Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 150546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 753(@200wpm)___ 602(@250wpm)___ 502(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 753(@200wpm)___ 602(@250wpm)___ 502(@300wpm)
I swallow but my saliva almost recoils. This is not new to me. I’m aware of this life and what we do. Do I? Or is there something I’m missing?
“Kneel,” War commands and she quickly falls to her knees, her hands behind her back.
His fingers curl around her chin, tilting her face up to the sky, but his words are for us. “You’re all in this world now, not just on the outskirts of it, so here’s the first thing you’re going to learn.”
He stands from his spot, disregarding the girl. “Our enemies try to infiltrate every week. Some more than others. We never know when it’s going to happen. We deal with the threat, and then bring whoever is with them back here to do with as we please. It feeds, fuels, and satiates each of us.” He grinds his teeth. “After we’ve killed the ones we do, we fuck up the ones we don’t and send them back to where they came from, broken enough that they will have to put them down themselves.”
I cross my arms in front of myself. “Seems a little vile.”
Vaden holds my stare. “Maybe. But this is how we handle our enemies now.”
“Dad knows about this?” I ask, gesturing around the torture garden. “I find it hard to believe that they’d sign off on it since it’s so messy.”
“They know.” Priest shifts around War. “They know because this is how they’ve helped me. Our enemies are our enemies, Halen. This lot?” He jerks his head to the eight. “Are part of a crew called the Bakers. They weren’t too happy about us coming back to Riverside.”
White noise pierces my ears. I step backward but trip over my foot, landing against Stella.
Her hands are on my cheeks, eyes pinned to mine. “You’re okay.”
I nod, swallowing and turning back to War.
War jerks his hand over the stake that the girl came from. “Go.” She crawls back, cutting her hands on the sharp stones. Her head hangs low enough for her long hair to sprawl over her shoulders. She’s beautiful. It’s a shame that kind of beauty isn’t the kind the world needs more of.
My drink of choice was betrayal.
And I stayed drunk on it for fourteen days…
Silent tears rolled down the contours of my face. I was tired of crying. The room smelled of burnt citrus, and every time I tried to move my legs, they’d ache. He’d left kisses in the form of bruises up and down my inner thigh. The kind that I knew was a brutal form of punishment.
The kind of punishment that digs its claws into your bones and rots like a piece of meat.
The mattress above me creaked as she moved. Her sobs became more frantic as the days passed. I couldn’t. I couldn’t allow myself to feel or I’d feel too much. I waited for—I didn’t know how long. Hours didn’t exist here. Locked in a time warp that seems to loop.
Morning, we wake. Night, we sleep. That was all.
I rolled onto my side, tucking my hand beneath my pillow. My body vibrated with unease. I needed to get out. To run. Holding my breath, I pulled back the covers and tiptoed across the floor, leaning down to shake him awake.
“Get up!”
He jolted, spinning around to face me. “Now? Again? We tried. They caught us, Halen. Go to sleep. I don’t much feel like getting punished tonight.” He dragged his blanket back over his body but I grabbed his shoulder, forcing him onto his back and glaring down at him.
“Get. Up. Now.”
His eyes turned to slits from below. “No! My back is still sore from the last time. Fuck. I won’t survive it again.”
I wanted to tell him that was the point. To not survive. Maybe it was the selfish part of me, not wanting to leave him behind.
“What’s going on?” a sleepy voice mused from behind me. “Halen! Again?”
I turned over my shoulder slightly, not enough to see her. “I’ll—I don’t know!”
He breathed out a sigh, pushing the blanket off his body. “Fuck.”
Leaving him to get out of bed, I’d crossed to the other side of the room like a thief in the night. “Are you coming?”
Two lines formed between her brows as she searched my eyes. “I don’t know, Halen, I think they’ll really kill us this time.”
“And if we stay here—” I made sure to pointedly glare at both of them. One on the top bunk of my bed, the other on the top of his. “—we will for sure die.”
“I thought you didn’t care about that,” he snapped from behind me, and God I wanted to fucking kill him myself.
My jaw clenched. “I will not leave you behind because you are so fucking stubborn. Get up.”
“And the others?” a soft voice drifted from above my bed.