25. Rose

25

Rose

Sebastian lay next to me on the narrow bed, one arm wrapped around me. The other—the injured one—rested carefully at his side, blood still seeping through the enormous bandage that lay beneath his shirt. It needed to be changed and washed with some sort of antiseptic fluid, just to be safe, but he looked so exhausted that I couldn’t bear to wake him just yet.

Instead, I lay beside him, mind whirling.

Just a few hours ago, I’d told myself I was absolutely sure about everything; that I wouldn’t regret anything or change my mind about my decision to have sex. But now… here I was, already questioning things and quietly running through everything that had happened, over and over.

I could still hardly believe that my virginity was gone. I thought I would feel different somehow. Like a new person. But I still felt exactly the same, mentally and physically. I wasn’t sore. I hadn’t even bled.

I wondered what that said about me. Was my body fundamentally broken? Was this meant to happen all along, and the Entity had spared me the expected first-time blood and pain as some sort of sign that this was right for me?

No, Rose. Don’t be stupid.

Now that the heady lust was no longer enveloping my mind, my reasoning skills were beginning to return, like a fog lifting in my head, inch by hazy inch. My body wasn’t broken. It was just doing what it was designed to do.

Part of my vow of purity involved going against all that and living a life of chastity to prove my loyalty and devotion to the Entity. To show him that I’d sacrifice anything for him, including all the natural bodily pleasures that came with living as a woman.

I had failed. I could twist it around in my head as much as I wanted, but that was the crux of the issue. I’d once vowed to forsake all pleasure and remain a virgin until my death, and I didn’t stick to that vow. Simple.

Sebastian stirred next to me and opened his eyes. “Shit.” He slowly sat up, handsome face contorting in a confused frown. “I fell asleep?”

“Yes, for an hour or so. You seem very tired,” I said softly. “Probably because of the injury.”

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “I’ll go and get us some food. You must be starving,” he said, guilt flashing in his eyes. “I’m sorry you were down here so long without anything to eat. I had no idea they’d keep me in the hospital for three days. I don’t even remember going to the fucking hospital in the first place.”

I remained silent and watched him step outside. I couldn’t tell him that I’d left the cell to get food in a moment of great hunger yesterday. Couldn’t tell him I still had a stolen keycard hidden under my mattress.

The more I thought about that, the more it bothered me. I couldn’t tell him about the key because at the end of the day, no matter how strong my feelings for him had grown, I was still his prisoner. I had no rights, no freedom to come and go, nothing.

Was that really what I’d given up my purity for? A man who kept me locked away like a criminal?

It seemed so right a few hours ago. In fact, it felt like I’d actually die if I didn’t give myself to him. But now that I was sitting here alone again, trapped by these four walls, I was slowly beginning to arrive at some stark realizations.

I’d promised him something when I gave up my purity—my whole life. But what kind of life would that be for me as his perpetual prisoner? And what kind of life would it be for him?

He wasn’t going to free me. I knew that. He would always be too concerned about the possibility of me running back to Alderwood and turning him in. So what would happen if he grew tired of having a lover who had to be kept under lock and key in an underground cell?

It was a lot of work, after all. He had to ensure I was fed every single day, and that couldn’t be easy for a man whose life was centered in a major city five or six hours away. Eventually, he could get sick of the endless stress over the logistics of it all, and then his feelings for me would probably fade.

The thought of what would happen then made me shiver with fear. He couldn’t release me back into the world, because then he’d risk getting in trouble. There was only one option to be safely rid of me.

He would have to kill me.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the cold wall, my thoughts a tangled web of confusion and despair. I wanted to believe that Sebastian would never dream of killing me, but I wasn’t sure that was a realistic belief to hold. After all, I knew from experience that he was fully capable of hurting me. Sometimes he even took great pleasure from it.

Then again, that didn’t necessarily mean he was capable of murder, did it? He was a rough and cruel man sometimes, but there were moments when his touch was gentle, and his words surprisingly tender. In those moments, I saw glimpses of a man who could have been my protector, my lover, my husband , in a different life. A man who could easily return my feelings of…

“Oh, lord,” I whispered, shaking my head as conflicting emotions churned inside me.

