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The door swings open and my father and brother appear at the door, Ephraim lurking behind Gideon like his little lackey.
Just like it always was before I left.
“Good,” Gideon says. “You’re awake.”
“What do you want?” I ask, my voice so weak I can barely hear it myself.
“To make sure you’re fed, clothed, cared for…” Gideon sneers. “It’s my duty as a father, after all.”
I don’t know how to respond. I’m too scared to speak, and I can’t tell him he’s a liar even thoughhe is. I don’t have a voice here—not on the Rig.
“Please let me go,” I ask.
“Not just yet, Esther,” he says. “Ephraim—bring her here.”
Ephraim barges past Gideon and grabs me by the arm, hauling me to my feet. I’m filthy and still trembling, my body shaking so badly that I almost fall down when Ephraim grabs me. His freckled face glares down at me, and it makes it all the worse how much he looks like me.
I hate being here. I hate these people.I hate them, I hate them…
“Get her downstairs,” Gideon says. “We need to get her ready.”
“Ready for what?” I ask as I stumble past my father.
He doesn’t say anything. He just watches and laughs.
Ephraim practically carries me down the stairs, back toward the sitting room where I saw my father’s mates last night. The fire still crackles in the hearth, the heat from the flames making my skin itch as we walk past it. There’s another room off to the side here—an opulent bathroom that reminds me of the bathing pools at home in the Austin den.
Ephraim tosses me inside.
“Clean her,” he says. “Bathe her. Get her ready.”
A meek voice comes from my right, a woman I didn’t even see standing in the corner. She’s small with short dark hair, her pale blue eyes darting around like she’s afraid someone might leap out of the shadows. “Yes, my lord.”
What…? He never did this before I left.
Gideonnevermade his mates call his sons stuff like this.
What have I done?
“I’ll be waiting outside if she causes any trouble,” Ephraim grunts.
Then he closes the door behind him.
I look at the woman with wide eyes, waiting for her to tell me what to do. She’s about my age, early twenties I think, her stomach slightly swollen. She’s pregnant—pregnant withmy sibling, I would have to think. It makes my stomach roil to think of these women being trapped here when it’s my fault they’re treated so horribly.
I should never have left.
The punishment wasn’t worth it.
She comes around behind me and gets to work on the ropes at my wrist, untying them with deft hands. She barely makes a sound; if it weren’t for the fact that she was untying me, I wouldn’t even know she was there.
“Hi,” I whisper. “I’m Peaches. What’s your name?”
She pauses—but just for a second—before she proceeds with undoing the knots in the rope.
“You may call me Two,” she says.
It’s like a punch to the gut. They don’t even havenames. He’s even taken that from these omegas.
