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“Cayde, stop,” Dean says, his voice steady as Winter walks towards him, but I can hear the misery in it. “Don’t fight.” He looks over at Cayde, and then at Jaxon. “They’ll make it worse. Don’t—”
I can hear the failure in his voice, the defeat. He looks at me as Winter approaches the altar, as Philip St. Vincent and Jaxon’s father spread a white sheet over it, and I can see everything that he wants to say written across it.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
Winter reaches for the tie of her robe, and I stare at her, stunned. I can’t imagine ever willingly allowing myself to be fucked on an altar in front of my future in laws, but Winter looks as if she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment. She lets the robe fall open, sliding from her shoulders to the stone floor, and her hair spills over her shoulders as her naked body is revealed to the entire room.
She’s gorgeous. There’s no way around it. Her figure is perfect, her breasts full and high, her waist slender, her flat stomach leading down to the perfectly shaved apex of her thighs. She looks every bit the glowing bride, and I can’t help but stare, feeling as if I’m having an out of body experience.
This has to be a fucking dream.
It can’t be real.
But it is.
Dean looks at me helplessly as Jaxon and Cayde’s father go to either side of Winter, helping her onto the altar. She lays back, arms above her head, legs spread and waiting for Dean. I can see the wheels turning in his head, trying to think of what to do, how to stall. How far to go, before he tries to stop this somehow.
But he knows as well as I do that we’ve been outsmarted.
There’s no way out.
“It’s okay,” I mouth. No matter what happens next, I don’t want to watch Dean be hurt, or die in front of me. I don’t wantanyof us to die, but if we fight back right now, we’ll all suffer. There’s got to be some way—
I look at the altar, the goblet on one side of Winter and the dagger on the other, placed ceremoniously, and a wave of frustration washes over me. If I could get to that dagger somehow—but there’s men surrounding me, Sons everywhere. If I so much as move, I’ll be stopped before I can make so much as an inch of progress. And they’ll make sure that I don’t get another chance.
“Begin the ritual, son.” Dean’s father speaks clearly and loudly, the order in his voice plain, and Dean steps forward helplessly, reaching for his zipper. I half expect them to tell him to disrobe, but when no one says anything, I realize this is part of it. It’s a power play—a clothed man and a naked woman, performing a ritual. That’s all this is about, male power and male rule, using women to further their plans, to make them stronger, to give them what they need and then throwing them aside.
Using us. Sacrificing us.
Murderingus.
“I can’t.” Dean fumbles helplessly, frustration coloring his tone. His cock is out, limp and soft, and he grips it, trying to stroke himself to an erection, but he can’t. There’s no response. He might be trying to go along with the situation until he can figure a way out, but his cock isn’t on board with the plan.
If it didn’t put us in so much danger, I’d be proud of him.
“The sacrifice.” Mark Blackmoor nods towards me. “Make her useful.”
Someone behind me hauls me up, dragging me towards Dean. I’m shoved back down roughly onto my knees, Dean turning towards me with a look of helpless misery on his face, his cock hanging limply in front of me. I don’t have to be told what I’m expected to do.
Get him hard, so he can fuck another woman in front of me. Hisbride. The woman who tried to have me killed.
So I can be thrown away, Dean’s friends and my other lovers murdered, my best friend violated, and the cycle of violence and rape and torture and sacrifice can keep going on, for a generation and a generation and a generation after that.
Anger rises up in me, hot and thick, pouring through my veins, my adrenaline spiking. I think of Natalie, left for dead in the street. My mother, burned alive in her home. Lives and dreams and hopes and love, destroyed, burned and buried, so that these men can keep their power.
And it won’t stop.
Unless I find the strength to do something, to risk it all one last time, it won’tever fucking stop.
Like fuck will I let that happen.
I look up at Dean, taking in his face one last time, just in case this all goes wrong. Just in case I’ve miscalculated, in case this is just another stupid idea, one last foolish Hail Mary in an effort not to let them win. I don’t dare take the time to look at Cayde or Jaxon, but I hold their faces in my mind too, using them for strength.
We have one chance. Just one.
And it’s up to me.
