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I’m doing my best here. Trying to survive. Using my brain. Forming alliances. Isn’t that what the contestants do on those Survivor reality shows?
Besides, how many women—trapped in the middle of nowhere with a pack of gorgeous, virile, red-blooded males—would not succumb to moments of weakness? I’m not making excuses for myself, but dammit, I don’t even know if I’ll see Monty again. I don’t know if I’ll escape or if he’ll be waiting for me when I do.
He thinks I packed up my shit and left him.
Exactly what I intended to do.
Is he searching for me anyway?
Or is he hooking up with the endless line of women who throw themselves at him every day?
He can’t live without sex. Doesn’t go a day without it.
How is he coping?
Please, Monty. Please, wait for me.
God, I’m growing more and more pathetic by the second. I need to get the hell out of here. Back to my job and my husband and my beautiful life.
Sitting on a wood crate off to the side, I study Kody’s posture, the movements of his fingers, and the mechanics of the crossbow. He doesn’t acknowledge my presence for hours, and when he finally does, he says the last thing I expect.
“Your turn.” Holding out the crossbow, he captures me in the dark challenge of his eyes.
My voice sticks in my throat. I want to tell him I don’t know how to use it, but he knows I’ve been watching, learning, and committing every detail to memory.
“Okay.” I accept the heavy weapon and glance around for his brothers.
“They’re safe in the workshop.” He rolls his sleeves up his muscled arms, impervious to the cold. “Let’s see what you got.”
31
Leonid
—
I told Frankie to stay away from my brothers. I warned her.
You were the first one to fold, Leo. You started it with that encounter against the wall in the supply room.
I know my shortcomings, but she isn’t helping with all that feisty, addictive beauty she flaunts in my face.
Why is she so difficult?
The other women needed no such warning. Even when we were young, they didn’t try to befriend us or join our side. We were feral, uncivilized kids, and they were smart enough to recognize the waste of effort.
Kaya Knowles might have tried, but she had her own child to protect. I was only seven when she arrived with Kody, and she didn’t spare me a glance. Soon after we lost her, Gretchen joined us, already pregnant with Wolf.
I helped Denver deliver Wolf, and the way Gretchen looked at me…Christ, I still shudder. With her womanly body on display, legs spread, and hooded eyes locked on mine, she turned the act of childbirth into a lewd sexual performance.
For the next eight years, she never stopped looking at me. Or performing.
As for the others who arrived in Denver’s crates, it was all they could do to keep their heads down and protect their own necks.
Not that it saved them in the end.
Denver has a way of petrifying women into quivering, helpless creatures. From the moment he captures them, they go into frightened-rabbit mode. The last one, Alyssa, didn’t last a month. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I think, in the end, it was intense fear and stress that stopped her heart.
Kaya made it a couple of weeks. Kody doesn’t remember his mother, but I do. She worked hard to remain invisible and avoid inciting Denver’s merciless punishments.
All the women kept to themselves when they could, most of them crying and flinching in constant terror.
Except Gretchen.
She was on a whole other level of unhinged. She actually wanted to be here.
I lean against the doorway of the shed, enraptured by the sight of Frankie’s tongue trapped between her teeth.
What’s her story? She’s here against her will. She’s not unhinged. She refuses to keep her head down or follow orders. She has no sense of self-preservation or survival skills. Yet here she is.
Still breathing.
Why?
With one foot in the stirrup of the crossbow, she pulls the string with every muscle in her body. Her tongue pokes out with each groaning tug.
It’s not helping.
I give her props for trying, though. She’s the first woman who’s made any attempt to learn how to survive here. Although, she’s chosen one of the most difficult skills to learn.
Cocking the bow requires strength and balance. Kody makes it look easy.
When he’s not injured.
I’ve watched him struggle with it all day. He consistently pulls the string slower with his wounded hand. Can’t do that. It disrupts the balance. Loading, aiming, firing—his entire vibe is fucked with the injury.
The night he stepped in to take the punishment in Wolf’s place, I knew he wasn’t offering up his dominant hand. That would’ve been deadly for all of us.
Even with a hole through his weaker hand, he’s a better hunter than Wolf and me. No one can match his freaky predatory instinct. He has an uncanny ability to sniff out prey and track it to the ends of the earth like a single-minded killer.