My heart was aching with the burgeoning love that was growing in the shadow of my captivity; a love that felt as twisted and forbidden as the situation itself. But at the same time, reality kept crashing down on me, bringing with it the knowledge that none of it could ever really happen.

That cold, hard reality was this: Sebastian was my captor, and I was his prisoner. Even if he never intended to kill me, he’d still taken my life in another way. That meant true, everlasting love wasn’t possible for us.

And yet, I was still drawn to him, inexplicably and undeniably, even as I cursed the glass and stone walls that kept me bound to this place.

“Rose?”

I opened my eyes to see Sebastian standing before me, holding a transparent bag filled with sandwiches. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn’t even heard him return.

He passed a sandwich to me. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, lifting a brow. “You look worried.”

I took a small bite and looked down. “It’s nothing,” I murmured after I swallowed.

“Come on. Tell me.” Frowning, Sebastian sat on the bed next to me. “I want to hear it.”

I knew I couldn’t tell him every single thing that was on my mind. It was too much, and it might make him angry, so I had to choose my words carefully.

“I just thought I might feel different,” I said, lowering my eyes.

“After losing your virginity?”

“Yes. I thought things would be…” I trailed off, hesitating. “I don’t know. Just different.”

He smiled faintly. “What did you think would happen?”

I bit my bottom lip. “Well… lots of girls in Alderwood talk about blood and pain upon their first time. But that didn’t happen to me. It was like my body was already used to the act.”

“That’s because most of the other girls probably lost their virginity to assholes who were too selfish to get them fully ready.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s because their purity was being torn away. But for me… it’s like I never had any purity to begin with.”

Sebastian raised a brow. “That’s bullshit, Rose.”

“What?”

“The whole concept of purity and virginity. It’s bullshit. Fucking bullshit .”

“It’s not.”

He sighed and rubbed his jaw. “Look, I’m sorry, I know this destroys your entire worldview, but I promise you—it’s all bullshit. Virginity is just a social construct. You aren’t different now, and you didn’t suddenly become a dirty or impure person. You’re still you . You’re just a version of you that’s had sex. That’s all.”

“I don’t believe that,” I muttered. “Purity exists.”

“Believe it or not. Doesn’t matter. It’s still the truth,” he said, lightly shrugging. “Trust me, those motherfuckers up at Alderwood wouldn’t know if you were a virgin or not.”

“Yes, they would. The healers conduct purity tests. I’ve passed all of mine before, but I know I wouldn’t now,” I murmured, stomach lurching at the thought of lying on that cold altar with a healer’s hand between my legs. I hated those proving rituals so much, but they were a necessity.

Sebastian chuckled. “Even if you tunneled right out of here and begged them to test you, they wouldn’t have a clue whether you’re a virgin or not. Not unless you openly told them that you fucked me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it fucking is .” He scraped a hand through his hair. “Do I really have to explain this?”

“If you’re going to make a wild claim, then yes, I think you should be prepared to explain it.”

“It’s not a wild claim. It’s a basic fact. Girls aren’t born with fucking freshness seals over their pussies. If they were, and it wasn’t broken until sex happened, then how the hell would they get their period? How would the blood come out?”

“I—” I stopped abruptly, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. He had a point. “There’s still something down there.”

“Yeah, for some women. For others, there isn’t. It’s all down to genetics. Every woman is different.” Sebastian reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. He clicked on the screen a few times, and then he handed it to me. “Here, just read this. It explains it better than I can.”

I stared at the words on the screen. “What is this?”

“Just. Read. It,” he said through gritted teeth.

He turned his attention to his sandwich. My own sandwich sat on my lap, half-eaten as my attention remained on the phone screen. It featured a digital encyclopedia entry on the hymen. I read the whole thing twice, brows dipping in a frown.

Sebastian finally looked over again and read several words aloud. “The state of the hymen is therefore not a reliable indicator of virginity through virginity testing,” he said. “See? Now click those blue words.”

I tapped on the words ‘virginity testing’. The screen flashed and changed. “Oh. Wow. It’s like—”

“Magic. I know. Now read it.”

