“Did one of those bastards ever touch you or hurt you sexually?” he ground out.
She flushed but shook her head.Thank God. He took in several deep breaths to rein in the rage that had threatened to consume him.
“I was a pariah. It was forbidden. But not for the reasons you might think. It wasn’t because they were protecting me or cared whether I was hurt. The elders had a stupid superstition that if I ever lost my virginity I would lose my power to heal. I was grateful,” she whispered. “Their stupidity and ignorance is the only thing I was ever grateful to them for.”
Finally he could breathe again, until she said her next words.
“But it was coming to an end,” she said, fear flooding her features once more. But more pronounced, more raw than any fear she’d shown until now.
Before he could demand to know what she meant, she went on, her voice trembling as much as her body was.
“I had always planned to escape,” she admitted. “It was the only thing that kept me sane. The idea of one day escaping. But they were so careful and they kept me under lock and key most of the time. The only times I was ever able to sneak from my room were after a healing session. Because I’m always so weak and exhausted afterward, they were more lax about watching me. They’d dump me in my room, but no one bothered to guard me. I played up my weakness, making it seem as though I was utterly helpless after healing someone. Then I would sneak into one of the elders’ quarters, where they had information that was supposedly forbidden. It’s how I learned of the outside world, what little I had time to learn. It was also the confusing and contradictory teachings of the cult. I knew it would take me time, years, to learn enough and plan my escape, but I didn’t care. It became my obsession and the way I’ve dealt with the punishments I received. I would imagine being free somewhere far away where I was just another face in the crowd and no one knew who I was or what I could do. I just wanted to be normal and to have a normal life,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.
Her sadness made Isaac’s chest ache, but more than that he wanted her happy, for him to be the one who made her happy.
“You can have that now, baby,” he said gently, palming her cheek and caressing away the tiny damp trails.
“But I can’t,” she said sadly. “They’ll never stop looking for me.”
“Tell me aboutthey. Who isthey,and if you lived in such seclusion, how would anyone outside the cult know anything about you or that you even existed?”
“Because the elders sold me to them,” she said bitterly.
“What the fuck? Who did they sell you to, Jenna, and is that why you ran?”
She nodded miserably, biting into her lip to keep from crying again. “I knew I had to take a chance and escape or I’d never have another opportunity.”
“Who did they sell you to?” he repeated patiently. “And are they the ones after you now? The ones who shot me and Shadow?”
She flinched, flushing with guilt. “I don’t know exactly who they are, but they’re dangerous,” she whispered. “They had guns. They always had guns. They offered the elders a lot of money for me but the elders had conditions. One was that I be made available anytime they needed my services and another was that I had to remain untouched.”
She flushed deeply. “Their leader wanted to speak to me alone and he told me I was his property now, and then he laughed and said, ‘Those crazy assholes believe that if you lose your virginity your powers will be gone, but you and I both know that isn’t true, don’t we?’ ”
She shivered and curled her body inward, pressing herself closer to Isaac, though he doubted she was conscious of it.
“He told me that he was going to enjoy fucking a virgin, that he would be the one to break me in, and then his men could have me as often as they wanted. He laughed more and told me that the elders would never have use of my powers again no matter what he’d agreed upon. He planned to kill them all when they came for me.”
Isaac swore viciously, his fingers curling into tight fists as the urge to kill returned. And he would. He’d kill every last one of those fuckers before ever allowing them to touch what was his.
“The exchange was set up for a few days later and I knew I had to escape. I had to take the chance because even if I died, it would be preferable to being sold to those men.”
Isaac closed his eyes, hurting for someone so innocent to have been exposed to so much evil in her young life. The knowledge that she’d embraced death so calmly as an alternative to being used and degraded by the men who’d bought her like a possession nearly broke him.
“God was with me,” she said softly, surprising Isaac with her mention of God. He would have thought that with the twisted aberration the cult presented God as, she would have lost any and all faith in a higher being.
“One of the elders had a heart attack. He was dying and I was called to heal him. Everyone knew how grave his condition was, and until him and then ... you ... I had never healed someone so close to death. So I did just enough that he wouldn’t die and pretended to be completely incapacitated, drained and exhausted. I told them I had to rest and then I would need to do a second session to completely heal him, but that he wouldn’t die. And that after the second time it would be as if the heart attack had never happened and he hadn’t been at death’s door.”
She looked down in shame and his brow furrowed as he looked at her in question, waiting for her to continue.
“I wanted to kill him, to let him die,” she whispered. “It was only because I knew this would be my only opportunity to finally escape that I helped him.”
“He deserved to die,” Isaac bit out. “Don’t waste one minute feeling shame for wanting him to die, baby. After all they put you through, it’s only human to feel the way you did. Not even God could blame you if you had let him die.”
His reassurance seemed to mollify her and she sucked in a deep breath.
“They dragged me to my room and tossed me in, and then they all went back to pray for the elder. To pray,” she said scornfully. “How does one pray to God to save the very face of evil? They didn’t spare a single thought to my escaping because they’d witnessed how weak I was so many times before after I’d healed. And though I had greatly exaggerated my condition, Iwasvery weak, and it took me a while to gain the strength to crawl to the door and drag myself up so I could escape.
“I had found maps in one of the elders’ offices before, so I knew the layout of the compound and which direction was the shortest route through the dense woods surrounding the place. I managed to slip out quietly and then I ran. It was so dark and I was terrified. I couldn’t see where I was going, and just prayed that I was running a straight line through the woods and not going in circles.”
