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“Well, normal people wouldn’t dream of it, but someone obviously did some calculations and figured out that raccoons are flexible and so are assholes.” He grinned at her. “Just because it’s on the internet, don’t take it as truth.”

All she could imagine was someone bent over, their bottom exposed, and two stripey tails dangling from between their buttocks.

The idea of someone using poor, defenseless raccoons as a calculation measure was both appalling and hysterical; she couldn’t stop laughing even as she chastised herself for doing so.

It felt wonderful to laugh, to sit on Merrick’s thigh and laugh like she hadn’t in years. She couldn’t remember a single moment in all her life in the community when she’d been given the opportunity to express herself so freely.

It didn’t matter that she was naked, her butt aflame, with her wrist itching like a nest of bedbugs under the cast.

She was happy.

Tamsyn leaned against his chest as her laughter trickled into giggles. When his arms came around her, keeping her close to the rumble of his own amusement, she knew she’d lost whatever argument she might have had.

She’d take that shower and whatever pills he gave her. She’d have a nap, because she was starting to feel a bit rough—not that she would admit that to him. Maybe she’d suffer through the appointment with Linnie, and try not to have an anxiety attack when she saw the white-haired, glacier-gazed Jasper again.

She would be Merrick’s good girl, because she loved him.

*

By the time afternoon rolled around, she really wasn’t in a much better frame of mind.

From her hips down, she felt heavy and uncomfortable. She wasn’t particularly keen on the tampon, and her back ached as miserably as her wrist after Linnie examined it.

The good news was the cast could come off next week.

No more cumbersome, itchy weight dragging her arm down.

The bad news had come later, during the meeting led by Elias and Jasper. Anarchy and a woman called Tabitha, who had the same intimidating presence as Jasper and who was actually his sister, were also there.

It had been a short meeting; once Tabitha relayed the information that the community was no longer in residence, Tamsyn had freaked out and bolted back home to lock herself in the bathroom.

Jedidiah was on the warpath.

The community was built in the mountains for a reason, mainly the network of manmade caves tunneled into the rock. Whenever the elders got paranoid about discovery or a perceived threat against their way of life, they herded the entire population into the mountainside to live underground.

It had only happened once or twice to her recollection—those memories were hazy—but the elders were strict on being prepared, and every few months they ran drills, forcing everyone into the cave system for a week.

She hated those drills with a passion.

Food and water were rationed disproportionately. Beds were reserved for the elders and married couples while children and untraded women were left to huddle in their quarters with barely a handful of blankets between them. The lights were unreliable, run on generators kept a fair distance away from the population, and sanitation was… well, the less she thought about that, the better.

It was no coincidence that they’d gone to ground now.

Tamsyn’s prolonged absence was making the elders nervous, which meant the community was in lockdown inside the mountain, and Jedidiah was on the hunt. He wouldn’t stop until he found her—she was a loose thread, a continued threat to what he treasured most.

Daughter or not, he was going to kill her.

Even if he had to burn the world to ashes to do so.

“Tamsyn, open the door.”

It was the third time in the last half hour that Merrick had asked, but she wasn’t moving from her spot in the tub. The familiar terror she’d lived with for years was back after her month-long reprieve, seeping into her bones colder and nastier than ever before.

How foolish had she been to let her guard down? To let the perceived safety of this haven distract her from the fact she reallywasn’tas free as she hoped? She was the product of a system which operated outside the laws of morality; a product with a chain around her throat and a vicious hand on the other end, willing to yank her back to captivity regardless of whether or not the pull broke her neck.

She was sleeping with a man who was not of the community, after running from the man who held her life in his hands. She’d given away what was not hers to give, stolen from the community and denied an elder his right to her body, broken the sanctity of her bloodline—the last of her family name.

When her father was finished with her, when the elders were done with their castigation, she doubted very much that there would be enough left of her body to use as a warning to the other women. The penalties they wreaked upon her flesh would be done in public instead, her pain and fear on display for all to see.