Chapter 273

Women in rags. Bare skin showing. Eyes dead. Some were barely in their teens, some already in their sixties. The men sat there gnawing at chunks of meat half-cooked by the sun on the train roof, then tossed the stripped bones right into the aisle like they were feeding kennel hounds.

Two women were on all fours, barking as they crawled, scrambling for those bones.

No hands allowed. Only their mouths.

Both women bit down on the same bone at once. They shook their heads and tore at it like real dogs, growling low in their throats. The men around them burst into laughter, clapping, hooting, throwing down a few more bones for fun.

The second carriage with people in it.

The third carriage with people in it.

Emily Ward, Magnus Specter, and the rest of the female squad members watched all of it with their own eyes.

Kevin Ward and Old Zhang and the others kept up stiff, ugly smiles.

“Heh... well... that, uh, that’s just them messing around. Heh, heh. Fake. It’s all fake. Don’t take it serious.”

Why don’t you mess around like that with your own mother, then?

Magnus Specter sneered inside, but his face stayed still. He said nothing and just kept walking with Kevin Ward and the rest.

This was about what he expected.

Last life. This life. Men like these never changed.

That wasn’t to say every man was born rotten. Not all of them were trash. But the decent ones, sooner or later, got dragged into the same mud by the rest.

In the apocalypse, women were weaker than men more often than not. Crystal were scarce. If there were Crystal, they naturally went first to the stronger men. Little by little, the women got pushed to the edge, until they turned into men’s attachments. Their toys.

Think about it. Even with your own father and mother—if you’re already thirty or forty, still rotting at home every day, earning nothing, eating their food, drinking their water, living off them like a leech—would they still smile at you kindly?

Even blood parents would sour on you.

So what about these men, who had no blood tie to these women at all?

The men went out and risked their necks for food. The women stayed in the base, eating and drinking without danger. Of course the men would feel the scales tipping wrong in their hearts. And once that poison started growing, they’d find ways to balance it out on the women.

If it had been one man, one woman—numbers equal—then maybe it would’ve been different. A man might feel a home on his shoulders. Might fight for a woman like he meant it.

But when several men shared one woman, what home was there to guard?

You could treat her well tonight, and tomorrow night she’d be serving another man.

How the hell was that supposed to grow any sense of family duty?

So over time, things turned into this.

Not all at once.

Step by step.

Bit by bit.

Until it became this filth.

“Sis! Don’t take all this seriously, alright? We ain’t all like that. At the very least, your little brother ain’t been bullied like that, right? Ain’t that better than anything?”

Kevin Ward led Emily Ward and the others all the way to the last carriage. This one was empty.

He dropped down wherever he pleased, broad and loose, then his eyes burned as they scraped across the faces of the Ice Regiment women. He smiled and made room for Emily Ward.

“Come, sis, sit. So? What do you think after seeing all this? My brothers here, every one of ’em’s solid. So? No problem now, right?”

No problem?

He really had the shameless gall to say that.

Magnus Specter followed behind Emily Ward, sneering in silence.

Emily Ward sat down across from her younger brother, face cold as frost. By now, disappointment had settled all the way into her bones.

If she stayed, she did not believe Kevin Ward would treat her exactly like those women.

But she had figured one thing out.

If she no longer had the title of Ice Regiment commander, then even Kevin Ward included, none of them would give her a good face.

Strip it bare, and the truth was simple.

Without Magnus Specter, she was nothing.

Just a woman who could fight a little.

And if some other man set his eyes on her, then if Kevin Ward had any backbone, he’d only bring trouble on himself. If he didn’t—if he was the spineless kind—then her ending would probably be no different from those women she had just seen.

Emily Ward already regretted wanting to stay.

Her chest tightened. Her heart turned uneasy.

She turned to look at Magnus Specter.

He had kept a cold face the whole way and said nothing. Seeing his sister glance at that man, Kevin Ward finally looked surprised.

“Sis! What’s he do? He with your regiment too?”

Among all these Ice Regiment women, Magnus Specter was the only man. Everyone else had already noticed him. Only Kevin Ward, whose eyes were either glued to Emily Ward or drifting toward the ponytailed female soldiers, had only now realized there was such a person standing there.

“He is...”

Emily Ward hesitated.

Magnus Specter let out a long breath and cut in flatly, “Kevin Ward. For your sister’s sake, I’ll give you two roads.”

He looked straight at him.

“One. You come with us alone. We take you in.”

“Two. Your sister stays here with you. And we leave right now.”

The moment those words fell, Emily Ward’s heart went cold all at once.

For an instant, she felt abandoned.

He really could bear to leave her behind.

In a place like this.

Kevin Ward exploded at once, jabbing a finger at Magnus Specter’s nose.

“The fuck are you? My sis ain’t spoken yet! Who the fuck said it was your turn to talk, huh?”

But the curse had barely left his mouth before all 140-plus Ice Regiment women moved as one.

Automatic rifles came up.

Bolts snapped.

Rounds chambered.

Cold muzzles pointed straight at Kevin Ward and his few brothers.

The sound alone was enough to freeze the blood.

Kevin Ward and the others were scared stupid on the spot. Kevin Ward hurriedly grabbed Emily Ward’s arm.

“Sis! What’s this supposed to mean? They... they ain’t they your people? Ain’t they all your squad members? Then why—”

“Your sister already resigned as commander for your sake,” Magnus Specter said evenly. “She decided to stay here with you. We only came to see her off. She isn’t the commander anymore. Understand?”

The instant she heard that, Emily Ward’s heart clenched hard.

Her body trembled despite herself.

Magnus Specter stayed calm, face unreadable, while Kevin Ward shouted at once, voice cracking, “What? Sis! What the hell did he just say?”

He sprang up and grabbed both Emily Ward’s shoulders hard.

“He telling the truth? Sis! How could you— how could you resign as commander? You quit, then what about us? You—”

Sophia Reid had gotten the rough picture by now. She gave a crooked, mocking laugh.

“Your sister quit because she wanted to stay and look after you. What, you’re not even gonna thank her properly?”

“Shut your damn mouth!”

Kevin Ward shook Emily Ward by the shoulders and roared, near hysterical.

“Sis! You tell me! Are they telling the truth or not? Are you fucking stupid? Did you really fucking resign that commander post?”

Emily Ward shut her big eyes tight.

A clear tear slid down from the corner of one eye.

Then she nodded. Very lightly.

She was crying, but not because of her brother.

No.

She simply felt, deep down, that Magnus Specter had truly cast her aside.

That hollow drop in the chest hit her hard.

And it hurt worst because just a little while ago, for the first time in her life, she had taken the first step and asked a younger man for a kiss.

And not long after that kiss, that same younger man had gone and abandoned her without mercy.

Yet on the other hand, she had also hoped Magnus Specter would let her have her way.

She knew Kevin Ward and his people could never join the Ice Regiment. Even if Magnus Specter agreed, Sophia Reid and Charlotte Renard and the others never would.

But now that Magnus Specter had really fulfilled her wish just like that, her heart twisted like it was being carved by a knife.

Women were like that sometimes.

Contradictory creatures.

Especially in front of a man they truly cared about.

Their hearts would turn chaotic.

Flustered.

Unsure.

Clinging one moment, doubting the next.

And not always reasonable.

“Fuck! My sis was just messing around with you!” Kevin Ward saw it was real and changed his tune at once. “Without my say-so, how could my sis quit being commander? Fuck, are all of you brain-dead? She’d stop being a proper commander just to stay here and be a damn slave?”

“Oh?” Sophia Reid sneered. “Did I hear that right? Your sister stays behind to take care of you, and you’re planning to have her be a slave here?”