Page 1 of Worshiping Faith

Chapter One

Faith

If there’s been one constant since we cleared the island, it’s that I’m never alone.

If Dax isn’t glued to my side, he assigns a babysitter. Trip, Wilkes, or, God help me, Zachs. I never asked for it. Didn’t fight it, either. There was alwayssomethinglurking in the shadows, something worse than them.

With hundreds of corrupt guards and brutal inmates dead, with no more monsters snarling in the dark… it feels more dangerous than ever.

Maybe it’s the quiet. Maybe it’s the sheer, open space, the way the prison breathes differently without the constant shuffling of the hundreds of inmates or the dead. Maybe it’s that I’ve spent my entire time on this rock fighting that I don’ttrustthe stillness.

There’s too much ground to cover. Too many blind spots.

I understand now why the guards were so paranoid, why their numbers were so high. It wasn’t just about control.It was about survival.

And if we think we’ve won, if we let our guard slip for even a second, we’ll be just as dead as the last regime.

The yard crunches under my boots as I cross it, eyes flicking toward me like whispers I can’t hear. I don’t know all their names yet. But once I pull the files, I’ll knoweverything. What they did, how they got here, who they werebefore.

Not that it matters. No one was here for shoplifting or DUIs. They were lifers, every last one.

Sixty-two survivors.

Minus us, that’s fifty-seven people who could slit our throats in the night if Dax rations something in a way they don’t like.

Our.

The word lodges under my ribs like a splinter.Our supplies. Our people. Our choices.

Worse than Zachs’ relentless dimple, worse than the silence that suffocates this place, that single word is what unsettles me the most.

What thehellwas Dax thinking?

Our conversation from last night is still too raw, rattling inside my skull like a loose bullet.

“Them. All of us. Some twisted fucking family, with me as the prize?”

Not happening.

He should know better. Hedoesknow better.

But I’d missed it, hadn’t I? The moment the words changed. The momentminebecameours.

“Watch our woman,”he’d said to Wilkes. And I hadn’t evenflinched. Hadn’t even registered it.

Because I’d been too tired. Too overwhelmed. Too comfortable in the idea that Dax wasmine.

And now?

“I’ll give you space to think about it. Talk to them,”he’d told me.

And now he’s scarce, keeping his distance. Actually giving me space. Like he thinks I need time to adjust, to process, to consider this insanity.

Like I’m not already suffocating under the weight of it.

Because how thefuckam I supposed to disappear on an island where Ican’t?

I’m theonlywoman here. There’s no fading into the background, no blending into the crowd. No matter how muchspace Dax gives me, it doesn’t change the fact that one of them always has eyes on me.