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She pulls away quickly and strides toward the door, opening it to reveal Ephraim on the other side. He gives me an ugly glare when he sees how I’m dressed, looking away like he’s disgusted.
“Come here, Esther,” he says.
I walk forward like the meek, stupid girl I am.
“Back to your room,” he says. “You’ll wait there until it’s time for the ceremony—anddon’ttry anything.”
“What ceremony?” I ask, but Ephraim shoots me a scowl.
“You don’t get to talk anymore,” he says. “Not after what you did.”
So I shut my mouth.
I won’t say a word.
CHAPTER FIVE
?
JAVI
I look out at the choppy water with a sigh, trying to figure out if we can leave today or if we’ll have to stay another night. We need to get out of here—me and Boyd, and maybe the beta we took from the mess. I’m not a man of honor by any means, but this place is off in more ways than one, and it’s not just about the payout we got for bringing in a defenseless omega.
It’s everything about the Rig—the way Gideon acts, the way they keep communal women in the mess, the way Gideon’s generals misbehave. Things were harsh on the barge where I grew up off the coast of what used to be Miami, but it was nothing like this. The Rig isn’t civilized at all; it’s barbaric.
We won’t be taking another contract from these people.
The girl’s name turned out to be Lila, and she hit it off with Boyd right away after we took her out of Abel’s clutches. Boyd tries not to tangle with alphas, but he was more than happy to smuggle her out—and she, in turn, offered to tell us everything she knows about the Rig.
Things are way more fucked up here than I thought they were. I was here years ago on another job early in my mercenary career, but a lot has changed since then. The Angels have relaxed their hold on the south and, apparently, a bunch of omegas made a break for it from the Rig in 2197.
Gideon and his people kept it hushed up, but it made a lot of things change around here. It was already bad, but Lila tells us everything got worse. The omegas were made to stay indoors at all times, trapped with their mates. Beta females were forced into servitude, there for the taking for any alpha who was unmated. And anyone who disobeyed…?
“We need to leave,” Boyd mutters over a quick lunch in the mess, Lila tucked into his side. He’s not what I would describe as a good guy, but he does what he can when the opportunity arises, and I have to give him credit for that. “This place is gonna get us killed.”
“I thought you were eager to stay,” I reply.
“Sure I was—until you picked a fight with one of the top alphas on the Rig,” he says.
“Please don’t leave me,” Lila says. “I don’t think I’ll be safe.”
“I’ll buy you off Gideon if that’s what it takes,” Boyd says. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’re safe.”
He kisses the top of her head and the beta snuggles closer.
Scumbag.
This is all a game for him.
“We have to stay at least one more night for the weather to break,” I say. “Our little skiff won’t take a big hurricane this far out—we’ll sink for sure.”
“And I thought you were the one who wanted to leave?” Boyd smirks.
“I want us to live,” I grunt.
But there’s more to it than that, and he knows it.
There’s something horrible going on here on the Rig, and I’m convinced it has something to do with Peaches.
