He never really did.
“You were losing your way,” he said instead. “The world you ran to is violent. Immoral.”
I let that sit for half a second just so it could rot in the air between us.
“Immoral,” I repeated. “Like burning a girl’s hands in front of a crowd? Like handing her to a man twice her age to teach her obedience? Like branding her. Like taking her face because she said no?”
He swallowed.
“Being abused at the hands of Shepherds,” I said, voice steady. “What do you call that?”
He exhaled through his nose, slow. “You were defiant, Lark.”
There it was. Not concern. Not regret. A complaint.
“That’s why you were given to Jasper,” he continued. “To teach you control.”
Cold slid through my ribs, clean and pointed, but my posture didn’t change. My hands were bound, but my spine was mine.
My eyes widened anyway, because disbelief is not weakness. It’s clarity. “You knew,” I said. “You knew I’d been given to him.”
His mouth tightened, frustration flickering across his face like he hated being dragged into the truth. “You were lost to me,” he said. “I couldn’t help you then.”
“You didn’t try,” I snapped.
His eyes flashed. “You don’t know what I did.”
“I know what you didn’t do,” I shot back.
He stared at me, and for a second I saw the boy in him, the one who’d been young and scared and hungry for approval. Then it was gone, covered by the Shepherd mask he wore like armor.
“But now,” he said, voice gentler, “Jasper has agreed to share you with me if I helped him. If I proved my loyalty. We can be together again.”
My stomach twisted, disgust rising so fast it almost made me gag.
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked.
His face hardened. “Don’t speak like that.”
I barked a laugh. “Don’t speak like what? Like I’m a human being?”
“That tone,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it. Like he truly believed tone was the problem. “That defiance. That’s why you need discipline. Julie, my vessel, has agreed to guide you.”
I stared at him, trying to make his words rearrange into something that didn’t make my skin crawl. They didn’t. “You have a wife,” I said, each word clipped.
He lifted his chin. “A vessel.”
“And she’s agreeing to all this?” I pushed. “She’s fine with you dragging women into the woods and ‘sharing’ them like property?”
“Of course,” he said, like it was obvious. Like I was the one being difficult. “As a Shepherd, I can have as many vessels as I want.”
The sickness in me settled into something hotter, something steadier. “You make me sick.”
His jaw clenched. “You’ll change your mind once you’re tamed.”
There it was again. Not love. Not longing. Ownership.
The SUV slowed. My body registered it before my brain did, the forward pull easing, the tires shifting onto something rougher. Gravel again. The vehicle rocked through a rut and my shoulder hit the door. We stopped, and a door opened up front, and cold air spilled inside.
