“Did you lead them here?” the man murmured angrily.
Desperately, I shook my head. “No. I don’t know when they plan to attack, but it’s soon. You need to get out of here,” I insisted and the leering grins on their faces only seemed to grow more perilous. My uneasiness grew tenfold, and I took a step back, but someone cleared their throat behind me. I paused, jerking my head back to see who was there, but it was already too late.
“I don’t think we’re going to do that, Raiza,” the man replied coldly. A hard shiver raced down my spine and I did my best to remain brave.
“I only wanted to give you time so that you could escape them. He’s coming and he’s bringing his army. He’s going to take the underground for himself,” I exclaimed, and the man’s eyes simply darkened.
“No. He’s not,” he replied.
“I’ve seen the plans! He’s mapped it out. He’s preparing to ambush you any day now,” I continued.
“Not if I can help it,” he said curtly. His gaze drifted up and down my body. I visibly recoiled and he just continued, stopping at the cusp of my thighs with a wicked grin. It made me feel dirty and I lifted my chin in defiance. The men to either side of him hovered around him, impatiently waiting. My fingers twitched and my eyes jerked around the dark tunnel, trying to focus on any ways out and finding none. Like a rabbit shoved into a cage with wolves, I trembled, trying to remain brave despite the sickening feeling that was roiling in my belly.
“Talyn will kill you if you hurt me,” I whispered and the man’s grin widened viciously.
I slowly dropped my hand, regretting holstering my weapon. Without wanting to alert them, I cautiously stretched my fingers and drew them backwards as the group of men drifted toward me. A boot scuffed against the ground behind me, and I made a quick move to grab at my gun, but it was already too late.
Something hard hit the back of my head and I knew only blackness after that.
* * *
Oh, my god,my head.
I groaned, tentatively bringing my fingers to my scalp. It felt wet. I could have sworn someone was hammering a nail right through my skull and I struggled for what felt like forever to even open my eyes. The moldy stench that surrounded me was rank. It made my head pulse that much harder, and I groaned as I pulled my hand away.
I dropped my hand to my throat.
My collar was still there.
I pressed my fingers against the band and held them there, and my chest unknotted enough for me to take a full breath. It was stupid. I was in the dark, underground, and my head felt like it was splitting, and the thing that settled me was the presence of an alien man’s mark around my neck.
The mark I hadn’t been able to remove since the day he’d placed it there.
I’d escaped. I’d gotten out. I’d taken one of his ships and flown it myself and made it all the way here. I was theoretically free of him. Free of the penthouse, the collar, the leash, the slow and absent way his fingers moved through my hair when he wasn’t paying attention to anything else. I should have been thinking about the people I’d come to warn. I should have been planning.
Instead, I was pressing my fingers against a silver band in the dark and feeling my heartbeat slow.
I thought about how his voice had gone quieter when he’d said, ‘You will want for nothing.’ Said like the simplest thing in the world. Like he’d decided it would be true for me and that was that.
I thought about the leash, and how I’d learned to walk close enough that it never pulled.
I pressed my fingers harder against the collar and kept them there until I felt less like I was drowning.
Then I looked around and started figuring out how to get free.
It was dark, but a soft burning light in the distance cast a glimmering glow on the floor. My vision was hazy, and I had to blink several times to clear it. I swallowed what felt like a mouthful of cotton balls and licked my lips. They were dry and cracked. How long had I been out for down here?
There didn’t seem to be anyone nearby and when I finally moved my other hand, I found that it was bound by a hard metal cuff. I pulled at it, but there wasn’t any give. My wrist was tender. The metal chain was long enough where I could bring my hands together and I tried to rub the soreness away, but that only seemed to make it worse. The cuff was so tight that I couldn’t even slide a finger beneath it.
I yanked at the chain, which only made a deep agony radiate up my arm.
I looked around, trying to gauge my location. It didn’t look much different than the sewers I’d been in before. There were dark puddles on the ground all around me. The walls were made of metal, but there were several rusted patches that looked so thin that I could have pushed a finger through. My eyes eventuallyadjusted to the dim light, and I was able to make out more pipes and a train track maybe six feet away from me.
I wasn’t sure how many levels of the old subway there were, but this appeared to be one of the older ones. The tracks were just as rusted as the walls and many of them had already disintegrated into soggy piles of dust.
My head pulsed harder, and I pushed myself up to a seated position just so I could hug my knees to my chest. I groaned, pressing my forehead against my knees. My entire body was sore, but there was one thing that seemed to bring me comfort even in all this mess.
I could still feel the marks from Talyn’s belt on my backside. It made it so that he didn’t feel so far away.
