The first bandage I unwrapped was my palm. It was still healing, the skin nearly gone, but I couldn’t help my curiosity. There, in the center of the lighter’s square, was Viktor’s initials stamped into my skin. I wet my lips, releasing a shaky breath as I moved to unwrap the bandage over my left forearm. I tugged the tape upgently, my chest dipping at the sight of thick black ink just below my DOLL tattoo.
CREED.
My fingers shook as I pressed the bandage back down, tears pricking my eyes as the door to the cell opened. Guards shoved Thorne inside, the chains around his thin ankles and wrists clanking as he stumbled and fell. He slammed down between the bunks at the same time the door clanged shut. He was so malnourished. I could see his hip bone peaking through his skin, his ribs stark, but then he grabbed hold of the bunk opposite me, the one that used to be Rafe’s, and his arms shook as he dragged himself up onto the mattress. A heavy sigh peeled out of him, his dark lashes fluttering, and his hair buzzed down. The CREED tattoo on his throat rippled as he swallowed thickly.
Then—slowly, painfully—he turned his cheek into the pillow and saw me. Nothing crossed his face, his green eyes so deeply hollowed that no light swam there anymore. He just stared at me, and I stared at him. The door opened twice more for Kane and Rafe. They didn’t attempt to climb the bunks. Kane laid on thefloor between Thorne and I, staring up at the ceiling, his blonde hair matted red. Rafe collapsed in the corner by the door, his back to us and his forehead tucked against the wall, his CREED tattoo across his shoulder blades the same black as the bruises littering his skin. Clothes were thrown in, but it took hours before any of us could get to them.
I was lying on my good ear when one of them tapped my spine. I jerked around, wide-eyed, always expecting to find a Buyer before a friend. I sputtered a gasp when Rafe took my face between his hands. He peered down, one knee on the bed as he leaned over me. His brows were drawn, his eyes flicking between mine, before he let go of my face with a small, wounded sound escaping his lips. I didn’t understand at first until one of his hands came close again, his fingers gently brushing under my left eye. He moved his hand to where a permanent dent was in my temple and then to myleft ear. He snapped his fingers, the sound coming to me dull and distant through my right ear. He did it a few times, his face sharpening with rage as he came to terms with the fact I was deaf in that ear.
He pushed off my bed and left me as quickly as he’d arrived. He hunkered down in his corner of the cell, grasping his head and glancing my way a few times in pain.
I turned my back, tears burning in my eyes.
We were hopeless, wounded, vulnerable. Stripped. Cold. Capable of being, finally, beaten into something darker, more violent.
?Arden?
There were three commanders blackmailed into honing Creed, and none of them knew the definition of mercy. They marched us lower than the cells, past steel doors I hadn’t known existed. What waited was an arena. Trenches cut into concrete. Ropes vanishing into shadow. The Yard. That’s what the commanders called that place, but Creed knew it as it was—another fucking hell.
We ran until our feet bled. We carried logs across our shoulders, sandbags lashed to our backs, whistles screaming in our ears. If you fell, a commander kicked you until you found your feet again. Stopping wasn’t an option. Ever.
Another drilled obedience. He circled with a stopwatch and ordered us to holdpositions until muscles trembled and tore. Planks. Squats. Arms locked overhead as we clutched rifles he’d weighted down. If anyone dropped their gun, he sent me to Room 82. Weakness wasn’t allowed, and if it showed, dehumanization was the cure. I never said what happened in Room 82. I…couldn’t. But the guys—they knew enough to hold onto their fucking guns. Any time they couldn’t, when the commanders practically forced them to drop their weapons, they stayed up well past curfew in the cell, waiting for me to be returned to them. They did their best to take care of me, but I didn’t want to be touched. I hated what I was becoming in that place; I was the thing Halden hurt to hurt the others.
