Chapter 3
M y fingers tightened on the chains, my mind working desperately.
I wondered if I could possibly slip between the bars nearest the door and escape.
It was dangerous, but once we left the city escape would be virtually impossible.
Experimentally, I moved part of my body to see if I could fit through the gap. I had always been small.
I might be able to do it.
The other option was being my brother’s whore.
So my desperate plan had to work.
The best time to try would be when the truck stopped in heavy traffic.
Occasionally, other Congregations would try to steal the concubines that had been collected for themselves. Though my former Congregation looked bigger and more prosperous now, this was obviously still a possibility, because they were following closely on their motorcycles, my brother in the front, his hands tight on the handlebars.
I turned away and moved to the opposite end of our cage. My hands were slick as I gripped the bars.
The street light was about to turn red. It was now or never.
“Don’t follow me,” I hissed in desperation at the other women, as I sucked in my breath to escape between the gap.
Rhyder wasn’t going to kill me, but there were no guarantees about the other men.
“I’m getting out of here,” one brunette wailed.
I turned back to look at her. “Do not! They are cruel men and you will get beat or worse.”
She didn’t look convinced, crowding closer to me, and I didn’t know if I could blame her. There were so many wild stories about what happened to the women kidnapped to serve as settlement whores. But the reality was far worse. Only a small percentage of them ever lived through the year.
I waited tensely for the truck to stop, then I squeezed myself desperately through the tiny gap, falling painfully to my knees as I tumbled off the side. Then I lurched to my feet and took off.
The brunette was heading after me, but she was bigger and it took her longer to squeeze through the gap.
I bolted as fast as I could down a side street, and I heard my brother get off his bike, that earsplitting crash that meant he had leapt off it without even stopping.
I had heard it once before, when we were riding bikes and I had slid off the road and into a ditch that was a little too close to a steep drop into a river for Rhyder. He had jumped, completely heedless of his bike as it smashed loudly into a guardrail, snatching me up before I had barely started to slide down the hill.
There was someone else back there, too, grabbing the brunette woman, and I heard the sound of a blow, and then a whimper.
“Get your skirt up if you want to get out of the cart,” someone else ordered.
I breathed a sigh of relief to hear her apparently obey.
Then I heard the sound of slick cocks on skin, but I wasn’t stopping to see any more.
There were heavy footfalls behind me.
I desperately searched each bike rack I passed see if any bikes were unsecured, but without luck until the fourth or fifth one.
“Temperance, stop!” I heard Rhyder roar.
In the cult disobeying the direct order of any adult male was a mortal sin.
That went double for any Deacon or Elder.
Disobeying a direct order could carry a sentence of death
In practice, it usually meant a beating, but you took your life in your hands every time you disobeyed a man.
But my brother had never raised a hand in anger to me in his entire life.
I kept running, and the next bike rack miraculously had an unsecured bike.
“Stop!” Rhyder ordered again.
But I grabbed the bike, jamming my pussy painfully against the seat, and began to peddle away.
I biked as fast as I could. After a few years in the city it was either a bike or the bus, and I was pretty fast. I pedaled until I felt like my lungs would burst, breaking for the main road I knew would take me to my apartment.
Oh, Allfather if I could only not make a stupid mistake in my panic!
I was lucky that I didn’t have a car, so I knew this part of the city very well.
Rhyder was still calling behind me, his feet pounding harder on the pavement.
“Temperance! Godsdamnit, Temperanc e ! Come back!”
I couldn’t risk looking back, not even when I heard the note of raw pain and anguish in his voice.
Please
I pedaled still faster, my hands clenched tight on the handlebars, wishing I could cover my ears.
The last thing I heard before I went past a noisy construction site was,
I won’t stop
Fuck. Rhyder might be built like a goddamn refrigerator, but he was also smart and when he thought he was doing what was right, he was absolutely ruthless and inflexible.
Where the fuck should I go?
Where would I be safe?
Where in the entire goddamn city would I be safe from my brother?
For a moment, I thought that maybe I was overreacting. Maybe all these fears were unfounded. After all, Rhyder didn’t know my new name. He didn’t know where I lived.
It was all very logical. But I knew my twin. And I knew he’d burn the whole goddamn city down to find me.
In a cult full of zealots, Rhyder is the most zealous one of all, a holy warrior from childhood, inflexible, stern, convinced of his own righteousness.
Ever since I could remember, his same refrain had run through me like the beat of a drum
You were made for me
Made for me
Mine
I gave a little shiver and headed to my apartment.
