Defiance.
Soldiers like Adam flocked to us to fight. Todefy.
After the attacks on our peaceful neighbor, worldwide panic set in. Within days, Europe sent troops to bolster Canada’s tiny military and neutralized our overseas bases. In a week, cyber-attacks and EMPs took down our internet and power.
World war erupted, everything destabilized, and for a scary few weeks, I was certain it would all end in a nuclear holocaust.
But that never happened.
Instead, information disappeared, trade was disrupted, and the civil war became our entire lives. We lost access to medicines. To gas. To food.
Including chocolate—my favorite.
I’d done many things for chocolate, but never anything like what I suspected Lucas Scott would want from me. At once, I succumbed to thoughts of those things—being choked, bent over in humiliation, forced to beg for it until he gave me the information I needed.
It’s your turn to suffer,I thought.You deserve this.
I had three days to prepare and no idea how to do it. Maybe I should try to make myself as ugly as possible. Would it anger him to receive an unattractive, unkempt woman? Would he punish me for it?
Probably, since he was a Hunter specifically requesting a woman.
Maybe he’d expect me to be flirty and accommodating, like an escort. Did I know how to do that? I’d been sleeping with only one person for the last year, and Jayden was only a fuck buddy, someone to relieve the stress. I didn’tflirtwith him.
Well, if Lucas Scott was expecting skill, then fuck him. He’d be disappointed and could request someone else.
Still, cold shivers of dread chased themselves down my spine and goosebumps rose across my body. I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t ready.
I couldn’t do it, could I?
I waffled back and forth between duty and desire, pitting selfishness against self-sacrifice.
An off-key twang of Adam’s guitar jolted me from my thoughts when the front door of headquarters banged open, spilling chaos into the house. I locked eyes with him before we both raced downstairs at the noise, shouts preceding carnage as bleeding bodies were dragged inside.
Adam and Devon scurried to help while the rest of the medic team flooded in. Springing into action, I helped transport the injured soldiers to the hospital wing. It filled quickly.Tooquickly. So many bodies and too few ways to help. I pressed both hands against the blood spurting from a crossbow injury to a man’s chest, trying to stop the bleeding with pressure and prayer. He gasped for oxygen. The bolt rose and fell with each breath.
“Look at me,” I said.
His chest heaved.
I glanced at his dog tags. “Aiden, look at me!”
His brown eyes met mine.
“You’re going to be okay. Alright?”
We both knew he wouldn’t.
“Just do it!” he hissed between breaths.
No.
I didn’t want to.
If I ripped the bolt from his chest, his time spent in agony would shorten with his life. We had no resources to save him from an injury like this. No surgeries. No blood. Nothing. This was the way of things.
But choosing to take his life instead of letting it end naturally…
“Do it!” he demanded.