But it was the last commander that was our true undoing. Along the perimeter of the Yard, they’d built a mock village, bringing in people Halden wanted dead. We weren’t told what they did, whether or not they were innocent; we were expected to raid the village, find anything alive, and kill it. The commander scattered us between various two-story buildings, ordered us to move as one despite the distance. We tried, but Rafe and I were always a beat too slow. For me, I was still adjusting to being deaf in one ear, only able to make outmy environment with one eye. It sucked, but Rafe had a far harder time, his eyes darting but never catching every cue sent his way. After a few months, I made the adjustments I needed, but Rafe could only do so much when he couldn't hear us through the provided walkie talkies. We paid for it in blood, and I was sent to Room 82 despite my progress. Every time I was, it was like Rafe receded deeper into himself.
Halden gave us a small mercy when we neared the end of our first year—an ASL instructor. It was supposed to help our communication, make us truly unstoppable, because if Rafe could understand us, then there would benothingwe couldn’t kill.
“Right, left, and forward,” the instructor said. She was pretty in her late thirties with blond hair and a petite frame. I remember thinking she looked far too innocent for the compound with her slicked back, tidy bun and crisp, winged eyeliner. I wasn’t even sure sheknewexactly who she was instructing or where she was, but there was a day we came in beaten and the smile she always offered disappeared. She’d gone pale, swallowed hard, and simply went through the list of signs again:right, left, forward.She’d make the sign andpoint at the word on the whiteboard behind her so that Rafe would understand.
The thing was…he didn’t. That became evident as we went into drill after drill, Thorne, Kane, and I using the signs but Rafe fucking up repeatedly.
“We learned ASL for you!” Kane shouted, flicking between the signs.
We stood in our cell, the three of us surrounding Rafe where he sat on the edge of his bed, holding his head and looking at the floor. Kane snapped his fingers down in Rafe’s line of sight, and finally he looked up at us, his jaw hard and dark eyes blank. “What the fuck, man?” Kane growled.
“I didn’t go through what I went through,” Thorne said, grabbing Rafe’s shoulder and dropping to a kneel so their gazes were level, “only to die for your fucking pride. Do you understand? You need to step up.”
I watched Thorne and Kane go back and forth while Rafe said nothing. There was a moment where Rafe’s gaze shifted to mine, and there was such a deep torment hidden there, it made me grab Kane and Thorne. “Back off,” I hissed and tugged on them.
Kane cursed and shook me away. “Arden, he’s going to get us killed.”
“And?” I asked, turning my dead expression to his. “So what Kane? Is there something you’re chasing after? That you have to live for?”
Kane wavered. Pain cracked over his expression, the first I’d witnessed in months. “Yes,” he breathed. “You. All off us. That is worth something.Weare worth something. We may not talk anymore, but we remain Creed. That’s not something Viktor made or Halden made. Creed isus. It’s what we are when we’retogether. That seizes to exist if one of us bows out.”
“Then back the fuck off,” I said again. My voice was flat, every bit of emotion long ironed out of my tone. “We don’t attack each other.” Then with slightly more venom, "Besides, if anyone should yell at Rafe for being punished by his failure to comply, it should be me."
I'd seen the inside of Room 82 over a dozen times that week. I could barely walk, so raw and torn between my legs that Dr. Davidson had to provide me with pad-lined underwear. My only consolation was being able to get access to my lighter when I went in. I'd acquired a few more burn wounds, but it was clear Halden enjoyed it when I killed the Buyers. The quicker I did, the quicker I was back to my cot and able to rest.
I looked to Thorne, yearning still burrowed in my chest for who we used to be,howwe used to be. “If Rafe wants to die for his pride, we let him. That’s his choice, and it’s the only fucking choice we get. If this is it for him, then let it be.”
Thorne stared at me. Then he nodded once, succinct, before he climbed into his bunk without a word.
Kane, however, wasn't ready to let it go. He shoved at Rafe's shoulder, forcing Rafe's gaze up to his. "I thought you loved her, man," Kane spit. "Look at her. She can barely stand because of you."
"Kane," I snapped, grasping the frame of the bunk to steady myself. "This isnothis fault. Don't you dare put that on him."
"Yes, it is, Arden," Kane argued. "I know you're used to being nothing more than a well-used whore, but that doesn't make it right."
