“Kill ’em. Hit ’em.”

The roar of noise rattled down the corridor, stealing Ava’s breath.

She’d been looking for a means of escape since her captor had dragged her from the cave, her thighs still slick from his cum, and a ring of faceless, honed bodies had closed in around them, hostility and menace thick in the air. The battered metal plates that hid their faces, adorned with only slits for the eyes and mouth, making it impossible for her to discern if there were any among them who might be sympathetic to her plight.

Now, it was too late.

Adrenaline spiking, her gaze sliced to the side. Her captor’s shoulders hadn’t tensed. His hold around his weapon was still loose.

Whatever this yelling was, it was expected.

Dread prickled up her spine.

She tried to drag her heels. The jerk of her wrists kept her stumbling forward. “Wh-what’s up there?”

“Keep her in the center. Hidden. At all times.” Her captor’s barked command rang out, drowning out her question.

Before she could repeat it, the others closed in, a wall of hard human flesh and male musk that jostled her and her captor as they flowed as one around the next bend, the others’ wide shoulders and thick torsos swallowing her up until all she could see was skin and hair.

Heart slamming against her ribs, she twisted and bobbed until she found a crack in the human wall.

Her eyes went round.

They’d entered another version of hell.

In every section of the wide cavernous room, drones buzzed overhead while red-caked bodies clustered together in small crowds, screaming and shrieking and shoving. A few intact stalagmites and stalactites littered the ground and ceiling, but most were stumps, their jagged edges giving the place an even more ravaged look than the other parts of the mining labyrinth. The stench of fear, greed, and hunger loomed especially thick in the air.

It was the biggest grouping of inmates and droids she’d seen. More even than outside the transport hold.

Panic tightened her throat. Valdus and his men were strong and well organized, but even they couldn’t hold off this kind of mob.

She was suddenly grateful for the human wall that blocked her from view, as well as for the coverings her captor had draped across her hair and face.

A howl shook the room. The smack of flesh on flesh sounded.

She tried to think beyond the fear. To figure out why they were here and what it meant for her.

She remembered Valdus referring to a mess hall, but saw no tables. No benches. No food. Nothing but endless crumbling rock and screaming inmates.

Another outcry. Bodies parted. And, as the men shifted, her view expanded.

In the center of one cluster, two men grappled in the dirt—biting, scratching, clawing—the sickening crack of flesh louder than before. All the while, drones whirred above, doing nothing to stop it. The lasers they’d used last time to control the fighting crowds absent. Nearby, rocks tumbled from the cavern walls, jarred loose by men climbing the rough terrain for a better view.

This made no sense.

But nothing that had happened since she’d been captured had.

He’d made her like it. Want it.

Always in the past, she spread her legs, absorbed the necessary sperm, and buried away the ugliness, forgetting the donors’ faces as soon as she scrubbed away their scent.

But her captor had flipped some switch she didn’t even know she had and turned her into exactly what her husband had wanted when he shoved that thing inside her brain—a willing and eager participant.

She’d writhed beneath her captor. Raked her nails down his back and lifted her hips to meet him thrust for thrust. Reveling in the very heat she’d been trying to exorcise since it had been forced on her.

Shame burned through her faster than a raging dust storm.

“If I don’t win—” her captor’s deep voice ripped her from her dark thoughts.

“You’ll win,” insisted the man on his right, the odd collection of instruments he wore clanging into one another as he shifted.

“If I don’t,” Valdus’s gaze flickered to her, his jaw hardening, “get her out of here. Follow the plan.”

Her gaze swiveled between them, her heart beating fast.

“Take her.” Valdus passed her leash to the one man she did recognize, Ryker.

It hit like an open slap to the face. “No. What—”

Ignoring her, her captor grabbed hold of his second’s harness and jerked him close, flesh cracking against flesh as the two collided.

Her mouth snapped shut.

“You don’t touch a hair on her head unless she asks.” Valdus’s voice was low and lethal. “Not a fucking hair.” His expression hardened further. “I’m trusting you, Ryker. To be the person you once were. To be the man Saralynee loved.”

Ryker flinched as if he’d been struck.

Valdus didn’t even pause. “No pain. Only pleasure.”

Her cheeks flamed red, confusion mixing with rage. The jagged cut of betrayal slicing deep. “You’re giving me to him?”

Blue eyes locked with hers. For an instant, she saw the man who’d touched her with such passion and need. Who’d shown her what it was to want. But his eyes iced over in the next heartbeat, as hard and cold as ever.

Without another word, he marched past.

“Valdus, wait.”

She stumbled, the hard tug at her wrists yanking her backward.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The smirk Ryker usually wore was absent. For once, he looked shaken. Still, there was no give in his eyes as he loomed above her. “You heard the Commander. You’re with me now. And I promise I can make you scream just as loud as he did. Whether it’s from pain or pleasure is up to you.”

Her nails curled into claws, the urge to make someone bleed pulsing through her veins with violent intensity.

Valdus had left her. Passed her off. As if she was nothing more than a possession.

After the way he’d claimed her, she’d almost begun to believe he was softening toward her, even just a little.

Clearly not.

She should have known.

Her husband, Hollisworth, had only grown crueler with every time he used her, too.

Sex wasn’t proof of caring and, apparently, even good sex was no different. She was a fool to have imagined otherwise, even for a nanosegment.

Against her will, her gaze followed the Resistance leader’s wide retreating back, her gaze slipping between the shoulders of the other men to follow his progress as he marched across the lofty corridor, parting the crowd easily with an elbow or a shoulder bump.

Until he was standing in front of the biggest behemoth in the room. A mountain of a man, Valdus’s new acquaintance had to be at least six feet seven, his head almost scrapping the ceiling. His matted, wild hair and overgrown beard suggested he’d given up on the little vanities that made a man human long ago.

She was too far away to hear what was said, but the brute nodded once, the tattoos covering his body rippling as he pushed off the wall.

An excited roar sounded around them, and then the crowd shuffled back. A new ring formed, this time around Valdus and the giant.

“What is—”

Without warning, the mountain swung.