Once I made it to my apartment complex, an unimpressive and probably illegally built collection of buildings stacked on top of and beside each other, next to a couple of overflowing dumpsters, I stowed the stolen bike guiltily and hurried into my small apartment, looking nervously around me as if my brother could have somehow gotten here before me. I tried to force my breath to slow down.
The blinking light of a community warning board caught my eye.
STAY CALM
DO NOT APPROACH THEM
IF APPROACHED, STAY SUBMISSIVE
It had a blurry picture of some Congregants on their motorcycles below the warnings.
As I hurried inside, my cellphone buzzed. It was Craig.
Come over early
You can give me a bj before my grandma gets here
I gritted my teeth and ignored the message.
Because I had grown up in the Congregation, I had had to learn some painful lessons about how men in the cities sometimes behaved. Craig’s inability to decide on if he actually wanted to date me had been a sore spot during the majority of our vaguely-defined situationship, but now that we were actually boyfriend and girlfriend, I felt apathetic.
Sex in general was not as exciting as I had hoped from the dire pronouncements from our Prophet growing up. It wasn’t that it was unpleasant, exactly.
More like incredibly boring and overrated.
Craig was talking about moving in together at some indeterminate date in the future, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care anymore. Maybe we should break up.
That was what you were supposed to do in the cities if you were bored of your boyfriend, right? I sighed. Sometimes I thought I would never get the hang of living here.
In the Congregation, there was no concept of “breaking up.” The idea of ever being apart from Rhyder had never occurred to me growing up.
And I was fucking sure it had never occurred to him .
I hopped in the shower, my hands trembling as I washed the skin of my throat, sore from where Eli had choked me.
I tried to shake the feeling of my brother’s fingers from my pussy. It was just that he was so big that it felt like his fingers had set every square inch of my cunt on fire, that they seemed to stroke and press spots I hadn’t even known about myself.
My asshole stung from where Rhyder had shoved his fingers inside, and my nipples tightened with the memory.
I hated that bastard
When I was out, I brushed my long hair slowly in front of the mirror. Did black really suit me? Maybe not, I thought as I looked at my pale little face and blue eyes, the jet-black of my hair standing out starkly against my skin.
But I looked different than I had when I left the cult. That was the important thing.
I wasn’t going to try to be fancy, but I changed my mind and put on a velvety scarlet red dress, worn off the shoulder with long sleeves and a tight skirt.
There. Now no one could possibly mistake me for a Congregant woman.
My shoulders looked thin, my skin pale. It was a big contrast to my brother’s strong, robust body and tanned healthy skin.
In the city food scarcity was common, and there was no one to ensure that I got the most flavorful cuts of meat or bring me a plump bird when I wanted something strengthening for soup.
I got dressed and decided to take an Uber over, since I didn’t want to risk being seen on the streets.
For the last six years, I had wondered if Rhyder still felt the same way, and now I had my answer.
If he caught me, I didn’t think I’d get another chance to escape.
Craig’s parents were well-off, his father working for the city government, and they lived in a gated community with high hedges that were supposed to shield them from less-comfortable city dwellers and the frequent Congregation raids. Hopefully I’d be inconspicuous there. Craig would probably want me to spend the night since he’d be too drunk to drive me home.
By the time I arrived, the party was about to begin. Craig met me in his parent’s driveway. He was 26, the same age as me, a tall man with black hair in perfect gelled curls and wire-rimmed glasses. He worked in finance and it looked like he had just come here from work since he was still wearing a suit and tie.
“What took you so long?” he complained. “My grandma’s already here. No time even for a handy. God, you’re so slow sometimes, Thérèse. At least you’re wearing a dress. It would be nice to see a little more of your tits, though.”
I shifted uncomfortably, trying to pull up the top of my red dress, so I looked presentable despite what he said.
“I don’t want my breasts falling out in front of your grandma,” I said. I felt irritable and on edge, scanning the crowd of visitors as if for some reason Rhyder would be here.
“Falling out?” Craig asked, laughing heartily at his own joke. “Fat chance of that.”
I had put on a little mascara and eyeliner even though my hands were shaking badly, so I felt even more annoyed by his lack of appreciation, but I followed him onto the long expanse of jeweled green grass and into his parents’ beautiful glass greenhouse. Craig grabbed a couple glasses of wine from the servers.
“God, I hope this catering company is good,” he said. “My father paid a lot for them. . .”
