Someone moved in beside him, swinging his gun barrel to crack Jordan in the head. My prince was ready though, swiftly smashing his hand against that person's forearm, dislodging the weapon, and then uppercutting him in the jaw so that the only person going night-night was the idiot who’d thought it wise to attack.
Also, Jordan could fucking fight. I'd be fanning my face right now if we weren't in complete mortal danger.
Someone else moved forward, and I kicked into gear, breaking their nose with a well-placed jab to the face. He backed off screaming, and I resumed my position at Jordan's six.
"Don't hurt the target," someone shouted from the back of the lot. "Red East leader will kill whoever harms her."
Her?
They're waiting for you...
Fuck, guess that confirmed it—I was definitely the target and they couldn't hurt me without consequences.
This was going to be fun.
Jordan and I fought back to back, and we took down dozens of them before they overwhelmed us with sheer numbers. I saw the final strike coming, slamming against his temple, and when Jordan's gaze met mine, his eyes fluttering as unconsciousness crept across his face, I screamed out my fear and frustration.
"Don't hurt him!" I cried, fighting to get to his side, but far too many resistance fighters stood between us. They had just not stopped coming. Over and fucking over.
We'd fought strongly, but two could not beat an army. Not today anyway.
Chapter 3
The door clanged, and I didn't bother to lift my head. Same fucking routine, day after day, and there was no point in reacting.
I’d been here for three weeks.
Three weeks trapped in a cage, allowed out once in the morning for the bathroom—when they occasionally let me shower in freezing water—and once in the evening. Between those two outings, all I got was some nice torture as they attempted to break me. The orders to not hurt me had ended after that first day, but they had at least stopped short of sexual assault or rape. So far anyway.
"Good morning, little bug," my toilet warden said. The woman was in her sixties and had a taser she was not afraid to use and a kink where she chained my hands and feet up so I wouldn't fight her. There was no reason to hurt her again though. The first time I'd knocked her out, I’d gotten into the next room—the only way out from here—to find thirty armed resistance members standing around like they were expecting me.
Some of them hadn't been back the next day, but the number of these fuckers was limitless. They just kept replacing the ones I broke.
Since then, I'd been learning as much as I could and cataloging everything. Brute strength wasn't going to get me out of here. I had to be smarter.
"Is Jordan alive?"
That was always my first question of the day.
"Yep," she said in her heavy accent of indeterminate origin. I had no reason to believe she was telling the truth, I had not seen or heard him in twenty-one days, but it made me feel better whenever I heard thatyep.
"Where is Rafe?"
Always my second question, and not because he was less important than Jordan but because I didn't even know if he was here.
She didn't reply, the same as always.
Fuck this place. Maybe I'd just knock her out anyway for fun.
But by the time I’d been returned to my cell—clean, starving, and exhausted—I couldn’t be bothered attacking her. So she got a stay of ass-whooping today. Who knew about tomorrow.
"Red East leader will be by shortly," the woman told me, shaking her ample hips as she wandered out the door.
I didn't reply. What the fuck could I say?
The Red East leader was a short man with pale skin, white hair, and red-rimmed blue eyes. He had a heavy, harsh accent, his words cutting off short and sharp. He also had heavy fists, ones he used when he chained me to the walls and beat the fuck out of me every day.
Today he entered at the same time as my breakfast, so I didn't get a chance to eat before he was gesturing for me to walk to the wall. The large gun he had pointed at me, not to mention the second gun pointed by the man behind him—a different one each time—was enough to have me moving toward the cuffs.
