Chapter 4

Idon’t look back at Derek. I just can’t. My vision is coming through a tunnel as I’m escorted off the shuttle and outside into the small clearing between the shuttle and the forest. The world is full of sparkling dots and a kaleidoscope of colors. My legs are shaking. It’s only Seb’s firm hold on my arm that keeps me upright, and my ass off the ground.

Little warning bells are going off in my mind, but I’m too busy worrying to work out what they mean.

“Hey!” I’m brought to an abrupt stop, and a big palm closes over the front of my throat. “Breathe, for fuck’s sake. If you pass out on me, Ash will rip me a new one.”

His touch worms its way through the terror that has taken hold of my mind. I breathe, gulping deep breaths until the sparkling dots recede.

“There we go.” His lips tug up. He’s a monster. Shouldn’t monsters be ugly? This one’s handsome, with blue eyes that seem somehow sensitive yet cold, all at once.

I shiver. It ripples through my whole body. This is happening. This is real. I blink, bringing reality back into painful focus. I take in the crowd around us, the dozens of men in tactical combat gear, the women… and horses.

The horses really throw me. I just stare at them.

“Easy way to get around,” Seb explains, his lips tugging up.

“Move out!”

“Our master has spoken.” Seb winks at me, directing me to the tree line where the horses are tethered. He lifts me into the saddle and then mounts up behind me. I’ve never been on a horse, and the movement beneath me is unsettling.

“You’ll get used to it,” he says. “Eventually. Chances are, once we get you back, you won’t need to ride one again. Although I highly recommend it. It does amazing things to a woman’s glutes and, you know, builds stamina useful for certain activities.” His arms wrap around my waist and he holds the reins before me; his body pressed up against mine from behind. It doesn’t feel like there’s enough room for two people here, but I’m comparatively small compared to him, and, somehow, we fit.

My mind is disconnecting from what’s happening. Shock. The realization that this is my body’s coping mechanism gives me something else to think about rather than what might be coming next.

To my left, I see Ash striding over to a horse. A man is waiting beside it, with one of the girls from the table opposite me in the shuttle… the one with the long blonde hair and the curvy figure. She smiles tentatively up at Ash. He smiles back. And then he picks her up and drops her into the saddle before mounting behind her.

My stomach tightens. I can’t even begin to explain the strange emotions that rush through me.

More people are mounting all around us, nudging their horses forward in a bunch beside a path into the forest.

A loud whirr goes up behind us. I glance back to see the open carriage doors slide shut. There’s a flicker, and then a blue glow snaps around the shuttle—the force field. It glides forward, sliding almost silently away.

It is leaving, taking Derek, and all the others that weren’t picked, onward to Chancely.

My gaze shifts back to Ash, the man with the obsidian eyes, and something equally dark takes root inside me. Abandoned. They’ve gone, leaving us to our fate. I won’t be going back ever. At least, those articles I read suggested nobody ever did. I’m never going to visit my mom and dad again. I’ll never be able to get the box down out of the attic and run my fingers over that smooth lump of volcanic rock my grandpa gave to me. All that is special to me—the little keepsakes, my old diaries, the teddy bear I had when I was five, the heart-shaped earrings my mother gave me for my twenty-first, my favorite playlist, my friends, and the man I was supposed to marry—is gone.

Irrevocably.

And all the while, I’m staring at him, the monster, the one who forced me to put my thumb to the plate, the one who appears to be in charge, the one who handed me off to Seb and told him I was a flight risk.

But he was right, wasn’t he? Because I don’t belong here. I didn’t hope to be taken. This isn’t something I chose. I’m not someone seeking to escape my old life, nor am I a thrill seeker. I don’t know what went wrong and why my light came up green, but I have a terrible feeling that Derek expected it to. And that, for all his bravado, he never expected us to be raided.

Now, though, as I feel the body of a man unknown to me pressed intimately close, and as the horse moves beneath us, it’s strange how burdenless I feel. I’m not Isla anymore; instead, I’m a nobody divorced from all of my past. The baggage of those past relationships that seemed so important a few hours ago has been rendered as insignificant as a single snowflake in the midst of a blizzard. I am unrealized matter, about to be molded and made into something new.

Only, I’m not the one who is going to be remaking me, and I have no choice in any of what comes next.

I feel so uneducated, so out of my depth that, really, it’s not funny. I don’t know the first thing about this place, nor its people. I only looked it up on the internet a few days ago, and that was little more than a cursory browse.

My intuition tells me that no amount of research could have prepared me for what will unfold.

The horse dances beneath us, bringing me back to the present.

I can’t take my eyes off Ash, the man who slammed my fiancé’s face into the table without missing a beat. Who didn’t even seem troubled by it.

Why can’t I take my eyes off of him? And why did it fucking sting so much when he passed me off to Seb?

My state of mind is chaotic. Let it go,I tell myself.