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His brows were drawn together and he looked angry as his eyes scanned the pen they had us in. “You will sleep with me tonight. Not here.”

I wanted to throw the plate back in his face, curse at him, tell him I hated him and I was going to fight anything he wanted to do to me tooth and nail.

But I was hungry and that would’ve been so foolish.

Without a word, I grabbed the plate, and began to distribute the food to the other kidnapped women.

He scanned my face. “This is unnecessary,” he said. “I’ll set up my tent for you now.”

“No,” I said. “If it’s good enough for the other whores, it’s good enough for me. Let me share the food.”

Rhyder hesitated, but then nodded.

“I’ll be back after the readings,” he said.

I nodded.

“Call out if anyone tries to bother you,” he warned, standing up.

“OK, I replied, looking with resentment at his broad back as he left.

“Who is that?” Norah asked as the other women crowded close to share the food.

“My brother,” I said dully.

“Your brother?” she squawked shrilly. “Does he. . . want you like that? Likeincest?”

What was the point in lying?

“He just caught and fucked me in a shack if that counts,” I said, my voice threaded with bitterness.

I wasn’t going to mention that I’d come all over his thighs

“Holy shit,” Norah said, her jaw dropping open.

“Is that what they’re like out here?” a woman with two honey-blonde braids asked.

Utterly, shamelessly depraved and wrong? Yes.

My mouth made sounds of comfort but I knew they were lies.

After each meal it was customary for someone to read passages from the Holy Writ. Boring as shit, but of course Rhyder would never miss it.

Helpmeets began to drift past us, removing the food, and I guessed we weren’t even going to be allowed to help clean up. They only looked at us to glare, some even putting the ends of their head scarves over their noses, as if to emphasize our filth.

“Are these all yours?” one of the men from the other Congregation asked, moving a toothpick slowly from one side of his mouth to the other as he examined us.

New fucking meat, that’s all we were

New wet cunts to dip his cock in

And I should have been looking at the ground, like the other women were.

But I wasn’t fully in the habit yet.

And being with my brother had always made me bolder. In the cities, I had gotten into the habit of keeping my eyes on the cement. Not so low that I couldn’t see if any man tried to grab my tits. But low enough to hopefully avoid any attention. It was what you had to do for self-preservation if you didn’t have someone behind you with knives that would appear in his hands faster than you could blink.

Even if I hadn’t been plain-looking and small, no man in the Congregation would have dared to fuck with me.