Teaser Chapter
Zak
The dark is wrong.
It’s not the dark of a room with the lights off, or the dark of a night with no moon. This dark is thick, wet, ancient. It presses against my skin, seeps into my nostrils with the smell of stone and earth and something older.
I try to open my eyes wider in the hope it might help, but it makes no difference. The black is absolute.
I should be afraid. I am afraid. But the fear is muffled, as though wrapped in cotton wool, floating somewhere just out of reach.
They drugged me.
I know this the way I know the weight of my own name, somewhere deep in the fog of my skull.
Whatever they gave me is still swimming through my blood, turning my limbs to lead, my thoughts to syrup.
I can feel my hands. They’re behind my back, wrists bound with something rough that bites into my skin when I try to move.
Rope, maybe. Leather, perhaps. It doesn’t matter.
My fingers twitch, and the effort of that small movement sends exhaustion rolling through me like a wave.
My heart is pounding, I can feel it, a distant drum in my chest, but my body won’t respond.
I can’t run.
I can’t fight.
I can’t even lift my head.
But I can hear.
Voices. Female. Low and unhurried, the way people talk when they’re doing something routine.
Laundry. Cooking. Abduction. I strain to make out the words, but they slide through my mind like water through fingers.
I catch fragments: …the other one first…
and …Eda said… and then something that might be laughter, soft and private.
Then Danny’s voice cuts through the fog.
“—the fuck is going on? Zak? Zak, you there?”
His voice is high, tight, stripped of its usual bravado.
I’ve heard Danny scared before—when a tractor nearly tipped on a slope, when a bull got loose in the yard—but not like this.
This is the fear of a man who’s never been truly helpless, and I know, with a clarity that pierces the drug-haze, that he’s about to find out what that feels like.
“Yeah,” I manage. The word comes out slurred, thick. “Here.”
“Where the fuck is here? I can’t see anything. I can’t, I can’t move my fucking arms. Zak, what the fuck is this?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. Because the darkness is shifting, and suddenly there’s light.
It’s not much. A flame, somewhere behind me, casting long shadows that dance across rough stone walls.
We’re in a cave. The ceiling is low, jagged, glistening with moisture.
The floor beneath me is hard-packed earth, cold against my back.
I turn my head, slow, so slow, my neck muscles screaming, and I see them.
Women.
Three of them. No, four. They’re standing in a loose semicircle near the cave entrance, their faces half-lit by the flame.
They’re dressed in dark, practical clothing, wool and leather, nothing modern.
Their hair is pulled back. Their hands are steady.
They look like they’ve done this a hundred times before.
And they’re all looking at Danny.
Two of them move toward him. One is tall and sharp-featured, like a hawk in human skin. The other is younger, softer, golden hair catching the firelight. They walk with the calm of predators, and Danny is trying to scramble backward, his bound limbs flopping uselessly against the dirt.
“Hey. Hey, what the fuck? Get away from me. Get the fuck away…”
The hawk-faced woman crouches beside him. She doesn’t speak. She just reaches out and grabs the collar of his shirt, and then she drags a knife down and the fabric tears with a sound that echoes off the stone.
Danny screams.
The sound is raw and animal, and it cuts through the drug-haze like a blade. I jerk against my bonds and the rope burns my wrists, and the effort drains what little strength I had. I slump back against the stone, breathing hard, my heart slamming against my ribs.
The red-haired woman is helping now. They’re stripping him.
Methodical. Efficient. Danny’s shirt is gone, and they’re working on his jeans, and he’s still screaming, thrashing, his legs kicking out.
One of the women catches his ankle and holds it still.
Her grip is gentle. Almost kind. That’s the worst part.
“Please,” Danny is sobbing now. “Please, please, I won’t tell anyone, just let me go, I swear to God I won’t…”
The hawk-faced woman shushes him. Actually shushes him, like a mother soothing a child. And then she cuts his jeans right off, and Danny makes a sound I’ve never heard a human being make before.
I look away.
And that’s when I see her.
She’s standing apart from the others, back against the cave wall, arms crossed. She’s tall, taller than the rest, with auburn hair pulled back from a face that’s all sharp angles and shadow. Her eyes are dark, almost black, and they’re fixed on me with an intensity that makes my skin crawl.
She’s been watching me this whole time.
I don’t know how I know this, but I do. While the others were focused on Danny, while I was fighting the drugs and the darkness and my own useless body, she was standing there, watching. Waiting.
I shake my head. It’s all I can do. The movement is small, barely a twitch, but she sees it. Her eyes narrow. Something flickers across her face, amusement maybe, and then it’s gone, replaced by that same flat, predatory calm.
