1. Logan

1

LOGAN

Ten years later…

Day nine hundred and sixty-one of captivity.

I etch a small line on the wooden panel with the dull blade of my knife. It joins the hundreds of other tick marks on the cabin wall.

The sun didn't bother coming out today. Thick storm clouds hide it from view. More rain'll be coming by tonight.

The pots placed around the room need to be emptied. They're still full with the water that leaked in during last night's downpour.

I roll over on the sunken bunkbed 'til I'm sitting up and my bare feet touch the puddles on the ground. We ran out of pots, causing water to pool around the room.

I barely notice the difference—my feet are pruned to the point of numbness.

Some of the others still cry about it.

I rise up off the bunk to the sounds. A skeleton of a woman sits in the corner opposite me, her bony knees drawn up to her chest, sniveling as she checks her toes. She's one of the newer ones. Still naive. Still delusional with hope.

They're my least favorite types. The ones who think there's still some grand silver lining somewhere.

Relief will have to come eventually…

I make my way across the room and stop in the doorway long enough to take in our surroundings. It's still early enough that the rest of the compound's dead silent. The other cabins bear no sign of life despite the fact that each one has people packed in like sardines in a can.

No different from the cabin I'm in.

My gaze switches out from peering around the grounds to inside the cabin where there's an empty bottom bunk.

Today's the day she arrives. They'll bring her in, and she'll be initiated into the family.

Whoever she is, she probably doesn't know what's in store for her. They're probably still transporting her. Meaning she's probably still knocked out.

In dreamland, clueless to the hell she's about to be put in.

The Leader and his saints have been searching far and wide. They've spoken about the new believer they needed to replace the last one. Not just anybody would do—she had to be of pure faith. She had to have a good heart.

Something the Leader claims is damn near impossible these days.

"Most women are deviants," he'd explained during one of his sermons. "They're dirty, filthy sinners that will burn in hell on judgment day. Our new believer must be worthy of our sacred home."

Never mind that I'm as sinful as sinful gets.

Never mind that he and his saints are the rottenest, evilest people I've ever met .

In their eyes, they're doing the work of some higher power.

None of that matters in this fucked up world we're captive in.

I'm standing so long in the doorway that Brody appears from the large house upfront. He crosses the grassy stretch of land carrying his AR-15 against his shoulder, his expression tight-lipped.

Our eyes lock onto each other.

I don't bother letting him finish his walk toward my cabin. I step forward to meet him damn near halfway. He clamps a hand on my shoulder and shoves me forward as if I wasn't already going voluntarily.

But appearance is everything in the Chosen Saints—Brody's making sure he looks like he's in control; he's leading me, not the other way around. Believers aren't supposed to have autonomy.

"You know the rules," he growls low enough for only my ears. "No crossing the threshold on your own unless directed."

I grit my teeth. "I saved you the steps."

"Hurry up." He shoves me again. Harder, so I stumble.

There was a time in the past where I was in good enough shape to take out any of the men in the Chosen Saints. I had the muscle power and the hand-to-hand combat skills to not just kick their ass. I had the ability to snap them like twigs.

Nine hundred and sixty-one days into captivity, things've changed. I'm a shell of what I once was, whittled down from the powerful man I used to be.

Brody pushes and shoves me all the way to the main house. The three-story mini mansion is where the Leader and his most loyal saints sleep. It's night and day between the main house and the cabins the believers are kept in.

Dry. Insulated. Full furnishings. Electricity and running water. Luxuries like TVs and real beds. It couldn't be more different from what we're subjected to out in the cabins.

The only time any of us spend in this house is when we're called upon. When we're needed for what's known as an ‘act of service'.

I'm called to the main house almost daily.

The curse of being a saint's favorite. Brody leads me upstairs to the fourth bedroom on the left, then nudges the door open.

She's waiting for me, propped up on her recliner she treats like a throne. Her eyes light up and a smirk twists onto her lips. She flicks her satiny robe open and kicks her legs up onto either side of her footstool. She doesn't care that Brody sees she's wearing nothing underneath.

The concept of modesty doesn't exist in a place like the Chosen Saints's sanctuary.

But that doesn't mean privacy isn't sometimes wanted for these acts of service.

Brody knows to close the door without any questions. I know to step forward and then kneel.

Mandy spreads her legs wider. "I've been dreaming of you, boy. All night I was. Almost had Brody go down and pull you out of your cabin. It couldn't have been earlier than three, four in the morning. Go ahead and have a taste. That tongue of yours…"

She shudders instead of finishing her train of thought.

I urge myself to tune out of the moment like I usually do. Some days it's easier than others .

In the beginning, I fought. I raised hell each and every time. My back bears the lash marks to show for it.

But everybody surrenders eventually; take any person and put them in this situation. They'd eventually tap out and comply.

I kneel between Mandy's legs and press my face to her vagina the way she likes—so that she's basically grinding into my face as my tongue pokes out and licks at her clit.

Her fingers grip my hair, and she sighs in encouragement. Soon her thighs are quivering around my head as I work my lips and tongue the way she likes. I'm checked out of the moment.

