Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

38. Consider Yourself Warned

Aston looked up from a large map spread across his table. He wore a ripped white shirt and pair of pants that must have come from the Terra Preservation army. Out in the dust fields, they would give him perfect camouflage with their burnt orange color. Bo cautiously entered the tent, not caring that she probably should have knocked and that she should probably wait to be asked before she pulled out a chair and flopped down in it. Whatever he had to say, she knew she wasn't going to like it, and she'd rather show him that she was the same girl who used to beat him in practically every game they ever played when they were children.

"So nice of you to actually obey my orders for once," he said, looking back down to the map. He marked a few places with a pencil, then went back to staring. Bo shrugged and leaned back in her chair, unimpressed.

"Well, I had nothing better to do, so why not see what the meathead wanted from me?"

"Watch it."

Bo shrugged again.

Aston looked as if he might try to make her apologize, but he only snarled at her for a moment and then pushed away from the map table. "I'm not here to argue with you, Bo," he said. "I want you here as the friend that knows me better than anyone else. I want the girl who led this camp while her dad was missing, and the girl who never backs down."

Bo chewed on the inside of her cheek, her arms crossed, waiting to see where he was going with all this almost-praise.

"We're poised on the brink of greatness," he continued. "With the militia, we're able to do so much more than we ever thought possible. We have more weapons, soon we'll have more people, and I hope to one day have more land. If we can negotiate a deal with the Terra Preservation army for a plot of land in the protected areas, we might be able to get a reliable source of food. If we can raise ourselves up, we can become something that's worth remembering. I want people all over the Blast Zones, here and in the rest of the world, to know our names and know who we are."

"The militia is so overdone, though," Bo said, waving her hand in the air. "Why not travelling circus, instead? Singing competition?" She widened her eyes and leaned forward in mock excitement. "Imagine all the people who would know us if we did those things!"

"Shut up," Aston said, but he put no anger behind it. He walked to stand in front of her, looking down with an expression she wasn't sure she wanted to analyze. "The militia wants us to start our service soon. And if we offer a few extra months of service to the militia each year, we'll rise in their ranks. They'll give us more men, more weapons, and we'll only keep growing. We could be a town within a few years."

"Great, well, I call dibs on naming the main street after me."

"Bo, stop making it all a joke," he said, his voice nearly cracking. This made Bo stare in wonder. She'd never seen Aston get riled up like this before. He was easy to anger, easy to frustrate, but this sort of restless intensity she did not often see provoked by anyone. "Don't you see that we will have power if we do this? We would be have the fire power to take care of that alien that kept your captive. If he is the Beast of Lyx, like you said, we can get vengeance for all those humans he slaughtered on the battlefields."

Bo's mouth went dry. "You'd go against an alien? You don't even know where he is."

"The militia is pressuring us to start our rotation. I've been putting them off due to you coming back and making everyone doubt the plan, but if we start now we can gain their power. We can tell the Terra Preservation about the alien, and then we'd have the whole army on our side. I am sure we could find him with their technology. You wouldn't have to worry anymore. You'd be safe."