Page 133 of Pretty Savage: Defy

Before he can slide the robe away, a voice rings out.

“Stop!”

Sam stands in front of the benches with her hood shoved off her head and one arm extended toward the crowd.

Jack rises to face her. “Stand down, Samantha. This is no business of yours. Let the adults make the decisions.”

“No,” she snaps back, “not when you make decisions like this.” She turns to the rest of the room, searching the rows of cream and gray robes. “Stop this. This isn’t power. It’s perversion!”

No one answers her call. They stare at their feet or sullenly glare back.

Her expression moves from desperate to disbelieving as the silence holds.

“Please? Someone?” My heart breaks, watching as Sam realizes she’s alone.

“Mother?” she says finally.

Rebecca stands, her eyes bouncing between Sam and me. The apology on her face tells me what her answer will be before she gives it.

“You should sit down, Samantha.”

The calculation is clear. Rebecca has spent years preparing to destroy The Order, and whatever plan she has isn’t ready. Defying them tonight could expose her, endanger everyone working with her, and destroy her only chance to bring them down.

Understanding her choice does nothing to dull the betrayal.

Angry tears glimmer in Sam’s eyes, but she refuses to let them go.

“Fine.” Her voice trembles with fury. “You leave me no choice.” She points toward the watching crowd. “You brought this on yourselves.”

Then she looks up at me, raises one fist above her head, and shouts, “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum!”

She races from the hall. Two robed figures push through the crowd and follow her, their hoods falling back long enough for me to recognize Abbie and Cicley.

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum?” I know that phrase from somewhere, but I can’t place it.

“Enough of these theatrics,” Jack says from the front row. “Let’s get on with it.”

It.

With one word, he reduces the most private thing Carrson and I share to a task on his agenda, a spectacle this room believes it is owed.

My bloody hand curls around Carrson’s as I turn toward Jack, no longer afraid of the room, only furious that it believes it owns us. Carrson is already looking at him. I recognize the expression on his face. It’s the one he wore before he killed a man.

Carr sighs and signals for us to continue.

Carrson’s fingers hover above my shoulder. He leaves them there so long I see he can’t be the one to do it.

So I reach up and push the robe off myself.

The fabric falls to my hips, exposing my chest and stomach to the cool air drifting through open doors across the room. I keep my eyes on Carrson, refusing to look beyond him at the people watching us.

I expected shame. Instead, anger fills every place where shame might have taken hold. They know we don’t want this. They know they’re forcing us, yet they sit in their rows and call it sacred.

I reject it. The shame belongs to them.

Carrson’s gaze moves to my chest. Color rises into his cheeks, and the hunger that moves across his face is so familiar it almost makes us feel alone.

He wants me. Even here.