“Never,” I say, shaking my head. I can’t even think about that ceremony without feeling queasy.
He folds his arms. “The ceremony and its rituals will happen. That’s a fact.”
I make a face. “Or what?”
“The community does not change its course.” His face is stark and unmoving. “The people will bend to the rules, not the other way around.”
So I’m forced to marry a man I’ve never met who randomly picks me to fuck in front of everyone. Got it.
“This is insane,” I say.
“No, it’s inevitable,” he replies.
I shake my head and barge past him. I open the door and march out without saying another word.
But his voice still rings in my head long after I’ve gone, even when he’s out of view … but never out of my mind. “It’s your choice, Natalie. Submit … or be conquered.”
Chapter 13
Natalie
A few weeks later
Today, we’re planting apple trees. Apparently, the community does this every so often to increase the fruit supply for the ever-growing population. Of course, they let us do the hard work. That’s why the workers are called helpers, the lowest class of all. Both married and unmarried women and men plant the trees while the elders tell us where and how to do it.
All I can think of is how close the fence is and whether it would be easy to escape. Every time I turn my head, another guard walks past us, and I wonder if that’s the norm for all the people here or just us initiates … or more specifically, the captured.
If they’re watching, it’s impossible to get over the fence. But what about underneath? Would I be able to dig a hole deep enough to get out?
I look at all the huts surrounding the fence, none of which belong to us. Maybe one of them is empty. I could sneak in every day and rip out the floorboards, then dig my way out.
I know it’s a ridiculous thought, but the idea is riveting to me.
Instead of digging holes for fruit trees, I’d be digging my way out of here like some sort of poetic justice. All I’d need is for them not to notice. But how? How do you go about not getting noticed in a community full of people ready to tattle on each other?
“What are you looking at?” Emmy suddenly asks me, catching me off guard while I was checking out the perimeter.
“Ahh … nothing,” I mutter, scooping up some dirt.
“Were you planning your escape again?” She sniggers, but I throw her a dead-serious glance.
“Why are you still thinking about that?” she asks.
Gee, I wonder why.
“Because I didn’t choose to be here,” I answer. “And because out there it’s far more beautiful than this place could ever be.”
“Why is that?”
God, she asks a lot of questions.
“In the outside world, people don’t live in huts but houses. We have showers with running water that we’re allowed to use any time of the day. And we don’t eat food together,” I say.
“So you eat alone?” she asks. “That doesn’t sound like fun.”
“No, I mean … people can choose how they eat or with who,” I say. “And that goes for pretty much anything. Like jobs. And who you marry.”
“We choose who we marry too,” she replies.
I frown. “The men choose who they marry … not the women.”
She shrugs. “I don’t see the difference.”
“That’s because you’ve never experienced true freedom,” I reply.
I can’t help but be a little snarky. It’s hard to resist when these girls are fully committed to this strangely sexist ideal that goes against everything I’ve ever known.
“In the real world, men and women are equal.”
“But I don’t want to be equal,” she says, closing her eyes. “I want to serve and love and be loved by a man who is powerful and handsome.” She giggles. “And who’s good in bed.”
I roll my eyes. “You think you want that, but what if he’s not at all what you want? What then?”
She looks at me with a sincere smile on her face. “Then I accept what God has given me.”
I shake my head. “It can’t be that simple.”
“No … it’s not.” I get up and grab a new bag of seed along with some water so we can water the plants. “You don’t know what it’s like out there. You could have so much more.”
“You really don’t like it here, do you?” she says.
“No,” I reply. “I want to go back home.”
“Well, there’s no ‘back.’ You’re here, and this is your home now,” she says, adding a smile. “And you can choose to smile.”
“Smile … for what?” I mutter, toiling away at the soil.
“Because of the beauty of this world. For serving God.”
I snort and shake my head. Such a typical thing for a girl who grew up here to say.
“There’s a lot you can be happy about here if only you’d give it a shot.”
I sigh and get up. “Yeah, well, I’m not interested in that.” I clean my hands with a towel, and say, “I’m going to take a break.”
“But break time isn’t until—”
“I have to pee,” I interrupt, and I walk off before she can say anything else.
It’s a lie, but I needed to get out of there before she tried any more tactics to persuade me that it’s awesome to live here.
“Wait,” she says. “I need to go too.”
I roll my eyes. And here I was thinking I’d get rid of her easily. How foolish of me.
“Can you tell me why you think it’s bad here?” she asks. “I mean, I grew up here. I don’t know any better.”
I rub my lips together, trying to form the words without offending her.
“I mean, all we do is bring people together in love. Families are created to last. No one is ashamed of one’s body. Everyone pitches in with the work. Our community doesn’t stain the earth. What else is there to ask for?”