So gone I don't taste her. The slick evidence of her arousal doesn't register.

I lick and suck at her while my mind's thousands of miles away.

There was a point in time where I used to laugh and tell my brother Mace and his best friend Cash I hadn't met a pussy I didn't like. Turn off the lights and they were all the same—they all felt pretty damn good wrapped around my dick.

It was a joke. Something dumb we laughed about before getting shitfaced and going home with a different club girl.

I was always in control. I was always in the driver's seat.

Not once did it ever occur to me that it could be different. That there'd come a time I didn't get any say.

Mandy bleats like a fucking goat when she comes. She rifles her fingers through my unkempt hair, then sags against the cushions of her recliner. Her eyelids grow heavy and her eyes hazy.

"You are the best, boy," she purrs, petting me like a dog. With affection that makes my skin crawl. "You like the taste of me, don't you? "

My glare would give me away to a sane person. Somebody not delusional.

Turns out, Mandy and the saints like her are as delusional as the new believers who still have hope—the difference is that the believers tell themselves help is on the way.

Mandy tells herself I'm enjoying this; that she doesn't repulse me on every fucking level.

I give the slightest nod in answer. Because if I didn't, I'd be on the receiving end of a whip. She keeps hers on her end table, within reach. Brody didn't say it, but he's out in the hall. It wouldn't end in my favor even if I did defy her.

It never has in the past.

She strokes my hair again. "Good boy. Have another taste."

Plugging her pussy with two of her fingers, she gathers some of her juices from her orgasm and then slips them past my lips. Her eyes glint as she watches me. She's waiting for me to play along.

I suck on her fingers and will myself to ignore the tart taste of her.

The only pussy I've ever almost retched at tasting.

When she's satisfied with my performance, she sits up straighter and calls for Brody.

I'm collected and escorted back toward the rear exit of the house. Brody's decided he needs to flex even more of his authority by gripping my arm. The urge to crack my elbow into his face and flip him on his ass rises up inside me.

The ceremony room stops me. I catch a glimpse of the inside where saints and believers are setting up for another ceremony, and my stomach roils.

"That for tonight?"

Brody jerks me along faster. "What do you think? She's arriving. You know what you have to do. "

I suspected.

It's different hearing it confirmed. Knowing I'm about to be forced to participate in more fucked up depravity I never wanted…

The ceremony begins at sundown. The saints are already seated in the first few pews when the believers are shoved and prodded into the room by the likes of Brody and a few other designated henchmen. None of us fight them. They're well-fed and armed. We're malnourished and barely functioning.

I drop into a seat toward the back, right next to the skeletal woman from my cabin. She hasn't stopped sniveling since this morning, wiggling her toes every so often; apparently she still can't feel them.

Xavier, one of the other armed guards, mutters something in Brody's ear, then points in my direction. Brody nods and comes over to collect me.

"Get up," he says. "We need you up front. You'll be performing your marital duty."

I stand up only after he jams the barrel of his assault rifle into my stomach. I've barely squeezed into the only open space up front when the double doors fly open.

The Leader strides through in his billowing white robe. His sheets of hair sway around his face like white-blond curtains. A few saints follow, their own like-new robes fluttering. The two in the back enter clutching a squirming, shrieking woman.

The new believer.

My stomach muscles clench. I track every movement of hers down the aisle toward the altar up front .

She's a mess. Clothes torn and streaked with dirt. Her hair's a knotted cloud, like a fist's been gripped up in it and disheveled whatever style it had been in. She's got a bruise on her cheek, a plum shade against her brown complexion. Tears brim in her wide, expressive eyes that match the panicked expression etched onto her face.

…but it's a face I could tell would be pretty in less grim circumstances. In a less fucked up moment where she was put together and not covered in bruises and scrapes.

She's on the shorter side. Pear-shaped and curvy in an enticing way.

But there's nothing enticing about this. It can only be described as the depraved fucked up shit that it is.

Yet we believers sit obediently in our pews and pretend we're not disturbed.

The woman's thrown to the floor of the altar. She lands right at the Leader's feet. He peers down at her with his cold, emotionless eyes, then steps over her like she's an inconvenience.

My hands curl into fists in my lap.

"Saints and believers, we have a new companion in our midst," he announces. "We searched far and wide for a woman with the purest heart who would join our mission. Behold—we have found her!"

Everyone rows back cranes their necks for a better look. A few murmurs break out.

The woman has sat up and tried to scoot away. Xavier nudges her with his boot to keep her in line.

"Silence!" the Leader calls. "It is time the ceremony begins. We have gathered today to welcome our new believer to our family, where she will be cherished and loved as we are all cherished and loved by each other. The bond we have formed is only outmatched by the bond we have with our sacred Leader and Lord."

Several of the saints and believers nod and mumble along, drinking in every word he speaks. I'm the only one glaring, fighting off the pulse of anger that throbs inside me.

Me and the woman.

She's looking up at the Leader with tears streaked down her cheeks and horror widening her eyes.

"And now, we will bear witness to another sacred bond," the Leader continues, his slivery voice echoing. "The bonding of a man and a woman. Believer Logan, step forward."