Chapter Fifty-One
I HEARD THE men talking about taking me to some isolated bunker.
That alone told me everything I needed to know.
If this was really about “bringing me home,” about “saving my soul” or whatever pretty lie they liked to paint over their violence, they would’ve marched me right through that front door like a ceremony. A spectacle. A lesson. They would’ve wanted me to see the walls and feel the trap closing.
Behind the house, tucked where the road couldn’t see, sat a dark SUV with tinted windows and mud caked up the sides. The kind of vehicle that didn’t look out of place in the woods because it was made for disappearing into them.
A hand clamped my arm. Another shoved hard between my shoulder blades. I stumbled, caught myself, and lifted my chin anyway. Fear was an easy thing to smell. They lived off it. If I gave them that, even for a second, they’d treat it like permission.
The back door yanked open, and I was thrown inside.
The interior was hot and stale, the air thick with old leather, sweat, and something sour underneath. Not rot. Not smoke. Something like… desperation that had soaked into the seams and never left. The floor mats were gritty, like this thing had hauled more than one secret through the woods.
Hands grabbed my wrists and wrenched them behind me before I could even shift my weight. I twisted, tried to get leverage, tried to get an elbow up, but the angle was wrong and the space was too tight.
A zip tie cinched down.
Plastic bit into my skin.
I didn’t jerk. I didn’t gasp. I didn’t give them anything pretty to watch.
I tested the tie once, a small twist of my wrists, just enough to feel where it would cut if I fought it too hard. Cheap plastic. Not a chain. Not unbreakable. Not right now, not with brute force, but later? Later was a word I could use.
I tucked that knowledge away.
Zach climbed in beside me.
Not Jasper. Not the other Shepherds.
Zach.
He shut the door and the last sliver of outside light vanished. The SUV went dim, lit only by the dashboard glow bleeding through from the front. My eyes adjusted fast. Survival had trained them to.
Zach sat too close, knees nearly touching mine, shoulders squared like he was trying to look calm on purpose. Like he was playing a role and needed me to believe he belonged in it.
The engine started.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires, loud in the enclosed space. The SUV rocked as it rolled forward, and the house disappeared behind us like it had never existed at all.
I stared straight ahead and made my body go still. Still didn’t mean weak. Still meant controlled. Still meant I got to choose what I spent my strength on.
The vehicle turned. Another turn. The suspension shifted with a bump and my shoulder knocked the door. I counted automatically.
Left. Right. Long curve. Short one.
If I survived this, those details mattered. And I planned on surviving.
Zach shifted beside me, a faint rustle of fabric. Close enough that I could feel the heat of him. Close enough that the betrayal had a pulse.
“You’re angry,” he said quietly, like he was commenting on the weather.
I let my gaze drift to him, slow and deliberate. “I’ve been kidnapped.”
He flinched. Not dramatic. Just enough to tell me some part of him still knew the words were wrong.
“We wouldn’t call it that,” he said.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” I shot back. “You people don’t call anything what it is. It’s always a prayer and a lesson and a blessing. That’s how you sleep.”
His jaw tightened. “You wandered,” he said. “You’re confused.”
A laugh tore out of me, bitter and ugly. “I didn’t wander. I drove to the address you sent, because you dangled children in front of me like bait. And I wasn’t confused when you wrapped your arms around me so Jasper could step out of the shadows.”
Silence thickened, filling the SUV with something heavy. The road noise was a steady noise beneath it, tires singing against pavement like a warning that never changed pitch.
Zach stared ahead, hands clasped together between his knees, knuckles pale. “I didn’t lie when I said I thought about you,” he said after a moment. “Every night.”
I turned my head slowly, meeting his eyes in the dim. “Save it.”
His throat bobbed. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” I said. “I don’t care what you thought. I care what you did.”
He looked like he wanted to argue, then decided not to. Or maybe he was waiting for the part where I softened. Where I remembered teenage promises and let him stand in them like shelter.
He didn’t know me anymore.
He never really did.
“You were losing your way,” he said instead. “The world you ran to is violent. Immoral.”
I let that sit for half a second just so it could rot in the air between us.
“Immoral,” I repeated. “Like burning a girl’s hands in front of a crowd? Like handing her to a man twice her age to teach her obedience? Like branding her. Like taking her face because she said no?”
He swallowed.
“Being abused at the hands of Shepherds,” I said, voice steady. “What do you call that?”
He exhaled through his nose, slow. “You were defiant, Lark.”
There it was. Not concern. Not regret. A complaint.
“That’s why you were given to Jasper,” he continued. “To teach you control.”
Cold slid through my ribs, clean and pointed, but my posture didn’t change. My hands were bound, but my spine was mine.
My eyes widened anyway, because disbelief is not weakness. It’s clarity. “You knew,” I said. “You knew I’d been given to him.”
His mouth tightened, frustration flickering across his face like he hated being dragged into the truth. “You were lost to me,” he said. “I couldn’t help you then.”
“You didn’t try,” I snapped.
His eyes flashed. “You don’t know what I did.”
“I know what you didn’t do,” I shot back.
He stared at me, and for a second I saw the boy in him, the one who’d been young and scared and hungry for approval. Then it was gone, covered by the Shepherd mask he wore like armor.
“But now,” he said, voice gentler, “Jasper has agreed to share you with me if I helped him. If I proved my loyalty. We can be together again.”
