Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel Chapter 66

Chapter 66 An Empty Account

Chapter 66 An Empty Account

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“But your father refused to accept that your grandfather was gone. Once he grew up, he came out to Wasteland and enlisted, hoping to find his father’s remains. He ended up on an 8th Legion mission to contain a taint core, and trying to save your mother, both of them fell that day. I came out to Wasteland three times in all. The only thing I brought back home was you, no bigger than my palm.”

By then Mabel’s eyes had gone red around the rims. The honest truth was that she had sworn off ever returning to Wasteland. She lived in fear that Gillian would end up buried in this dirt, too.

“Grandma, you’ve never told me anything about my parents or my grandfather.”

Every time Gillian had asked before, Mabel had only said they died in a shuttle crash. Then Mabel would cry for days afterward, until Gillian had stopped daring to bring it up at all. She had never imagined the truth ran this deep.

“I took your father and mother’s survivor’s pension, brought you out of Wasteland, and settled us in Goldspine. Twenty years, almost. Where does the time go?”

On Wasteland, the legion name only changed when one commander fell and the next one took up the

post.

Eight commanders had died before Merrick took over. The 9th Legion under him had stood for six years

now.

This place buried plenty of people every year. Top-tier beastman or nameless grunt, the dirt didn’t draw a line between them.

Three years ago, for example, a small dormant taint core had suddenly come alive.

The eruption tore through the shielding at the source and swallowed the entire cleric squad stationed at the 9th Legion’s rear.

Out of nearly three hundred clerics, Elara was the only one who walked out alive. After that, no new cleric ever signed on with the legion again.

The disaster shook every one of the Elemental Cities. Even the legions on Capital Planet issued an order. From then on, every cleric had the right to choose for herself whether to enlist.

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Someone might ask why everyone didn’t just emigrate to Capital Planet.

Put it this way. Outer Planet was basically Capital Planet’s satellite.

Take Goldspine, where the Grayson family ruled the roost. Even they were nothing more than a junior branch dispatched from the top houses on Capital Planet.

As for the regular folks scraping by in the Elemental Cities or out on Wasteland, sure, Capital Planet would welcome you, as long as you could afford the interstellar passage.

A single ticket ran close to ten million coins. Even if you scraped the fare together, you would be sent right back home unless you also owned property and land up there.

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Chapter 66 An Empty Account

In her last life, the legion roster had ended at the ninth, and no further.

“To be honest, I hadn’t planned to bring any of this up. But that Lucian boy got on the line with his father Cédric right in front of me, and last night he asked me as a personal favor to look after Tristan’

Mabel wiped at her eyes. “I haven’t seen those folks in years, but he’s still the grandson of your grandfather’s old comrade. Gillian, let it go, sweetheart. Bad blood is for setting aside, not piling up Let

this one rest.”

“All right.”

But if Tristan ever tried to pull something on her again, she wouldn’t be going easy on him.

Gillian and Mabel stepped outside and found Tristan asleep inside the medical scanner, the report already generating on the screen.

When Sylas saw Gillian come out, he forwarded the scan results to her wrist terminal.

“There’s a large pocket of pooled blood inside his head. That clot is most likely the reason for the memory loss. It’s putting pressure on his hippocampus.”

Sylas studied the report data and felt something didn’t quite add up.

“The report shows his overall condition is recovering well. The wounds elsewhere on his body are mending unusually fast. The healing alloy seems to work especially well on him for some reason?”

Of course the wounds healed fast. Gillian had channeled her psionic power into him to speed it along.

Gillian read through the report on her terminal. “If we dissolve that clot, does he go back to normal?”

“In theory, yes. We won’t know for certain until the clot is gone.”

“Run a course of healing alloy on him and see what happens.”

“That’s about all we can do at this point.”

Sylas immediately filed for healing alloy through his own account, but the legion’s medical team turned the request down flat.

The reasoning was straightforward. Tristan hadn’t sustained his injuries on active duty, so the request for free use of the resource was denied.

But Sylas didn’t have the money either. His genetic flaw was that the moment his emotions spiked past a certain point, he lost his mind and started killing. Every coin he earned went toward sedatives.

Gillian rarely saw it, but Sylas’ face actually went red.

He tapped through the interface several times, and every attempt came back with the same buzzing rejection.

“What’s wrong?”

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Chapter 66 An Empty Account

Gillian’s curiosity sharpened. What could possibly have Sylas this flustered?

Tristan, lying inside the scanner, caught their voices and sat himself up.

“You two look pretty grim. Is there… any hope left for me?”

Sylas killed the terminal and forced a smile for Tristan. “Nothing serious. Just a small injury.”

Tristan flopped right back down. “Mm, okay.”

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