Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel Chapter 169

Chapter 169 Lunch Break

Chapter 169 Lunch Break

“Elara, your antidote, was it a person or a pill?”

But Gillian worried about embarrassing Elara, so she added another line.

“Elara, come back soon. Grandma and I are really worried about you.”

“Mm.”

Elara was slow to reply, and when Gillian saw her dodge the question, her stomach dropped.

+20 Free Coms

This didn’t look like a pill situation at all. Had Elara found a male to clear the dose, just like Gillian had?”

Gillian passed the news of Elara’s safety along to Mabel, and on the other end of the video call, Mabel thanked her stars.

“Gillian, where is Elara right now? Tell her to come home and stay. I’ll cook her something nice.”

Gillian tried calling Elara back and sending more messages, but nobody picked up.

All she could do was leave another message.

“Elara, Grandma wants you to come home and stay with us. If you’re not making it back tonight, can you at least message Grandma?”

“OK”

This time the reply came quick.

“Gillian, what’s wrong?”

Merrick walked over carrying two metal lunchboxes and set them down in front of Gillian.

His long fingers nudged a lunchbox gently into her hand.

“You’ve been interrogating all morning. Hungry?”

Gillian shook her head. She wasn’t hungry.

Twenty of the black serpents at Winterhush had survived. Fifteen lay dead.

Under the 9th Legion’s special interrogation methods, all 20 of them had basically confessed every detail of their lives down to what age they stopped wetting the bed.

But none of them gave up who had sent them.

All they knew was to follow Levi in, tear up Winterhush, teach Elowen a lesson, and swallow up the place’s equity.

Levi was dead now, killed by Elara, and the trail had gone cold.

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Chapter 169 Lunch Break

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“Don’t worry. Once the White Griffin upgrades come through, we’ll crack open Levi’s wrist terminal and the rest of theirs.”

Merrick opened all the metal boxes and pressed a fork into Gillian’s hand.

“Eat something, or I’ll have to feed you myself. You’re carrying our babies. The two of them are worried about you. They keep asking in those tiny voices, Why isn’t Mom eating on time? What if she goes hungry?”

“Merrick, you’re being so childish.”

Was Merrick really the dutiful-husband type?

Merrick’s teasing actually lifted Gillian’s mood. She put her wrist terminal aside and picked up her fork.

She must have been hungrier than she thought, because the food in the metal lunchbox didn’t taste half as bad now.

“Merrick, does Wasteland City grow its own crops yet? Are these potatoes locally grown or shipped in?” Gillian picked up a slice of potato and chewed. It tasted faintly off, like dirt and metal.

“Gillian, outside Wasteland City the contamination is brutal. But the Legion’s opened up some land inside the protective dome and started growing high-yield, hardy crops. The potato is one of them.”

Merrick watched Gillian’s frown deepen, then picked up a piece himself and gave it a taste.

“The flavor’s a little off, sure, but at least it isn’t contaminated.”

Gillian thought back to her thousand-acre plot. “Merrick, how’s the blackstone survey at Wilder Peak going?”

“Already done. There’s more underneath. The veteran prospectors think the deposit might run deeper than the mithril vein. I’m setting up a protective dome on the site so we can start digging.”

“Can my thousand acres get rolled into the dome too? I want to farm that land.”

“It’s already included. Once the dome’s up, I’ll redirect the medical team’s clerics out there to clear the contamination.”

Merrick wasn’t about to shoot Gillian down. Turning Wasteland City’s iron-hard ground into something green was a tall order, but if Gillian wanted to try, he would let her have her shot. Maybe she would actually pull it off.

Hearing that her plot was included, Gillian’s mood lifted

The faintly metallic potato slices didn’t seem so bad anymore. She and Merrick were buried under trillions in debt, and if they could put Wasteland City’s land to work, even just hitting self-sufficiency would save them a fortune.

If they could export on top of that, they would actually start making money.

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Chapter 169 Lunch Break

Wasteland City could climb its way out of the deficit.

Gillian had been genuinely hungry. She cleared the lunchbox in record time.

Merrick picked up the empty box and let out a low whistle.

“A second ago somebody told me she wasn’t hungry. You call this not hungry?”

Gillian’s face went red. Merrick had just told her to eat, and now he was calling her a piglet.

“Merrick, call yourself a pig, right now.”

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