My stomach twisted, disgust rising so fast it almost made me gag.
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked.
His face hardened. “Don’t speak like that.”
I barked a laugh. “Don’t speak like what? Like I’m a human being?”
“That tone,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it. Like he truly believed tone was the problem. “That defiance. That’s why you need discipline. Julie, my vessel, has agreed to guide you.”
I stared at him, trying to make his words rearrange into something that didn’t make my skin crawl. They didn’t. “You have a wife,” I said, each word clipped.
He lifted his chin. “A vessel.”
“And she’s agreeing to all this?” I pushed. “She’s fine with you dragging women into the woods and ‘sharing’ them like property?”
“Of course,” he said, like it was obvious. Like I was the one being difficult. “As a Shepherd, I can have as many vessels as I want.”
The sickness in me settled into something hotter, something steadier. “You make me sick.”
His jaw clenched. “You’ll change your mind once you’re tamed.”
There it was again. Not love. Not longing. Ownership.
The SUV slowed. My body registered it before my brain did, the forward pull easing, the tires shifting onto something rougher. Gravel again. The vehicle rocked through a rut and my shoulder hit the door. We stopped, and a door opened up front, and cold air spilled inside.
Jasper’s voice drifted back, pleased. “She causing trouble?”
Zach’s eyes flicked to me, warning. Not concern. A reminder. “No,” he said.
I held Zach’s gaze and let my expression go flat. If he wanted quiet, I’d give him quiet with teeth in it.
The back door opened.
Hands grabbed my arm and yanked me out. My feet hit the ground unevenly and I caught myself, refusing to stumble. The woods pressed close, trees stacked thick, darkness layered between trunks. The air smelled like damp earth and pine and the faint metallic edge of machinery somewhere nearby.
Not a house. Not a porch. Not a place anyone would casually wander into. They marched me into the trees. Zach on one side. Jasper on the other. Each of them held an arm like I was a child they feared might bolt. Like they didn’t trust the zip tie. Like they knew I would try anyway.
“Did you enjoy your freedom?” Jasper asked, almost polite.
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t have to.
He smiled anyway, amused by my silence like it was a game. “You always did have a dramatic streak,” he went on. “But I warned you. The Flame doesn’t release what belongs to it.”
“I don’t belong to you,” I snarled.
He moved fast, fingers snapping around my chin and forcing my face up. His grip wasn’t frantic. It was practiced. Casual. Because he’d done it a thousand times and never once questioned why.
“You were shaped by me,” he said calmly. “Marked. Broken down and rebuilt. You don’t undo that by running into the arms of bikers and pretending at morality.”
My pulse hammered, but I didn’t look away. Not because I was brave for the sake of being brave. Because looking away would be a gift, and I refused to give him one.
“Your friend was loud,” Jasper continued, like he was reminiscing over a drink. “Messy. Brave, though. I’ll give her that. I’m almost sorry she escaped. She would’ve been fun to break.”
My stomach clenched, anger flaring so hot it nearly blurred my vision. “She won’t stop,” I said. “She’ll bring them.”
Jasper’s thumb traced the edge of my mouth, slow and deliberate, the kind of touch meant to make my skin crawl. He wanted me to flinch. He wanted me to be small, but I kept my face still.
“They will never find you,” he said.
The words were meant to land like a verdict.
I let them land, then filed them away the way I’d filed the turns in the road.
Never find you meant they thought they’d chosen a place that didn’t exist on any map anyone used. It meant they were confident. It meant they were sloppy enough to believe confidence was the same as safety.
We kept walking.
The woods stretched on, dark and swallowing, sound dampened by moss and pine needles. Every few steps, I marked something. A fallen log. A split trunk. The way the ground dipped, then rose. A distant mechanical whine that came and went like a heartbeat.
They were taking me somewhere built to stay hidden.
Somewhere that had been used before.
My wrists burned. The zip tie cut deeper with each movement. I rolled my shoulders subtly, shifting the pressure so it wouldn’t slice the same spot raw. Pain was information. Pain was something to manage.
Zach’s grip tightened once when I adjusted my stride.
I looked at him. “You scared I’ll run?”
His mouth twitched like he wanted to say no. He didn’t, and that told me enough too.
Jasper’s smile widened like he enjoyed the tension. Like he fed on it. “You’re still fighting,” he murmured, almost appreciative. “That fire. That’s what made you so worth the work.”
I leaned slightly into his space, just enough to make him register I wasn’t shrinking. “I’m not yours to work on.”
He laughed, soft. “I missed you, Lark.”
We walked deeper.
The trees crowded tighter. The air turned colder. Somewhere ahead, I heard metal on metal, a faint clang that didn’t belong to the woods. A gate, maybe. A door. A lock. Something manmade waiting inside all that dark.
My gut spoke up again, quiet but certain.
Someone was coming. Because Briar didn’t run to be free. She ran to bring hell back with her. And the men who loved her, and one who still possibly loves me, a family, didn’t do helpless. They did action. They did violence when it was earned.
I drew a slow breath through my nose and kept my steps even. Survival wasn’t loud, it was patient. Calculated. Stubborn. And I was very good at it.
Someone was coming, and if they didn’t get here in time, I would find a way to survive and escape. I just had to stay alive long enough to make that choice.