of living. Loss is a part of living. Risk—tempered with intelligence and wisdom—is a part of living. I won’t numb myself or shut myself off from the world for the illusion of safety. I will not trade myself for a promise that’s not even real.

The night was cold and crisp, the moon smothered in clouds.

The beam wavered, the trees on either side of the driveway seeming to leap out at him, their barren branches scraping the black sky.

He inhaled sharply, the cold air searing his lungs as a stew of heartbreak, jealousy, and anger roiled through him.

There were no stars. No stars existed in the entire universe. His entire world was collapsing inward on itself like a black hole.

The night closed all around him, threatening, menacing. His boots scraped across ice like shards of glass. He shivered.

A seething hatred stabbed him. Jealousy, black and ugly.

Some distant part of his brain registered that Rosamond had said nothing about her own desire for revenge. A tiny warning bell clanged in his head, but he ignored it. There was no room for anything but his anger, his spite and bitterness, his desolation. He wanted to hate Liam Coleman. He wanted him dead.

He thought he’d recoil. He didn’t. Dark fury boiled through him. His hands shook with it, fingers curling into fists. He would do anything to put his family back together. Anything.

A memory flickered, tried to wriggle to the surface of his mind. It was buried too deep, shrouded in darkness. It winked out as fast as it had appeared.

this new world they were building, they created their own rules. There was poetry in that. A certain primal satisfaction.

If there was one thing that she’d learned, it was the need to control emotional connections. Feelings were finite. Attachments were only valuable when they were beneficial.

Jealousy ate at him. A dark resentment slithered through his veins.

boots slipped on the slick mixture of snow and ice. Her hair was frozen. Icicles were forming on her cheeks, her eyelashes, and her earlobes. Her breath came in dense white jets.

Snow stuck to her face, melting, trickling down her cheeks and forehead. She was numb. A stunned disconnect from reality. This wasn’t real. It wasn’t happening.

The universe was cruel and barbaric, senseless and fickle.

Hannah pulled Milo into her arms, weeping as snow gathered in her hair, coating her head and shoulders with ice crystals.

Behind her, the fire blazed higher. The roof went up with a roaring whoosh, the bones of the house snapping, creaking, and popping. A groaning crash shuddered through the walls.

“That’s what faith means. To believe in something you can’t see, to trust when the way is difficult. To believe that even on the darkest night, the sun will rise.”

Before the collapse, corrupt and greedy politicians ruled us, taxed us to death, sucked the teat of America dry. No one could do anything about it. Not the little people, anyway. They taught us that voting could change things, fix things, but we’ve just been trading

one charlatan for another, through every level of government.

The sky above the tree line lightened to gray as dawn approached, the crowns of spruce and pine haloed in fog.

apocalyptic

Some wounds never healed, not fully. There were ways to contain the pain, to put it in a box. To not only live with the scars, but to come to terms with them.

To find peace. He was starting to believe that it was possible.

It was, but that didn’t mean he could relax. Not for a day, not for a minute. They’d already lost more than two people should ever lose.

Enemies lurked beyond the gates. Some known, others unknown.