I swallowed hard and returned my attention to the phone. Sebastian leaned closer, reading alongside me. “See this part?” he said, pointing to a section in the article called ‘two-finger test’. “That’s the main way they check. They think if they can fit two fingers in, then the woman must’ve had sex before. But it’s a load of shit. Like I said, all women are built differently. You could fuck a hundred guys and still struggle to get even one finger in during one of these so-called tests, depending on how relaxed your body feels at the time.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” I muttered.

“It’s true. Trust me. If you asked one of your healers for a purity test, that’s what they’d do, right? The two-finger test?”

“They would try. That’s how the proving ritual works. They put their hand between your legs and see if they can…” I trailed off again, blushing to my roots. “Well, I’m sure you can guess.”

“Yes, I can. And you’re always nervous and tense during these proving rituals, right?”

“Of course.”

“So your muscles are super-tight and they can’t get anything in you. Then they declare you to be a pure little virgin. Right?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“You can do that even when you aren’t stressed. You can control the muscles and make them tight or loose. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ever had sex or not.”

I stared at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“It’s like when you really need to piss, but you have to hold it in because you’re nowhere near a toilet. It’s that same tensing and squeezing,” he replied. “If a woman does that during a so-called purity test, the muscles will be so constricted that the tester probably won’t be able to get one finger inside, let alone two.”

I scoffed and handed the phone back to him. “That’s not true,” I said, picking up my sandwich again. “Our healers are trained at universities.”

“Yeah, exactly. So they know for sure that the purity tests are bullshit. They probably just go along with it because it’s part of their job and they don’t want to rock the boat.” Sebastian sat up straight, giving me a hard look as I chewed. “Tell me something. Has a girl or woman ever failed one of these proving rituals?”

I swallowed my bite. “No.”

“And do you really think all those women were virgins?” he asked, forehead wrinkling.

“Yes, of course they were,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“I can almost guarantee you they weren’t. Sure, a few of them, or even most of them, might’ve managed to avoid giving into temptation. But there’s always someone like you, Rose. Someone who likes to break the rules.” A wicked grin spread over Sebastian’s handsome face. “I bet you there’s been at least fifty of them over the centuries, lying about their virginity. And the world didn’t end when they were sacrificed, did it? Because literally all of it is fucking bullshit. Virginity doesn’t matter.”

I shook my head, anger flaring inside me. How dare he question the virtues of our past sacrifices? And how dare he question the will of the Entity?

“Virginity does matter. To the Covenant, at least. And the healers would know if any of those women lied,” I said stiffly.

“Nope. They wouldn’t. Like I said, the healers would all know that the concept of virginity is total bullshit. They just claim that the girls are virgins when they test them, because they know there’s no way of actually knowing for sure, and if they ever denied that a girl was ‘pure’, then that girl would probably be tortured with one of those Confession things. And they don’t want to subject a girl to that if there’s a chance that she’s actually telling the truth, right?”

I jumped up, incensed. “You’re wrong!” I said, crossing my arms. “Every celestial virgin in history has been pure!”

“Sure.” Amusement glimmered in his eyes. “Tell me, if the Entity cares so much about his prized virgins remaining that way until their sacrifice, then why didn’t he strike you down with a bolt of lightning from the heavens the second my cock went inside you? As a punishment.”

I breathed deeply, trying to control my fury. “You are so disgustingly disrespectful sometimes.”

“Honestly, Rose, I’m not trying to mock you. I swear. It’s just that the stuff they teach you up on that mountain is a bunch of bullshit. I think you deserve better. I think you deserve a life where you’re free to enjoy your body.”

I stared at him, unable to believe the hypocrisy coming out of his mouth. He thought I deserved a life where I was free to enjoy my body, and yet, at the exact same time, he was happy to keep me locked away in this godforsaken cage where I had no freedom whatsoever. It didn’t make any sense.

Lord. Nothing made sense anymore. Trying to think about it all gave me a splitting headache.

I sat back down, rubbing my temples with one hand as I finished my food with the other.

Sebastian shuffled closer and tenderly stroked my arm. Part of me instantly wanted him to strip off and touch me the same way he did a few hours ago; wanted him to bring me all those heated pleasures so I could forget the world and its cold, brutal reality for a few blissful minutes. But one last remnant of rationality told me I shouldn’t want that. Should never have wanted it. Not as long as he remained my jailer.

