Chapter 6

I’d thought I was exhausted when we stopped the first time, but that pales into insignificance compared to how I feel as the light begins to fade. We’ve been so enclosed by forest that I’ve not been paying attention to anything regarding our location—it’s just been one forest path after another. I got the impression we might be sleeping in the forest. Or maybe we’ll arrive at our final destination, wherever that might be.

The way they rely on horses is at odds with their high-tech combat gear, yet they’re familiar with the animals, and confident riders, which tells me they do so often enough.

My speculating is brought to an end when a huge concrete construction appears ahead of us, the outer walls wedged in between the trees.

I’m exhausted. I’ve drunk some water, but nowhere near enough. I’ve consumed the first ration pack, and then another one, but it still feels like somebody has carved a hole out of my belly.

Despite all that, at the same time, I don’t want to stop. The boxy, utilitarian building has no visible windows, only a wide double door, and signifies a culmination to the journey that I don’t want to reach.

Seb helps me down from the horse. My legs cramp and refuse to bear my weight. I’m in so much pain that I can’t even think straight, and I burst into great gut-wracking sobs that shatter me and rob me of thought and breath.

“Hey,” he says, dragging me into his arms, wrapping me up, hugging me, and that makes me cry even harder.

Why is he hugging me? He’s a monster. Why can’t he just continue to act like one? Why can’t he be consistent?

I’m destroyed. Maybe it’s the emotional toll, the fear, and the memories of violence, as much as the many hours on horseback. I’m aware of people moving around us, of conversations. I’m not the only one crying, and they all have different tones.

Too caught up in my misery, my intellect struggles to stretch beyond the circle of Seb’s arms. All I can sense is that, on our periphery, our number has swollen as people emerge from the building and collect the horses.

I try to push away.

Seb tightens his hold.

“It’s a lot,” he says. “I get that. I really do.”

I wish he wouldn’t hold me. I wish he wouldn’t fake this empathy. I mean, how can he hold me as if he cares, after telling me he’s going to fuck me, and he’s going to enjoy that I’ll fight him when he does? How can this even be the same man? And he’s made it clear that after he has done, he will hand me over to Ash, because that’s just how they do things here. Only Ash won’t care, either. I’ll just be a willing or not-so-willing hole, and when he’s finished, then he’ll move on, too.

And it’s not only about me, or the girl with Ash, because she’ll be handed around too. It’s about all of us.

He said he cared about us all equally, and that breaks me down even more because I already sense that the things he does, whether I want them to or not, are worming under my skin, and that I won’t find this liberating; that even in this fucked up place, I will want it to mean something more.

Maybe Stockholm Syndrome is already weaving its spell.

Or maybe I’m just frightened, and my mind is confused and clinging to the false safety he represents.

He swings me up into his arms. And I stop fighting with him. My legs aren’t functioning anyway. My whole body throbs in pain, and my head aches. I’m just so fucking tired.

I rest my head against his shoulder—just going with it—as he enters a doorway and heads along a passage that is clean and modern, with subdued lighting emerging from recesses where the walls meet the ceiling. There are doors on either side, some open, some closed, and people are peeling off through them, seemingly at random.

Then we turn right at an open door and enter a rectangular room with bright lights. It houses six narrow examination tables. The walls are lined with cabinets, some clear, some white, and the kind of equipment that makes me think this is a medical facility.

He sits me down on one of the exam tables, with my legs dangling over the side.

My eyes are swollen from crying but I cast a glance around, seeing other women sitting or lying, all with soldiers standing over them.

I feel that deep magnetic pull again, and my eyes lift just as Ash steps up beside Seb. I look away as his eyes pass over me. Doesn’t he have his own woman to deal with?

The one he was choking on his cock.

“She needs some pain meds.” Seb gestures toward me.

“Sure,” Ash replies. “Give her what she needs.”

“You want to dose her tonight?”

Dose?

“Yes. Max.”

I glance up to find Seb raising a brow. “That’s a big fucking dose.”

Ash nods. “I know.” Firm. “I don’t care.” Cold.

“Are you out to fucking test me?” Seb hisses through his teeth. “What are the parameters here?”

The conversation is like a code I’ve yet to crack, and my instincts tell me this is important.

“Not yet. I’ll tell you when. I trust you to have control.”

Seb grunts like he’s not convinced about that.

Ash chuckles and slaps a hand on Seb’s shoulder. “You’re tough. You can take it.”

Seb mutters something under his breath that sounds like ‘asshole’.

Ash chuckles again and strides away.

“What was that about?” I ask when Seb turns back to me.

There is a strange wariness in his eyes that disappears so quickly that I question what I saw.

