Chapter 59

Chapter 59: Chapter 59

Ingrid stared at him in disbelief. For a few seconds, she couldn’t even find the words to respond, partly because she couldn’t believe he was serious and partly because her exhaustion had left her with very little patience. Then her expression hardened, and she looked directly into his eyes.

"You..." She started, her voice a bit scratchy, "Are you trying to accuse us of working with the zombies?" she asked.

Jowe’s grip on his rifle remained steady. "What if I am?"

For a moment, Ingrid simply stared at him. Then she let out a short, disbelieving laugh, shaking her head. She couldn’t believe the absurdity of what she was hearing. She slowly pushed herself upright with Lysander’s help, although her legs still felt weak and her entire body ached from the chase. Lysander kept an arm around her waist, supporting her weight while watching Jowe with a dangerous look in his purple eyes.

"Listen carefully, Dart, or whatever you want people to call you," Ingrid said, her voice now completely devoid of warmth. "I couldn’t care less about your stuck-up attitude or your need to act like the smartest person in every room. You can be rude, arrogant, and unpleasant to your heart’s content, and I won’t lose a second of sleep over it. But accusing me of working with zombies is a different matter entirely, and I won’t let you throw that accusation at me simply because you can’t make sense of the situation."

Jowe opened his mouth, but Ingrid raised her hand sharply.

"Shut up and listen to me! You asked me a question, so now you’re going to hear my answer without interrupting. If you’re really as intelligent as you seem to believe, then use that brain of yours to think carefully before pointing a gun at people who have done nothing to you." Her eyes were cold as she looked at him, there was no trace of the frightened woman who had stumbled to the ground moments earlier.

"You think we conveniently escaped a place your guild was ordered to destroy? Do you honestly believe that anyone who wanted to cooperate with zombies would have spent the last several minutes running for their lives, climbing trees, and nearly getting impaled by flying branches?"

She took a painful breath, but she refused to look away from him. "A few days ago, Lysander and I were attacked by people from our village. It was simply because I managed to sell some goods to someone from the Merchant Guild. If you really want to know why I was able to escape, it was because I found out that the village would be destroyed the day I supplied herbs to the Merchant Guild. Anyone who’s truly smart would have been able to determine what was really happening." Ingrid added in the last sentence before Jowe could add anything.

"Lysander and I were nearly killed during that attack, and when I finally woke up, I had been unconscious for five days. My wounds haven’t even healed properly, and my companion is so badly injured that he can barely stand, yet he carried me through that forest while a giant zombie chased us." Her voice grew sharper with every word, and her fingers curled tightly at her sides. "We didn’t lead that monster here on purpose. We ran in this direction because we were trying to survive, and when we finally found people who could help us, we thought we were safe."

Ingrid gestured toward the dead Evolved One lying in the clearing. "Look at that thing! Does it look like something we could control? If we were working with it, why would we risk our lives escaping it? Why would Lysander keep putting himself in danger to protect me when he could barely move without reopening his wounds? And why would we bring a creature like that toward a group of armed hunters who could kill it?" She shook her head, her expression full of disgust. "Your suspicions don’t even make sense. You decided that we must be guilty simply because our situation is inconvenient for you, and now you’re using your weapons to force us to explain ourselves."

Jowe’s jaw tightened, but Ingrid didn’t give him a chance to speak.

"I don’t care how long you’ve trained with the Hunter’s Guild, and I don’t care how many zombies you’ve killed. Experience is useless if you refuse to think beyond your own assumptions. You saw a group of exhausted people who had barely survived an attack, and instead of asking what happened or checking whether we were injured, you immediately decided we were enemies." Her gaze moved briefly to the other hunters pointing their weapons at them before returning to Jowe. "If every hunter in this guild is as cynical and foolish as you, then sooner or later, you’ll get innocent people killed while wasting your time hunting imaginary enemies."

The clearing fell silent.

Even the foxes seemed stunned by how fiercely Ingrid had spoken, and Freya slowly lifted her head from Jowe’s shoulder to look at her with renewed interest. Jowe’s expression had become unreadable, although the tension in his jaw suggested that her words had struck a nerve.

Ingrid, however, no longer cared whether she had offended him. She was exhausted, and furious, and after everything she had endured, she had no intention of begging a man with a gun to treat her like a human being.

She leaned more heavily against Lysander when her legs threatened to give out again, but she kept her chin raised. If Jowe wanted to investigate them, he could ask questions and look for evidence instead of threatening people who had nearly died. She had survived the zombie attack, the five-day coma, and the terrifying chase through the forest, and she wasn’t about to let an arrogant hunter make her feel guilty for surviving.

"Now, are you going to lower that weapon and speak to us like a reasonable person, or are you going to keep proving my point?"

"You...!"

"Lower your weapon, Jowe."