Using her slim opportunity, Dom slipped past us both and headed toward the gym. “She’ll need to be initiated. Properly. Can’t have a stranger skulking around our work.”
“Probably for the best. She saw The Gauntlet tonight.” The words left my mouth before I could even consider whether Dom should hear them. From across the foyer, Leo shot me an annoyed glance.
Oops.
Hissing at us now, Dom’s eyes flicked between the two of us. “Who let that happen? I knew I should’ve made you lock her in here.”
Leo took the heat. “Schedule shift. They grabbed a guy who needed to be tried immediately. Didn’t realize it until it was too late.”
“Better not happen again.” Dom growled.
Still pissed, Leo snapped back. “Better not see you put your hands on her like that again. Or I’ll have to meet you in the pit.”
A laugh ripped through Dom’s chest, the thought of a fight between them some sick joke to her. “Funny. Why don’t you go back to the room I gave you and think about who would win that one?”
Before Leo could make a move, Dom left the room and disappeared into the winding, mysterious maze of this house.
In the silence, reality set in. Initiation was serious shit and after my Bunny’s reaction to the events in The Hollow, I couldn’t be sure she was ready for it. Especially if she was truly some sort of asset to The Oracle, not the unassuming woman we thought we’d rescued that night but instead some cog in some larger, foggy plan.
Or maybe they just didn’t want us to send her back to that monster.
Breaking the eerie quiet, I sighed. “Now what?”
52
KIERA
I dreamedabout him all night. That man, in his tattered clothes. The way he bled.
The way Dom carried me, how her steel grip burned into my thighs.
When my eyes bolted open the next morning, I felt hot irons on my skin. Peeling my shorts up, red and purple bloomed where she’d touched me.
It was real. All of it.
Bringing my knees to my chin, I sat up in the king-sized bed and pushed off the fluffy blankets. They didn’t belong in what had become a cold, unwelcoming room overnight.
I felt like I’d been grounded, like I’d been yelled at and put in time out. I wasn't sure why. As much as Dom postured, we were nearly the same age, and I owed her nothing. I’d wanted to get out of here, to finally leave my saviors in their chaotic, disturbing mess.
But that wasn’t in Dom’s plan.
Always the contrarian.
I hadn’t been manhandled like that, tossed in my room like a screaming toddler, since I was one. And even then, my father was far too gentle for such a punishment.
Now, Maura was a different case.
Nonetheless, I fucking hated it. With all the doors locked and all my possible escape routes more like suicide missions, all I could do was hug my knees.
So now what?
Looking around the room, I truly couldn’t fathom how the fuck I could get out of here.
I’d started to love the way my saviors kept me protected — even from their own darkness.
But now they were my captors, and I wasn’t sure they’d play nice anymore.
Maybe it had all been an act: lulling me into a sense of security just to rip it away from me and make me their property.
