Read. Kaya’s going to read. Which means Barrett is going to be able to say real words to me, through her. I’ll be able to ask him questions, maybe, and get real answers!

My heart trips toward my throat at the very thought. Maybe we should stay here, beyond tonight. Maybe company will be good for Barrett, even if he doesn’t truly realize that until the next time that he really wants to say something to me, and suddenly realizes he can.

“Yes. Bring her in,” I say, waving Barrett back from the doorway. Audra and Tyson step aside, and a tall, slim woman in a white blouse comes into the room. “Hi. I’m Mallory Landrum.” I shove my hand at her, and she jumps, startled by my eagerness. “Sorry. It’s just…this is exciting.”

She takes my hand, and her smile is kind. “I’m Kaya Johnston.” She turns to Barrett. “Barrett and I have already met, several times. Though really, I guess it’s more accurate to say that we existed in the same room, several times.”

“Okay, we’ll leave you to it, then,” Audra says. Then she slides the door closed, giving us privacy.

“Come sit down, please.” I motion Kaya toward the floor where our lunch still sits, and that’s when I notice that my spaghetti is running onto the concrete from the open pouch I abandoned when I threw myself at Barrett earlier. “Oh no! I didn’t mean to waste your food.” I can feel my face burn as I pick up the packet.

Barrett puts one hand on my shoulder, silently telling me it’s okay. He rips open the napkin that came with our meal and wipes up the sauce and a couple of chunks of beef that spilled, then he shoves the messy napkin into the large envelope the smaller food packets came out of.

“Doesn’t look like you lost much of it,” Kaya says as she sinks onto the floor across from me. “Please, feel free to eat while we talk. I’m sure you’re both starving.” But I don’t pick up my plastic spork until Barrett pointedly takes a bite out of his fig bar, encouraging me to eat.

“I’m not sure how much of this you heard earlier, Mallory, but I used to be a sponsorship liaison for Universal Authority, working in and for the arena in zone one. My job was to find sponsors for my fighters—companies willing to pay for medical care and weapons for the gladiators. Barrett wasn’t one of my men. In fact, he beat both of my fighters that season. Killed them in the arena, which was his job. He was a favorite, high up in UA, almost from the beginning, because in addition to being a great fighter, his background reel made him…sympathetic. Someone the audience would connect with, in spite of his violent past.”

I turn to Barrett to find him staring at the floor, slowly chewing his fig bar. When he feels me watching, he looks up, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. He seems to be trying to figure out what I’m thinking. “Is this okay with you?” I ask. “If she tells me about your past?”

Barrett nods, but he looks worried. He seems unsure how I’ll react to whatever I’m about to hear.

“Well, I guess we’ll start at the beginning. Barrett, please let me know if I get any of these details wrong, okay?” Kaya says, and he nods. “Okay. Well, Mallory, Barrett became a death row inmate when he was convicted of six counts of murder, as well as one count of attempted murder.”

“Six—” I choke on the word, staring at Barrett in shock. Sylvie told me he was convicted on multiple counts of murder, but I assumed she meant, like, two.

“To be fair, six is all he was prosecuted for, but the authorities on Kallisto have reason to believe he actually committed far more than that. He was among the most wanted men on the planet, for years.”

I turn to Barrett again, expecting him to correct her. Or at least add something. I know there is violence in him. But that seems…hard to believe. Yet he lets her statement stand without argument.

“Wait, Kallisto? That’s where I lived, before I was arrested. Barrett, we’re from the same planet! Though, I’m not really from Kallisto.” Nor was I there voluntarily.

He nods, and I realize he already knew that. There must be so much he hasn’t been able to tell me.

“There’s more.” Kaya darts a nervous glance at Barrett, but he only nods for her to continue. “The murders the authorities weren’t able to prosecute Barrett for, due to lack of evidence, were allegedly committed under orders from a local cartel boss, who was quite powerful on your planet.”

No.

No!

“Varian?” My voice trembles around his name. “You worked for Varian?” Barrett nods, and suddenly the rest of it crashes over me with an impact like a boulder to my skull. “You killed his bodyguards—those are your six counts of murder? You shot him in the street like a dog?”

“Wait, you knew him?” Kaya stares at me with wide eyes. “You knew Varian Roys?”