“You haven’t changed, Rose. It’s like I said. You’re still you, ” he said softly. “The Covenant would never know just from looking at you or touching you.”

“But I would know,” I murmured, lowering my eyes to the floor.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. You aren’t going back there, so they can’t do anything to you.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I murmured before taking my last bite of the sandwich.

His words echoed in my mind as I chewed and swallowed. You aren’t going back there.

I wiped the crumbs from my hands and closed my eyes, feeling the weight of my former life pressing down on my shoulders again. It seemed to call out to me like a distant echo, making me long for it, but at the same time, I knew Sebastian was right. I could never go back to Alderwood. Not when I was no longer a virgin. The shame and guilt of my betrayal would be too much to bear, and the entire Covenant would know about it the second the healer slid his hand between my thighs.

Then again… a sacrifice still needed to be made on the evening of the final Tetrad moon in order to complete the ritual. If not me, then who ? No other girls had been born to dying mothers under a blood moon in recent years. I was the only option left, and if I wasn’t sacrificed at the Red Rocks, the whole Tetrad ritual would fail.

I inhaled sharply at the terrible thought.

How could I have been so selfish? How could I have chosen my carnal desires over the good of my own people? And not just my people… the whole world. Everyone on this planet would suffer as the veil ripped in two, letting the Darkness spill out of the forbidden cave, and the chaos that would ensue would be my fault for giving up my purity and causing the ritual to fail. All because I wanted to have sex.

My mind whirled as the hot, oppressive shame swelled inside me. Perhaps the Entity would accept my body in the Tetrad ritual even as a non-virgin. It was better than nothing, surely, and I was the only possible candidate.

I just needed a sign. Something to show me that it was the right way. Something to show me that all was not lost.

Please show me, I silently begged, squeezing my eyes shut even tighter.

“Still hungry?”

I opened my eyes and turned to look at Sebastian. “Oh, um… yes. I am.”

“Me too. I’ll go and make us some more food,” he said, rising to his feet.

I noticed that he winced slightly every time he moved, but he hadn’t said a single word about his injury beyond the gruff ‘you tried to kill me’ comment when he returned to me earlier.

Somehow, I knew that he’d already forgiven me for the terrible sin I’d committed against him, and he had no intention of punishing me for it.

My brows shot up. Perhaps that was it. My sign!

If Sebastian could forgive me for a transgression as terrible as attempted murder, then surely the Entity could forgive me for a temporary lapse in judgment that led to the loss of my purity.

Yes.

Sebastian’s quick and easy forgiveness must be a sign from the Entity; the exact one I’d prayed for only moments ago. But… could I really walk away from him right now? After what I’d done to him? After what we’d done together?

The pounding in my temples worsened as I considered it all. I was caught in an agonizing limbo now, torn between my growing affection for Sebastian and my desperate yearning to return to the Covenant to fulfil my earthly duties. It felt like my heart was a prisoner just as much as my body.

I decided to wait for one more sign. This time, it would be one I determined myself.

If Sebastian unlocked the door and invited me to go up to the house with him, then I would see that as a sign that I should stay with him. A sign that he was willing to consider me as an equal partner rather than a permanent prisoner and slave to his will.

But if he left me here, door locked, I’d see that as a sign that I should leave and carry out my sacrificial duties.

He glanced at his watch and turned to head to the glass door. “I might take a while,” he said. “I have to make a call while I’m up there.”

Take me with you, I silently implored him, already realizing I wanted to choose him over the rest of the world, even if that meant the Darkness and its ensuing chaos would be released. That was how far and deep I’d fallen for him.

He turned back and looked down at me on the bed, face arranged in an unreadable expression. “Do you need anything else?” he asked. “Apart from food.”

Yes! I need you to show me that you’re really willing to make me yours! I screamed inside my head. But I couldn’t tell him. I needed him to say it of his own accord, or else it wouldn’t be true. Just words I put in his mouth.

I shook my head. “I think I’m okay,” I murmured.

Sebastian hesitated for another moment, brows dipping in a slight frown. Then his lips pressed together in a firm line, and he turned back to the door.

With that, he unlocked it, stepped outside, and left me behind.