Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Huxley

I HEAR GLORY beg faintly as the fear in her tone shakes me back to awareness. “Please, let us go.”

I’m on my back and the floor is hard along my spine. I blink, rolling my head as consciousness returns slowly, but then all at once, I jerk awake, sitting up in a flash.

I gasp in a breath as I turn my head to find Glory standing beside me. It takes me a moment to process what I’m seeing because it’s so fucking bizarre. Her small hands are wrapped tightly around metal bars that cage us in a small room.

I climb to my feet and my body tilts as my vision blackens for a moment. I reach out to catch myself before I fall, though my hand lands on nothing. But then Glory is at my side, grabbing hold of me, her arms wrapping around my waist to steady me. I fight dizziness, blinking against the swirling room, and I manage to reach out and wrap my fist around one of the bars. I tug on it, pulling myself upright so Glory doesn’t have to bear the weight of me.

“Hux,” she says.

The way her fear sinks inside me makes me sick. It starts a fire in my gut that burns bright and hot, setting off an explosion of protective energy.

I put my arm around her shoulders as I balance with the other against the bar, looking out at the man who has made us captives. “Let us out,” I demand. “Open this goddamn door or I swear, I’ll fucking kill you.”

I finally get a good look at the creep who caged us, and I’m not quite sure how to process what I see. I expected to see someone strong and solid based on the way he fought me when I broke in through a window. I didn’t expect to see lean muscles and a sculpted frame. His dark brown eyes are narrowed on us, studying us, and his raven hair is tousled and messy from our fight.

He doesn’t appear to be all that much older than me—maybe by a few years—and that strikes me as odd because I can’t understand why an attractive guy in his twenties would live alone this deep in the forest. I’m only guessing that he lives alone, of course, but the odds seem good since he’s got a goddamn cage inside his house that he probably wouldn’t want anyone else to know about.

He doesn’t say a word, only tilts his head to the side, watching us both with dark, curious eyes—penetrating eyes that burrow deep and burn inside me.

“Let us out,” I say again, my voice slow and commanding.

“Who are you?” He has a low voice, a gruff tone, an authoritative timbre. “Why are you here?”

“Please, just let us go,” Glory pleads. “I told you, we were lost. We just needed some help.”

“Tell me your names.”

I squeeze Glory’s shoulder, hoping she’ll understand to keep her mouth shut. If he doesn’t already know who she is, I don’t want him to find out. If he learns her name, he’ll know she has money.

“You don’t need to know our names,” I tell him. “Just let us out and we’ll leave quietly.”

“No,” he says with finality, then turns and leaves the room.

He doesn’t shut the door to the hallway because he doesn’t need to. We’re locked inside this fucking cage.

I let go of Glory and grab hold of the bars with both hands, giving them a good, solid shake, testing the strength of them. They vibrate in my hold as I wrench my arms against them, but they’re sturdy and don’t show any sign of weakness. “Fuck!”

“What are we gonna do?”

I spin, quickly scanning the room, my gaze landing on a wooden door at the back of the cage. “Did you try that?” I ask, already moving toward it.

“It’s not a way out,” she says as I twist the doorknob.

It opens away from us, into the room beyond it, which I quickly see is a small bathroom, basic in every sense of the word. There’s a toilet, a sink, a single shower, no mirror, no windows. White tile floor, white painted walls…except they’re decorated with simple crayon drawings, as if a child had been in here and colored on the walls.

More importantly, there’s another door opposite the one I came through. My pulse ticks hopefully, sending a burst of adrenaline through my veins as my hand lands on the knob and twists. I tug the door open toward me, hopeful for an exit, but my heart sinks heavily. The exit is sealed behind more metal bars.

I grab hold of one as I step closer, peering into the space beyond the bars. It looks like another bedroom, though it’s bare. There’s a mattress sitting atop old, stained carpet, but otherwise, the room is empty.

I turn, looking around the bathroom, searching for something, anything that might be useful…but there’s nothing. We’re trapped and there’s nothing we can use to defend ourselves with.

“What do we do, Hux?”

I shake my head in disbelief.

How did we wind up here?

How did we shift so easily from one nightmare to another?

“I don’t know…” I tell her honestly. “I don’t know what to do.”

I reach into my pockets, suddenly thinking that my cell phone must be there. It’s not, and it wouldn’t matter if it were. It was already dead and who knows if there’s service here, anyway.

“He took everything out of your pockets and mine,” she says, something metal rattling against the floor as she steps toward me.

I follow the sound to her feet and see a cuff attached to her ankle. She’s chained to a hook that’s bolted to the floor. “Christ,” I mutter, dropping to my knees in front of her. “What did he do?”

I tug on the padlock that secures the cuff and find that it’s solid. I grab hold of the chain, running hand over hand down the length until I come to the bolted hook. I pull hard, testing its strength. It’s solid, too. “Shit.” I drop the chain and it crashes heavily to the floor. I comb my fingertips through my hair, tugging at the ends in frustration.

“Why is this happening? What does he want with us?”

“I don’t fucking know!” I snap.

She flinches and takes a step back.

I stand and rush to close the space between us, wrapping her up in my arms and pulling her close. She’s rigid, her arms pinned at her sides.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper against her hair. “I just…I don’t have answers. I don’t have answers, and it fucking scares me. I always know what to do.” As my hand comes up to cradle the back of her head, she softens, tugging her arms free from my grip to hug me back, to hold me as close to her as I hold her to me. “I won’t let him hurt you. I’m gonna find us a way out of this.” Yet, even as the words leave my mouth, I know my promises may be false.

I don’t know if I can stop him from hurting her.

I don’t know if I can find us a way out of this.

The not knowing is more terrifying than anything because I’ve never not known what to do.

I always know what to do.

I always save her.

But in this…I might not be able to save myself.