I stand and back away from them both. This is too much. This doesn’t make sense, yet I can’t deny… “I was sold to him when I was fifteen fucking years old, to pay for my uncle and cousin’s passage off a dying planet.”

“Oh my god.” Kaya’s hand flies up to cover her mouth. She turns to Barrett. “You knew?”

He nods, then he pushes himself to his feet and reaches for me, but I back away.

“I was there that day. Did you know that? I was there when you shot him. There was blood all over my—” I swipe tears from my eyes with balled up fists, fighting a maelstrom of conflicting emotions that make no sense, all tangled up together, but that I can’t deny. Or separate into logical threads.

I hate Varian. I wish he’d died that day. I wish Barrett had managed to kill him and his last two guards, like he did the other six. Yet my memories of that day are nothing but a blurry, blood-streaked horror I can’t quite bring into focus.

Shaking hands as I press on Varian’s wounds, trying to hold blood inside him. Shattered glass, from shot-out windows. Rough pavement beneath my knees, as I kneel next to Varian, screaming. Trying to keep him alive, as the men around me look for the source of the shots.

Terror that I will be next. That the next bullets will find me and take me out of this hell.

For a second, I actually wished for that. For a way out.

I hate Varian. I keep coming back to that thought, and it was true even then, as he lay bleeding in the street. Yet I also loved him. Varian brought me every meal himself, and sometimes he fed me by hand. When his touch didn’t hurt—and sometimes even when it did—it felt like bliss. When he was mad at me, the world was made of thunderbolts and storm clouds, but when he was happy…

I loved him. God help me, I fucking loved him, just as much as I hated him. There is no way to separate those two truths. Varian was light and darkness. He was pleasure and pain, laughter and tears, brilliant colors and the dreary fucking landscape of a wretched existence I could never hope to escape. He was my life, for four long years.

And I was his.

I was his favorite. Until Barrett shot him, and the police found me in the hospital. Until they saved me from him, then damned me to this living hell, just because they fucking could.

Barrett makes a pained sound deep in his throat, and he reaches for me again, but I can’t— I’m not ready for him to touch me yet.

“I’m sorry. I had no idea,” Kaya says.

“Did you know I was there?” I demand, and Barrett looks helpless, for the first time since I met him. He turns to Kaya, gesturing in the air with one hand, like he’s writing. He wants a pen.

“Oh. Just a minute.” Kaya digs in the bag she brought and pulls out an honest-to-god ink pen. “It’s Sylvie’s. She bribed a guard for it and used it as a weapon in the bullpen, but I think it’ll still write. Since we cleaned most of the dried blood off…”

I search through my satchel for the paper Audra mentioned, and finally I find it folded in an interior pocket I hadn’t even noticed before. The paper is thick and nicely textured, and there’s fancy print on one side. But the back is blank.

I give it to Barrett, and he presses it against the wall, then writes a few words at the top of the side with the printing. He hands the paper to Kaya, and my heart thunders in my chest while she squints at the small, neat writing.

“I didn’t know who you were until the first time you said Varian’s name,” she reads. And he didn’t have any way to tell me who he was.

Barrett’s eyes beg me to understand.

“Why were you trying to kill Varian?” I ask. “Back on Kallisto?”

He reaches for the paper again, but Kaya’s eyes light up. “Oh! I know that one, from his background reel. May I?” she asks, and he nods.

“He fell in love and got married. To a woman named…Norah!” she says, and Barrett nods. “So, he tried to leave the organization. For her.”

“But Varian doesn’t let people leave.” I know that for a fact. “He killed her, didn’t he? Your Norah?”

Barrett nods again, and his jaw is clenched. His hands are curled into fists. His eyes look…haunted.

“That’s not all he did, is it?” I feel sick.

Barrett snatches the paper from Kaya and scribbles more words down the left margin, in dark, angry markings. He hands the paper back to her, and she reads, her voice thick with the weight of the words. “He and his men raped her. They made her beg for death. Then they shot her.”

“That’s why you went after his men too,” I say, and Barrett nods. “They made you watch?” Another nod, and now his eyes are shiny with unshed tears. He lifts his hair to show me the gruesome scar in his scalp, and with his other hand, he mimes shooting a gun.