She pushes off the wall.
“Hold up,” one of the other women says. She’s dark-skinned, voluptuous, with a mouth that looks like it’s always on the edge of a smile. “We haven’t drawn yet.”
The tall woman doesn’t stop walking. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a short stick. She holds it up, just for a moment, and then tosses it to the dark-skinned woman.
“Mara,” the woman says, and there’s something in her voice, resentment, maybe, or amusement. “Eda said to draw.”
“Eda said to draw,” the tall woman, Mara, repeats, her voice low and rough like smoke and gravel. “I drew. He’s mine.”
She’s standing over me now.
I crane my neck to look up at her, and the effort makes my head spin.
She’s taller than I thought, lean and corded with muscle.
Her face is not beautiful, it’s too sharp, too hungry for that, but there’s something about her that holds my gaze, something that makes me want to look away and makes it impossible to do so.
“You’re mine,” she says, and this time she’s speaking to me.
I shake my head again. Harder. The movement costs me, sends a wave of nausea rolling through my gut, but I do it anyway.
No. No, I’m not yours. I’m not anyone’s.
She doesn’t seem to care.
She crouches down, and now her face is level with mine, and I can smell her, earth and sweat and something sweet, something I can’t quite name. There’s nothing in her eyes now. No anger. No cruelty. Just a hunger so vast and absolute that it swallows everything else.
“I’m going to take care of you,” she says, and her voice is almost gentle. “And in return you’re going to give me what I need.”
I try to speak. I try to tell her to go fuck herself, to get away from me, to explain what the hell is happening. But my tongue is thick and useless, and all that comes out is a sound that might be a word or might be a groan.
She leans in.
Her mouth finds mine.
It’s not a kiss. A kiss implies something mutual, something wanted. This is an invasion. Her lips are cold, and her tongue is pushing past my teeth, and I can’t close my jaw, I can’t turn away, I can’t do anything except make a noise that sounds like an animal dying.
I try to bite her. I try. My jaw clenches, but she’s already pulling back, and my teeth close on nothing but air.
Then her hands are on my chest.
They move down, slowly, deliberate. She’s not gentle, but she’s not rough, either.
She’s thorough. She touches me like she’s cataloguing every inch of my body, the planes of my chest, the ridges of my ribs, the scars that crisscross my skin.
I’m trying to twist away, but my body won’t cooperate, and her hands are so strong, so sure.
Her fingers find my belt.
I know what’s happening. I know what’s about to happen. And I know, with a certainty that hollows out my chest, that I can’t stop it. I can’t fight. I can’t run. I can’t even fucking scream - my voice is gone, swallowed by the dark and the drugs and the horror of all of it.
Her fingers work the buckle. The leather loosens. I feel the pressure ease around my waist, and then her hand is sliding lower, and…
No.
No, no, no.
I’m fucking hard.
The drugs, the touch, the adrenaline, I don’t know which one is responsible, I don’t know if it matters. All I know is that I’m straining against my jeans, and she can feel it, and her eyes flick up to meet mine, and there’s something in them that looks like triumph.
My mind is screaming. Every rational part of me is recoiling, fighting, trying to claw its way out of this nightmare.
But my body, my body isn’t listening. Isn’t getting the damned message.
Instead, my dick is responding to her touch with a mechanical, chemical obedience that has nothing to do with consent.
She sees the horror in my eyes. I know she does. And she clearly doesn’t care.
“Good,” she murmurs, and her hand closes around me, and I stop breathing.
In the background, Danny is grunting. I can hear him, somewhere in the dark, echoing off the stone. The other women are still working him, their voices low and calm. None of them are watching us. None of them care.
It’s just me and her, and the dark, and the terrible, treacherous heat building in my gut.
I want to die.
I want to kill her.
I want to close my eyes and wake up somewhere else, somewhere this isn’t happening, somewhere I’m still in control of my own fucking body.
But I can’t do any of those things. I can only lie here, bound and helpless, while this woman, this stranger, this predator, touches me like I belong to her.
And that’s the horror. That’s the true horror.
Not the cave, not the bonds, not the drugs, not even the violation itself.
It’s the fact that my body is willing when my mind is screaming no.
It’s the fact that I can’t stop it. It’s the fact that some part of me, some small, shameful, animal part, is giving in.
She leans in again, her mouth brushing my ear as she straddles me and as she sinks down onto me she lets out such a deep satisfied groan.
“You’re going to be my favourite,” she whispers. “I can tell.”
And I believe her.
God help me, I do.
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