The Farming Saint in the Starry Wasteland (Elizabeth Schofield) novel Chapter 495

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Chapter 495 He Wouldn’t listen

Chapter 495 He Wouldn’t Listen

He kept his eyes carefully averted from Bukowski as he spoke.

He already knew Bukowski wouldn’t listen.

Bukowski had never once in his life been a man who took other people’s counsel.

Once he’d locked onto a course, nothing short of an act of the divine could pull him off it.

Sure enough, Bukowski lifted his head and fixed Dominique with a look so cold it could’ve drawn blood.

“Head back? Head back empty-handed?”

Dominique dropped his gaze and said nothing more.

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Jebediah held his silence for a moment, then pressed forward anyway. “Captain, we’re short on people. Clara and the others are gone; that leaves four of us, and Nathaniel’s down hard. Cluckoo Chickens and Redhogs are both brutal to catch under the best circumstances. Even if we find them, there’s no guarantee we can actually bring anything back.”

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Bukowski surged to his feet.

“Brutal or not, we’re catching them!” His voice tore through the hollow stillness of the jungle and sent a startled flock of birds exploding from the canopy in a furious, wingbeating rush.

“Seafarm Group’s payout for this contract wasn’t cheap. We go back empty-handed, and we won’t even cover our travel costs!” He stood there heaving with ragged breath, his gaze burning across Jebédiah and Dominique. “You two want to go home with nothing? Want to go home and starve?”

Jebediah went quiet.

Dominique went quiet too.

They didn’t want to go home with nothing; of course, they didn’t.

But they wanted to die out here even less.

The Crackshell Crab swarm had already given them a thorough, brutal education in what this place was capable of.

Nathaniel was out of commission.

Clara and the others were gone.

With just the four of them left, how exactly were they supposed to catch Cluckoo Chickens and Redhogs?

Bukowski seemed to arrive at that same ugly realization on his own.

He went silent for a long moment, and then something vicious and scalding tore out of him. “Ungrateful! Every single one of them, completely ungrateful!”

Jebediah and Dominique both flinched.

“If it weren’t for me, they’d still be digging through trash in the slums!” Bukowski’s voice was a raw, ragged wound of fury and.

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Chapter 495 He Wouldn’t Listen

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bitter hurt “Now that they can actually afford a decent meal, suddenly they’re too good for us!” Jebediah opened his mouth, turned something over behind his teeth, and swallowed it back down,

He wanted to say that Clara left because Bukowski had shielded the man who’d tried to have her killed.

He wanted to say: Nathaniel had already destroyed Tyson once and come after Clara next, and that Bukowski hadn’t seen fit to punish him even slightly, so what exactly did Bukowski expect everyone else to think?

But he didn’t dare to.

Buko had saved his life. Five years ago, on a mission that went catastrophically wrong.

ad walked into an ambush, and it was Bukowski who’d led the charge in and dragged frim out of a pile of bodies.

ebediah had sworn himself to Bukowski completely. He wasn’t leaving, not ever.

had his own version of the same story.

rs back, fresh to the squad and green as new grass, Dominique had taken a near-fatal wound on his very first mission. It owski who’d carried him over ten miles of hostile terrain on his own back until they found help.

ooth owed Bukowski their lives. That debt didn’t just dissolve because things were hard now. That was the whole point of a

matter how fiercely they envied Clara and the others, no matter how much a place like Tycoon Farm called to something deep nd yearning inside them, they couldn’t leave.

Dominique sat with his head bowed, his fingers working absently at the mud beneath him, pressing and releasing without purpose.

He thought about how Tyson had looked back there. Loose. At/ease. The old coiled tension and that ever-present, razor-edged coldness had simply… lifted off him, like a cloak he’d finally been allowed to set down.

Whatever life looked like at Tycoon Farm, it was clearly something worth becoming.

For one unguarded moment, the envy that moved through Dominique was so sharp it nearly hurt. He envied Tyson, and he envied Clara and every single person who’d walked away with them.

But he couldn’t follow.

He owed Bukowski his life.

So did Jebediah.

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Jebediah stared down at Nathaniel’s unconscious form and felt something thick and restless churn inside him, a frustration that had no clean outlet.

This man. This useless, destructive, ruinous man, who’d wrecked Tyson, who’d come for Clara, who was now a deadweight dragging all of them toward the bottom with him.

If not for Nathaniel, Clara people short and bl

But Bukowski

squad wouldn’t have fractured. They wouldn’t be sitting here in the mud, four

had no business attempting.

anyone could do about that.

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Chapter 495 He Wouldn’t Listen

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Bukowski’s fury burned itself out at last, leaving only the rough rasp of his breathing and the oppressive quiet of the jungle. He dropped back down against the tree with a heavy, graceless thud.

“Doesn’t matter how we got here His voice had gone rough and stripped raw. “We can’t go home with nothing. We bring back at least one nest of Cluckoo Chickens. Enough to cover our expenses and break even. That’s the floor.”

Jebediah glanced at Dominique Dominique glanced back. Neither of them spoke.

They didn’t agree. They weren’t going to say so.

Bukowski dug a tube of liquid supplements from his pocket, cracked it open, and knocked it back in one long pull, his face contracting at the cloying, saccharine flood of it.

He dropped the empty tube into the dirt and stared out at the dense wall of jungle ahead, his expression unreadable and very far away.

Jebediah rose to his feet and crossed to Nathaniel, crouching down to take stock of his injuries.

Both arms were broken, the bones not merely cracked but shattered, ground fine as gravel. Even if they healed, they’d never be right again.

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