“Discussing your pain meds.”

“I don’t think I want any.”

He makes a scoffing noise. “You’re a fucking mess.”

“Well, thanks,” I say dryly.

His laughter is warm. “There we go. Welcome back.”

He was provoking me, I realize, belatedly; in his unique Seb way, rousing me from the depression into which I was sinking. It’s still waiting for me, the depression, but now it’s not as close as it was. Now it’s more a looming threat off on the horizon.

I scrub my sticky cheeks where the tears have left tracks. I feel dirty and confused.

He opens a drawer to my left, rummages, and pulls out two syringes and two needle tips from within. Then he presses his thumb to the cabinet ID plate on his right, opens the door, and extracts two vials containing clear liquid.

I frown. “I thought it might be a tablet.”

“Can you even stand up?” he asks me.

I shake my head. Sitting is a challenge when I’m trembling everywhere, and all down the length of my back and across my shoulders is twitching with fatigue. Only, it’s more than exhaustion. There’s stress and shock tossed into the mix, too.

“Are you a trained doctor? What are they anyway?”

He sighs heavily, then slides his fingers through my hair, brushing a dark lock from my cheek before he grasps my chin in a firm hold and tips my head up, forcing me to meet his eyes.

“We’re doing this—whether you want me to or not. You don’t have autonomy anymore; in case you haven’t figured that part out. I think you need these.” He thumbs over his shoulder with his other hand, in the direction Ash went. “And, more importantly, Ash does. So you’re going to be getting them. Is that clear?”

I swallow. “Yes.” I guess this is another Seb pep talk on the harsh reality of my new life. These flips between the empathetic and asshole versions of him are giving me whiplash. I really wish he didn’t keep confusing me by sometimes being nice.

He is not nice. He’s a monster who snatched me from my life and who is inevitably going to fuck me at some point.

His hand slides down over my shoulder and all the way to my hand. He lifts it and holds it in front of my face, showing me how it trembles.

“This,” he says, “will stop.” He selects the nearest vial. “When you get some of this.”

“And the other one?” Why do I ask?

“Will help in a different way.”

I search his eyes, looking for something, anything… maybe the nice version of Seb who will allay my fears.

Maybe it’s an antidepressant. Maybe he’s about to make me high on drugs, to make me a docile little victim. Except, I’m already pretty damn compliant. And given he’s built like a man who could bench press a car without breaking a sweat, I wouldn’t have a fucking chance of overpowering him.

“We don’t keep women high here,” he says, bluntly. “Not our kink, princess.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him what their kink is, because his choice of phrase makes it sound like there are some.

“Not much joy in fucking a zombie.” He smiles, giving me another glimpse of the disarming version of Seb even as he rolls out his hard truths. “The pain med might make you a little sleepy, that’s all, but it will wear off. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? That I’m going to dope you up and rape you. Trust me, princess, when I fuck you, I want you aware of every detail; I want you feeling every inch.”

What an asshole.

He smirks. “I’m an asshole,” he says—I guess I was projecting. “But I’m an honest asshole. Mostly. Now, are you going to take these like a good girl? Or do I need to strap you down?”

I’m still reeling from that mindfuck of his comments so I only latch onto the mostly part.

But I also understand that Seb is not a man to make idle threats. I can let him do this, or I can fight, and it doesn’t matter which: the outcome will be the same. We’re in some kind of bunker in the middle of a forest. It’s not like I can go anywhere. I doubt I could make it across the room before Seb or someone else stopped me.

“You don’t need to strap me down,” I say, quietly.

“Good choice.” He unwraps the needle, draws the fluid from the first vial, changes out the tip, and pushes up my sleeve before administering the dose into my upper arm. He does this efficiently, like he has done it before.

God, how often has he been part of these raids, to be so practiced at this?

How many women has he had the same conversations with?

He drops the needle and vial into a small plastic box and repeats the process for the second one. Whatever is in this one aches as it goes in, and I fidget.

It is soon over. I have two tiny plasters and an aching arm.

“It’ll start feeling better soon,” he says. “I promise.” He squeezes his hand over mine in another one of those confusing gestures that almost make me think he cares. “I’m not going to fuck you tonight, just to take that off the table before you start freaking out again.” Then his eyes slide past mine to look at something over his shoulder. “Don’t get me wrong, we’ll be breaking plenty of them in tonight, and you’ll hear stuff you probably won’t like.” He sighs again. “The best advice I can give you is to just focus on you and let everybody else sort their own shit out.”

He slips an arm underneath my knees and another behind my back and lifts me into his arms again before striding out of the room.