“They shot him too,” Kaya translates, though I’ve figured out that much. “But there’s a metal plate in his head. That stopped the bullet but sent shrapnel into his brain. Obviously he survived, but that shrapnel stole his ability to speak. The background reel said he spent years in rehab.”

So many of my questions, answered. So much about Barrett that I now understand. But…

“You were his bodyguard?” I can’t keep accusation from my voice. “You chose to work for him?”

Pain wrinkles his forehead, but he meets my gaze as he nods.

“Did you… You know what his guards did to me. Did you ever…do that? To someone else? To Jerri or Avery?”

His flinch speaks volumes.

“Avery?” I guess, and he nods miserably. “Did you ever do what they did to Norah?”

He shakes his head firmly. But then the angry rumble that tears free from his throat startles me so badly that I stumble back. He snatches the paper from Kaya and writes in the right-hand margin this time, then he shoves it at her.

“He threatened to kill Avery if I didn’t participate,” she reads. “I didn’t know what else to do, but that’s no excuse. I deserve to be here, for Avery, if for nothing else. But I never wanted to be a part of that. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I took the job, and by then it was too late.”

I can’t imagine Barrett in the lineup. I don’t want to. I just want him to hold me again. I wish I didn’t know any of this, because now I can’t— I can’t look at him the same way.

He reaches for me, making a wordless, comforting sound, but I back away again. “I need a minute.”

He takes the paper and scribbles some more, then shoves it at Kaya so she can read the words written across the bottom. “I’m going to kill him.” She frowns at us both. “Does he mean Varian? Varian Roys is here?” We both nod, and for a second, she just blinks at us. Then she looks at the paper and starts over. “I’m going to kill him. For Norah and for you.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” I whisper. “Maybe you should just let sleeping dogs lie.”

He shakes his head. Hard. Then he grabs the paper and writes more, on one of the corners. “You’re not safe with him here,” Kaya reads, looking over his shoulder this time.

“I know.” I turn to her. “Varian really will kill me if he finds me.”

A growl rumbles up from Barrett’s throat, and I know it’s aimed at Varian, not at me.

“Okay, I… I need to think.”

“Why don’t you bring your lunch and come finish it with some of your friends?” Kaya suggests.

“That sounds good.” I pick up the pouch and my short-handled plastic spork. “I’ll be right there.”

Kaya nods, and when she realizes I’m waiting for her to leave, she quietly excuses herself.

I turn back to Barrett, who’s imploring me with his eyes not to go. “I just need a few minutes. Some girl-time. But Barrett…there’s a graveyard out back. That’s where they bury men who can’t follow the Sorority’s rules. So you can’t lose your temper here, okay?”

He blinks at me. Then he gives me a slow nod.

“Okay. I’ll be back.” He takes my hand as I head for the hall, and I gently pull free. It breaks my heart to leave him staring after me, but I go anyway. I need to process what I’ve just heard.

Lilli squeals when I step into the lobby, which is functioning as a living room of sorts, complete with curtains made from bedsheets and several of those giant homemade cushions. They’ve made their home look almost civilized. And with five other men here—plus Sylvie and the women with spears—I don’t think Varian could get to me at the Sorority, even if he found out I was here.

“Are you going to stay?” Danna asks as I sink onto the cushion next to Lilli.

“For tonight, at least.” I dig a bite of spaghetti from the pouch with my spork, then I speak around the mouthful. “But I don’t know if Barrett’s a community kind of person. He’s been through a lot.”

“And you haven’t?” Lilli demands.

I told some of the ladies a little bit about Varian, back at the Resort, and they all know about my homeworld dying when I was a kid. But they all have trauma to deal with. The few who didn’t arrive on Rhodon with stories of tragedy or abuse gained them at the Resort.

“He saw his wife murdered right in front of him. By Varian.”

Penny frowns. “Wait, your Varian?”

“Well, I’m no longer claiming him, but yes. They sent him to zone three the same day they sent Lilli and me to the Resort.” I shrug. “And now we’re here too.

“And your ex killed Barrett’s wife?” Penny blinks, trying to work through it all in her head.”

“He’s not her ex,” Lilli snaps at her. “He fucking bought her.”