He began to break down the party expenses for his aunt and I and my attention wandered.
Had he always been this motherfucking boring?
Or was I just so desperate for any attention that I had grasped at even the tiniest sliver of connection? My mandatory deprogramming sessions had been effective in convincing me that I would be seen as a freak by everyone who knew I had grown up in the Congregation.
Sometimes even the strict deprogramming would flicker in and out, and I’d feel curiously naked in a sundress and have a sudden wild urge to wear my head covering again.
But they were absolutely forbidden in the cities and you could get harassed or physically harmed by wearing one.
I tightened my hand on my wine glass.
Just another boring party at his parents’ house.
Conversation drifted to the same topics as always.
What changes would Ronan make to the decades-old peace agreements with the cities?
Would he ask for more tribute? He already owned or had control over the richest, most fertile lands and streams in the PNW. The cities only had food if he allowed it, and his father had taken varying amounts of tribute. Some years the tribute had been enough to almost bankrupt the city. But so far, Ronan had not made any new demands.
But no one ever knew what the Congregants were thinking.
Craig moved to grab another glass of wine. He had obviously been drinking before I got there.
I was just taking another sip of my glass, thinking this fancy wine tasted like shit, when I heard a noise at their garden gate.
Heads started craning toward the noise.
My breath seemed to freeze in my chest, sending spikes of panic through my body.
It was Rhyder and his men, my brother pushing the heavy gate open with easy, dangerous power.
With his big body, towering over every other man there, taller, broader than every other man there, he was unmistakable.
Rhyder strode up to one of the guards with his easy, casual arrogance. The guards were only there to keep other Unsaved out. They would never dare to try to keep a Congregant out.
“I’m looking for a woman,” he said.
That voice. Low, gravelly. That thread of possessive power in it. My spine turned to liquid, my legs to jelly.
“Who are you looking for?” the guard asked, his head bowed submissively.
“My sister,” Rhyder replied. “You cannot miss her. Dark hair, blue eyes, tiny little thing.”
His eyes began to roam around, flicking past all the other guests.
How did he find me here?
“Step aside,” Rhyder warned the guests, his voice like steel, and I tried to move inconspicuously behind Craig’s aunt.
I could feel people start to look at me.
I had black hair and blue eyes.
I was small.
My brain was spinning.
Some of Rhyder’s men, the men from my old Congregation, started going through the guests, pulling people impatiently aside.
To find a tiny, dark-haired, blue-eyed woman.
What the fuck should I do?
I tried to force my breath to slow down, remain calm. Maybe I could slip off my high heels and back away, somehow escape his notice and hide somewhere until he left?
Then I saw someone point toward the greenhouse and Rhyder’s head whipped around.
His sharp eyes flicked without interest past the other guests, then zeroed in on me.
My brother immediately began to stalk toward me, tall and menacing, shoving aside unfortunate guests who happened to be in his way, his eyes never leaving mine.
I felt the shiver of fear that went through them then.
“Is there an exit?” I cried, turning to Craig.
But his eyes were already dead and empty, filled with a weak cringing fear of the man stalking with chilling menace toward us.
“Thérèse. . .my boyfriend said, his hand on my arm, dragging me in front of the glass door.
“Here she is!” he called. “Don’t hurt us.”
“Stop!” I hissed, struggling in his grip, and his hand bit down on my arms.
“Get your hands off her!” Rhyder barked angrily.
My brother’s work pants, fitting perfectly across his hips and strong thighs, only emphasized his fluid predator’s walk.
“Take her, holy warrior,” Craig said gratingly, bowing his head low as the men in the cities are taught to do around the Congregants. “Do what you want with her.”
Panic surging through me, I kicked at his shins as hard as I could, Craig desperately trying to hold onto me.
With my other hand, I scrabbled desperately in my bag, my fingers closing on the sharp blade of a nail file.
I brought it out and jammed it into Craig’s side, making him grunt in pain.
He turned, his face filled with anger and panic.
“Little bitch!”
“Get her out the fucking door,” his father ordered.
Rhyder was only a few strides away now.
“Keep your hands fucking off her or I’ll kill you,” he threatened, even as blood seeped out from between Craig’s hands where I had stabbed him.
But that was my brother all over.
I turned and bolted the door, then I drove the sharp blade of the nail file as hard as I could directly into the glass.
“Stop,” I warned Rhyder as pieces of glass began to flake off around my blade. “Don’t come any closer or you’ll hurt me.”