“That is enough!” he barked. He looked at me like he was staring at a stranger, like I was some NAO sympathizer who refused to see the error of my ways. “I never should’ve let you do this. Look at you, coming home after hours alone with that pathetic excuse for a man, agreeing to do God-knows-what with him, then defending him as if the blood on his hands and the desecration of your body aren’t unforgivable sins.”
I blinked, shocked into speechlessness. Desecration? Lucas had done nothing but try to protect me from the moment I met him.
Theo would know that if he’d ever bothered to ask.
He never had. That was his problem—assuming he already knew.
“What would your parents say?” he asked as I gaped. “I promised your father I’d watch out for you, and this is what I’ve let you become.”
A wave of affront passed over me, hot and cold all at once. I pitched my voice low, daring him to insult me. “What have I become, Theo?”
He said nothing.
I stepped closer to the desk, supporting my weight on the tips of my fingers. “Are you insinuating I’m a whore?”
His silence spoke more than words ever could.
Whore. Damaged. Compromised.
Maybe he was right.
I stood before the general of the Defiance, wearing a Hunter’s clothes, armed with his weapons, his taste still saturating the back of my tongue. Lucas killed thirty-two people yesterday, and I’d rewarded him by inviting him inside my body.
Why had I done it? For the hope he’d keep giving me information? Keep allowing himself to live? Keep looking at me like I mattered to him?
But Theo hadaskedme to do this, and now he was judging me for it. If I was damaged, he was the one holding the weapon. If I was a whore, he was the pimp who sold me.
Rage erupted, scalding my skin. “You gave me away for the mere promise of useful information, and you have the gall to insult me for doing exactly what you wanted me to do?”
“I never wanted you to do it. Williams?—”
“You didn’t use the words, but you begged me to fuck him into compliance. Are you happy you got what you wanted? Did I play my part well enough for you?”
He winced. “Sophia?—”
“Don’t! You don’t get to stand there and accuse him of being an unforgivable sinner and me a dirty whore when yougaveme to him. You sacrificed me to the slaughter, and all he has ever done is try to protect me.”
Theo snorted. “Protectyou? Is that how he protects you?” He gestured toward my mussed hair, my rumpled clothes. “You have teeth marks on your throat.”
My breaths deepened as fire spread through my cheeks, and my heart pounded in my chest. “I wanted his marks on my skin.”
His eyes widened.
“Ask me what he makes me do for him. Go ahead, ask me.”
He didn’t.
“Ask me if I like what he does to me.”
He ground his teeth. “Stop it, Sophia.”
“Ask me, Theo. Don’t you want to know if I’ve been a good little slut for him?”
Theo stared at my face for a long time. “I’m not sure what you’re implying here, but let me remind you who this man is. In the last year, he has personally executed dozens of people, and that’s not including the people he killed in battle.”
“Again, I ask, how many people haveyoukilled?”
His jaw hardened.
