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CHAPTER FOUR
Jorik
“I don’t think she’s ever seen a naked man before,” I murmured to Rix, turning my back to Haina in the water and resting my elbows on the railing behind me.
“Pretty sure she hasn’t,” Zane said under his breath. “I asked her if she’s been to the Sector Eight compound, and although she didn’t reply, I’m going to take her silence as a no. She’s been kept in a tower like a princess.”
“Like a pet. An animal. And it’s been a cage,” I corrected, shooting Zane a quick glare. “None of us have had a choice. Not even her.”
Rix made a sad noise in his throat. “No friends. No family. No …anything. At least we have each other.” Not that we’d met any of our sources before.
We used to ask questions about our sources—when we were curious kids with rebellious streaks and not enough sense to shut up.
There used to be four of us.
But when we started talking back, questioning the ways of the system, Chance had been made an example of. Tortured right in front of us for days as a reminder that we were no more than slaves. Farmed animals with owners and our lives were solely in their hands and we’d best just shut up and do as we’re told.
Chance had been eighteen.
We just had no idea how tight a fortress some Hellcats were being kept in until we met Haina and she told us she’d never stepped foot on dirt before. Never touched a tree or held a flower. That’s what prompted me to pick up the Twin Flower. And as we continued walking through the woods, I had to keep myself from picking up other flowers, and plants and showing them to her. Unlike my brothers, she seemed interested in what I had to tell her about plants—about the world really. Eager to understand and know more. But I didn’t want to overwhelm her. When we went to shore for freshwater, maybe I could teach her more. Point out edible plants and ones that held medicinal properties.
It was safe to say she’d obviously never had a kill switch implanted since she’d never been on a mission, so if the thought of taking her own life had occurred to her, she’d have had to enact it herself in her room. And even then, she was too valuable and they’d probably do everything they could to keep her alive. Restrain her, sedate her and just drain her of her lifeblood over and over again to dope up soldiers like Rix, Zane and me.
I turned back around to watch her as she swam in the water like a beautiful mermaid.
She looked so … peaceful.
I’d been the first to wake up when we were in the bunk below, and she’d been facing me. She’d looked peaceful then, too, and I’d lain there and just watched her for far longer than I should have. My cock got stiff in my pants, much like it was now as her naked, creamy frame glistened beneath the black water.
Did she even know what sex was?
We all had tutors to learn math, reading, writing, chemistry, physics and everything else. And when I displayed a savant-like proficiency in technology and science around the age of five, I was put into an accelerated science, technology, math and engineering tutoring program that had me, building bombs before my seventh birthday.
Rix, our third in command, was our sharpshooter. I’d never met anyone with his level of focus, or skill when it came to hitting his target. Nothing made his hand shake, even though our commanders tried. I was pretty sure if they made a bullet small enough, he could shoot it through the eye of a needle from a half mile away.
When Rix wasn’t in sniper mode, though, he was a massive goofball. It was amazing how optimistic and happy he still was given the way we were raised, the things we’d done and how little goodness or joy we’d experienced growing up. As much as his positivity irritated Zane and I once in a while, we also knew how necessary it was to keep up from spiraling into the darkness.
Zane, of course, was the leader. He ran point on all of our missions and was the most strategic minded. He could see a way out of a sticky situation before Rix or I could even fully process what was going on.
But despite our differences, we’d all been schooled in the art of seduction. We spent six months at the compound in Sector Eight in order to learn how to seduce. We were taught how to manipulate someone else using your body and your “skills” to get what you wanted from them.
Rix and I had been fourteen. Zane, who is three years older than us, had been sent there at fourteen, too. He’d come back with stories that were as intriguing as they were haunting.
I’d never dreaded getting older so much as I did when I knew I was turning fourteen and would be sent to the “seduction camp.”
We’ve had to use those “skills” from time to time to gain intel from a lead or charm our way into the bed of a dignitary’s wife so we could kill that dignitary, but I’m not going to say that the seduction learning process had been worth it.
We were innocent kids, and yet we were schooled in every sexual act imaginable. Our “first time” was with a Kappa “trainer,” and we were coached and guided from start to finish.
Wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of care and affection for the person first? Meanwhile, the woman coaching me had been twice my age and cold as ice as she lay back, spread her legs, and told me to lick her. Then she critiqued my every move.
You might say that we didn’t know any different since we were raised by these psychopaths and have never had a real life or family. But we did know different.
We’d been out in the real world enough to know how it wassupposedto be. How it used to be. And our fucked-up upbringing and training was far from it.
“What do you think about what she said about Neffers?” Rix asked, glancing at Zane and me. “Think she’s telling the truth?”
“I didn’t detect a heart rate spike like she might be lying,” I said. “Nervous about telling us and that we might betray her and the revolution, but not that she was lying.”
