I closed my eyes and welcomed it.
Unfortunately, I woke up a few minutes later as someone set me on a hay bale, trying carefully not to jostle me.
“Not the asshole,” I surmised before I’d even opened my eyes.
“The asshole found someone to, uh, question,” the softer, harrowed voice replied. Devil. What a fucking name.
“You can say torture, I don’t care,” I muttered, squinting my swollen eyes open and giving the blonde-haired, thirty-something guy a cursory look. He wore the same jacket as the other guy, but looked less like a criminal and more like he’d gotten lost on the way to a skatepark. “What’s with the dress code?”
He raised an eyebrow. “What’s with the attitude?”
“If I could straighten my middle finger, I’d flip you off right now,” I said hoarsely, the world swaying. Or maybeIwas swaying.
“Hey, don’t pass out,” he said urgently. Devil really wasn’t a name that inspired trust and confidence. Neither was Cobra. “The medics are working their way down the line, you’ll get seen to soon.”
“If anyone touches me, they die,” I snarled, teeth bared as if that meant anything from a beta. I didn’t have sharp canines, just dull beta teeth. That wouldn’t stop me gnawing my way through someone’s neck to rip their throat out.
I looked beyond Devil’s rugged, artfully stubbled face and blinked when I saw the vast fields that spread out around us, a couple dozen vans and cars arranged in the wheat, tyre tracks carved through the stalks. And just behind them was a big, stone structure I’d never glimpsed before—because I was drugged on the way in, of course. The piece of shit traffickers were professional. Arrayed around the big house were seven barns. Seven.
Seven.
I must have said it out loud because Devil ran a hand down his face, then dragged it through his hair. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Seven.”
There must have been ten people in the barn where I’d been restrained and—nope, not thinking about it. Never thinking about it again. Not fucking ever. The barn wherenothing at allhappened. I curled inward, ignoring the pain that exploded through my shoulders, my ribs, my stomach, and inside me, each a detonation that made my eyes water.
Ten times seven. Seventy. These fucking pigs hadseventyof us locked up here, available at a price to—to—
“Ah, shit. Comforting isn’t really my strong suit, but—calm down?”
“Youcalm down,” I snarled, my breathing racing, each rough scratch of air down my throat making my ribs howl, spike, and stab me with pain. White spots crowded into my vision this time, to add a little variety.
“We’re here to get you out, yeah?”
“You don’t—sound confident—of that,” I wheezed. I was definitely swaying now, my head spinning.
“What happened in that barn isnevergoing to happen again. I give you my word.”
I swayed a little too far to the left, and knew I would fall off the trailer. I slammed into a solid arm instead, and had to bitedown a cry. But it hurt less than crashing into the ground would have. “The word of the devil. Wow.”
The scent of rum and leather swirled around me, invading my senses, and it was such a pleasant difference to cum and piss and terrified desperation that I endured the pain in my ribs to draw more of it into my lungs.
“Devil’s a sappy bastard,” Asshole Number One told me, appearing from nowhere. That, or I blacked out for a second there. Possible. “You can take him at his word; he’s not the sort to break a promise. And he’s right. None of us would touch a rescue. Kinda goes against our whole ‘kill abusers and rehabilitate their victims’ shtick.”
“Not a victim, fucklord,” I spat, trying to open my eyes but finding it difficult enough to breathe let alone adding in more bodily functions.
“Sure, asshole,” he agreed.
“Cobra,” Devil hissed. “Don’t call her asshole. I’m so sorry—what’s your name, darling?”
I forced my eyes open to give Devil a lethal glare. “Call me that again. I dare you.”
“You’re not in a position to attack anyone,” Cobra pointed out, almost amused.
“Hi, there,” a soothing, motherly voice interrupted our conversation, and a school-teacher-ish woman with a white coat over a lemon yellow cardigan pushed the men aside. I braced for their temper, but they allowed themselves to be bustled back a few steps. “I’m Miranda, one of the doctors the Knights called in.”
“Knights,” I echoed, managing to summon some scornful attitude.
“I know,” she replied, assessing me with her eyes, seeing my broken hands, my bruises, my blood, the way I hunched, the arm that hung so fucking wrongly from my shoulder. “It’sa ridiculous name, but they really do charge in like knights on their chargers to save people. And they end the lives of monsters, so I’m inclined to think they deserve their name.”