She has a point, but there’s also much less evil ways to go about it as a community. To her, it may be awesome, but her view is biased. She wears rose-colored glasses. To her, all these people fucking and making families are just doing God’s will. It all sounds so altruistic to live together in peace, growing your own fruits and vegetables, keeping your own livestock, and making your own clothes. Until you throw in the word authoritarian regime, and then they’d all look at me funny as if I’m making up stuff that doesn’t exist.
“In my world, we don’t force people to live by these arbitrary rules.”
“So there are no rules where you come from?” she asks.
“Well, there are rules … but women and men are equal. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” She frowns. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s hard to explain.” I wave it off. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“No, please, tell me more.” She keeps following me. “I wanna know more.”
Why is she so intrigued?
I stop in my tracks. “Why? Why would you wanna know about a world you’ll never visit?”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t say a word, and the look on her face has changed. She’s no longer that cheerful, happy girl who prances around the grounds. I’ve burst her bubble.
“I … I …” she mutters.
“Never mind. I never should’ve said that.” I sigh out loud. “Just … let me be alone for a while, please,” I ask. “I just need to think on the toilet.”
“Okay,” she answers with a pout. I turn around and walk off, determined to ignore this growing need to educate the women here about how their world could be if only they’d rise up and revolt.
But the moment I glance over my shoulder, and Emmy is gone, a weight is lifted off my shoulders, and I can finally breathe again. For now. I don’t want to think about any of the things we talked about. I just wanna sit by myself and drink some water and pretend I’m not here. I know I’m telling myself a lie, but lies are nic
e sometimes. They keep you from tearing yourself apart.
After I’ve gone back to our hut, I pour myself some water and sit down to gulp it down in one go. It doesn’t quench my thirst. Instead, it only makes it worse. But it’s not a thirst for water; it’s a thirst for information.
I’m not going to get anywhere by doing nothing and abiding by the rules of this community. I need to do what no one thinks I’ll do. Something to grab their attention … to make him tell me why I’m here.
So I place my cup down, get up, and march straight out the door … all the way to the temple. I remember seeing it being marked on that map one of the elder wives forced us to memorize. It’s a huge, twentieth-century building—part wood, part concrete—with beautiful embellishments and actual gargoyles on the top. It reminds me more of a castle than an actual house, and I can’t believe the patriarchs and the president are the only ones who live there. They could fit so many people into this property, but I guess they want to keep the separation intact to make them look powerful and to literally look over the people like some kind of gods.
I shiver as I slowly walk straight to the building, gazing around to see if anyone’s watching. The guards have turned around to talk amongst themselves, and they haven’t noticed me leaving the other group nor do they notice me going straight for the temple.
Without thinking, I go up the big stairs toward the door and try to open it. Of course, it’s locked.
“Hey!”
I look over my shoulder. It’s a guard.
Shit.
I jerk the door a few more times, but it’s no use, and the guard’s approaching fast.
“Noah! I know you’re in there!” I yell as loud as I can.
Other people in the community have heard the ruckus and gather around to watch as I continue to yell.
“Come out and talk to me!”
Suddenly, the guard’s got his arms hooked around mine.
“Shut your mouth, initiate,” he growls into my ear.
I ignore him and continue yelling, “Noah! Come and face me, you coward!”
The people around me look on in shock as I’m dragged away from the door and down the steps.
“Let go of me!” I try to elbow the guy holding me, but he’s much bigger than I am, and it’s almost as if I’m hitting a rock. “I have to speak with him!”
I manage to wriggle away from his grasp, and I quickly run back up the stairs, refusing to give up. I slam the doors with both fists as hard as I can. “Noah, you listen to me! I know you’re in there! Tell me why you brought me here! Tell me who my mother is!”
A hand wraps around my wrist, pulling me down the steps again. “You’ll be punished for this,” the guard growls.
“No! I need to speak with Noah!”
“The patriarchs don’t speak to the likes of you,” he says, and he holds me tightly against his chest as he talks to me. “How dare you call out his name without his title?”
“Fuck you.” I spit on his face, and he wipes it off with disdain.
“You’ll pay for that,” he hisses. I’m sure it’s not just a threat, but I don’t care.
I’ve made my presence known, and the people here know I’m not supposed to be here. I can see it in their eyes, the fear of a newcomer. I’m an unwelcome guest in a house I don’t belong in, and they all know it. All I need to do is get them to act.
“You see how I’m treated?” I yell at the crowd. “I don’t belong here, and you know it! Noah took me from my world and brought me here into your community. He stole me away without telling me why. Is that what you want? Is that what you want to teach your children?”
I look at a woman standing in the crowd, huddling over her children, whom she protects with her arms, and she covers their ears with her hands.
“That’s right. Hide them away from the truth. You’re all monsters abiding monsters.”
“Enough.”
The voice at the top of the stairs makes us all turn our heads.
It’s Noah. So he did hear me.
The guard’s grip on my wrist loosens to the point that I’m able to free myself from his grasp.
