Weathered Angel

○Twenty○

Jasper had left us to go off somewhere with that Maya girl. She floated into the room and found us laying down. The moment her eyes landed on Jasper, they shared big smiles that made me avert my eyes in envy.

Maya had short, wavy, black hair that she wore clipped back. She had big brown eyes that probably dilated at the sight of Jasper. Her presence brought with it a shyness, but I couldn't tell if it was because I had been there.

Now, Monty and I both lay in his bed talking aimlessly yet purposefully. It was relaxing to be around somebody I trusted completely, not that I didn't trust Cage, I've just had an odd feeling from today when I thought about him. From what Jasper, Monty and Miller had said, to my cryptic chat with Dante Wallace. Some things, like my time here, weren't adding up and that played in the back of my mind.

"Eden?" Monty looked over at me and I looked over at him.

"Yeah?"

"Why do you trust Cage so much?" He whispered.

I pushed my hair back and rolled onto my side. "What do you mean?"

"Earlier, you were adamant he wouldn't allow us to be used like the Grounders. What did he do for you to have so much faith in him?"

"He ordered the guards to take me in when they found me and made sure I got surgery to help with my injuries." I included what Dante had revealed to me today. "He didn't have to do that. He could have left me to die like everybody else does." Images bathed in red flashed through my mind: bleeding out in front of Murphy; being in Bellamy's arms then being alone; crashing into icy cold water.

Monty wasn't sold on what I'd said, he looked very weary. "What if he only did those things, so that he could use your blood."

"Wouldn't they have used my blood without giving me surgery whilst none of you knew I was here?"

Monty paused to think. "That's what's throwing me off. You wouldn't know what they did to you whilst you had surgery."

I held back a huff and eye roll. I scratched the side of my neck, while I thought of a way to make Monty understand without telling him things I wasn't permitted to.

"I had to stay awake during the procedure. They just numbed my body."

"But you wouldn't have seen what they were doing. Even if you thought Cage wouldn't harm you, what makes you sure they wouldn't hurt us?"

I had to bite my tongue. There wasn't any solid proof that the mountain men wouldn't hurt the forty-seven. Cage had already instructed me to take Harper with any force necessary and now apparently she was missing. Maybe I should go to the recovery room she should be in and see if she's actually there.

"We've already been giving them blood, remember? So, what happens when we don't want to give them more?"

"They go back to using Grounders."

"We both know they won't, Eden." Monty peered over his shoulder as a small group walked in and went over to their bunks. "If you find a breakthrough in an experiment, you don't revert to old ways when you've found a better alternative. And what if what they've done to you was an experiment to see if your blood would be even better? You'd never know. How can you trust people you don't know?"

Everything Monty said made sense, yet I struggled to let go of the idea that the mountain men were a danger to me. It was like it had been engrained in me that I was safe here, because so far I had been. "How can I trust the people I do know after everything that has happened?"

He placed a hand on my arm and gave me an empathetic look which I didn't like. I didn't need sympathy or fake empathy. 

"You can trust me and Jasper. Some of us have made bad decisions, but they didn't want to hurt you or anybody else. You can trust all of us, because we just want the best for each other. We're just trying to survive."