He glares at me from the top of the stairs, just beyond the doors, which have opened a tiny sliver, just enough for a single person to slip through and speak to the masses.
“Everyone, back to your work. There’s enough to do,” Noah says to the crowd. “Show’s over.”
I watch them leave, along with my hope of ever getting out of here by trying to incite them to throw me out.
He tosses me a single glance, one that could bring any woman to her knees. And I swallow back the fear I felt in my heart the moment the guard grabbed me, hoping he’ll give me what I need.
“Take her back to her hut.”
What? No, that wasn’t supposed to happen.
“No, wait!” I yell as the guard grabs my arm and whisks me away. “Noah! You can’t do this!”
But he doesn’t say another word.
Instead, he turns around and goes right back through the door he came from, closing it shut behind him, shattering whatever hope I had left.
And I let the guard drag me all the way back to my hut without even fighting him. What’s the point? Not even Noah cares enough to stop him, so why should I?
He throws me inside, and says, “Stay here until someone comes to get you.”
And he closes the door behind him and locks me in.
They’re probably going to decide on my punishment now. I deserve it for being dumb enough to believe Noah would ever try to intervene, that he would even remotely care enough about me to stop the charade and talk with me.
He’s a patriarch, one of the leaders everyone looks up to. He can’t abandon the rules for a girl like me. Even though he’s the one who brought me here in the first place, he’ll still uphold the community’s laws … because he is the law. If he doesn’t listen to it, then who will?
Complete and total anarchy would ensue.
Of course he’d want to avoid that at all cost.
What was I even thinking, going to that temple all by myself?
Sighing, I sit down on the chair, trying to make sense of the jumbled mess inside my head. This place is already getting to me. I can feel it in my bones. I’m starting to fall in line, and there’s no way to stop it from happening. Assimilation is only a natural progression of life here in the community, and he knows it. It’s exactly why he put me through all of this … to force me to become one of them.
Suddenly, something is slipped underneath the door.
I look up and blink a couple of times, wondering if I just imagined it.
But there really is a paper note on the wooden floor.
I jump up from my seat and bend over to pick it up. It has some handwritten words scribbled on one side.
In the showers hut, left side, is a door. Someone will let you in tomorrow evening. I’ll be waiting there. Your ritual is tomorrow. Choose wisely.
The note tremors in my hand.
He’s approved me for a ritual … for the ceremony tomorrow.
But he also gave me a choice.
I swallow hard.
Fuck someone … or get fucked.
Chapter 14
Natalie
My punishment for running off and trying to speak to the patriarchs was no lunch and no dinner for the day. It was easy, considering what they put me through in the concrete hut. Still, I did what I was asked to do, eating with a scarf around my neck the moment breakfast arrived.
I worked without putting up a fight, gathering branches for the fires and helping the women roll up the yarn for the day. Mundane tasks like that keep my thoughts occupied and away from what it truly wants to think about; the evening ceremony, which is arriving soon.
By the time the sun sets, my nerves have already come out to play. As everyone comes back to the hut for a final drink and a few chats, I feel uneasy and ready to hurl. But I keep it together, for April’s sake. She’s been watching me ever since I r
an off, and from the way she looks at me, I can tell she’s fearful. She knows what’s going to happen to me, and it’s only a matter of time before it’ll happen to her too.
She’s younger than I am, maybe nineteen tops, much too young to be thrust into a world like this. This world is unkind to women, but most of all to those who are unwilling to adjust.
That’s why she’s been so compliant all this time. It’s easier to give in and do what’s asked, if it means the suffering is less. But every other glance she throws me is one of worry or one of horror.
I wish I could talk to her. That I could hug her without any of the other girls present here to tattle on us and get us into trouble for trying to survive the impossible.
Instead, I begrudgingly let them dress me up again like some Christmas tree. I don’t understand why they do it in this order since we’re going to be showering right after. Maybe it’s part of the ceremony.
“Why do we get dressed first if we shower after?” I ask, unable to stop the curiosity.
“The showers are a sacred place, Natalie. We have to do away with our dirty work clothes before we go there. Fresh clothes are a must.”
“Ah … got it,” I answer even though it still doesn’t make any sense.
“But we must be naked for the ceremony,” April murmurs under her breath.
Holly looks at her with disdain. “Yes, that is what makes the ceremony so wonderful. Everything is laid bare, no one holds secrets, and no one is afraid.”
Except for us.
It’s almost as if she’s instilling her thoughts into April to try to convince her that what she’s feeling isn’t right. As though our own thoughts no longer belong to us.
“It’s the most wonderful thing, to get married to a man,” Holly adds.
“Right,” April says, nodding.
It’s almost as if she’s starting to believe it.
When we’re ready, it’s time to walk toward the showers again. My heart is already racing, my mind still reeling from that note I got … the same note I had to burn in the fireplace so no one would find it. But I memorized its words.
Under His Rule (Dark Romance Suspense) Page 10