“It’s complicated,” I tell them. “Varian, Barrett, and I are like three strings tangled up in a knot.” I just hope I can unravel that knot without having to snip myself free from Barrett.

“Well then, you should definitely stay,” Danna says, sending a pointed look to Ty and Audra, who’re half-watching us from across the room. “With Varian out there, you’re not safe anywhere else.”

“Barrett can keep me safe,” I insist around another bite.

Penny snorts. “Because that worked out so well today.”

“That was my fault. I left the shelter alone.”

“No.” Audra stands and crosses the room toward us. “That wasn’t your fault. That was the fault of the men who took you.” She squats in front of me, and her blue-eyed gaze captures mine with a singular intensity. “Women have enough to deal with out here. Don’t let those bastards off the hook, even now that they’re cold and rotting. Let them take their guilt with them into the grave.”

I nod, staring at her in awe. She’s so…confident. I bet no one ever bought Audra.

“You’re welcome to stay,” she says as she stands again, and my gaze follows her. “If Barrett wants to stay too, I’m sure we can work something out. If he’s willing to follow the rules.”

Behind her, Tyson scowls, but his mouth stays shut.

“That would be nice,” I admit. “Maybe Kaya—or one of you guys—could teach me how to read, so I could communicate with him better. He tried to write something in the dirt, the night we met but I couldn’t tell what it said.” He doesn’t want to stay here, though. I shrug. “Or maybe we could just come back and visit, so I could get some reading lessons. I know my letters. I just need help…putting them together.”

Audra smiles. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

I spend the afternoon catching up with my friends, hearing about everything I’ve missed over the past few months while we help Penny and Bryony with the homemade cushions they’re sewing to replace the thin sleep mats they took from the Resort. After about an hour, Barrett comes into the lobby, and when Warren follows him in, I realize he’s still on duty, shadowing Barrett to make sure he doesn’t break any rules.

Danna hisses when she stabs her thumb with a homemade needle made of what looks like a tiny bone with a hole cut in one end for the thread to go through. When her face reddens, I realize she stabbed herself because she wasn’t paying attention. Because she was staring at Warren.

I guess he is kind of cute. I mean, he’s no Barrett, but… Is it just me, or is the cushion she’s making big enough for two people to sleep on?

I give Danna a knowing smile, and her faces turns an even brighter shade of red.

At night, a few of the ladies distribute meal packets and we all gather in the main room to eat, by the light of several flashlights set on their ends. I sit on the floor, leaning against the wall next to Barrett, and I can’t help but smile when I look around the room. Everyone looks…content. This life isn’t easy, but it’s infinitely better than being delivered, nude, to strangers at the Resort or on the blimp. The Sorority has a good thing going.

Well, as good as anything gets on the surface of a prison planet, anyway.

“Do you guys ever actually use the fire pits out back?” I ask around a bite of what Danna described as a “rib-shaped barbecue-flavored pork patty.”

“Oh, yes!” Lilli says, poking at a packet of chicken tetrazzini. “When we have fresh game. But it’s not safe to cook or eat out there after dark, because light from the fires can be seen a long way away, and that would attract…people.”

Men, she means. Predators.

“But it’s fun, when we do get to use the pits. Roasting meat smells amazing.” Bryony listlessly stirs vegetable primavera in her packet. “It’s a kind of primal scent, you know? Makes me feel like we’re wresting sustenance from mother nature herself, rather than sucking down this slop UA drops on us once a week.”

Barrett’s brows rise in interest. He points at one of the spears propped against the wall, then makes a stabbing gesture with his brows arched in question.

“I think he wants to know if you hunt with your spears,” I tell them, and Barrett nods.

Bryony snorts. “We’re not that good yet. Ty is teaching us all to set traps, but it’s risky for more than a couple of women to go out at once. We attract attention, when we’re seen.”

“And we’re constantly short on trap-making supplies,” Lilli adds. “So it’s special when we have fresh meat.”

After dinner, everyone gathers up their trash and people start picking up the flashlights. “We go to bed pretty early,” Penny explains. “Batteries are hard to come by in the supply drops, so to save the ones we have, we try to be awake when the sun’s up and in bed when it’s not.”

“Yeah, that’s been our routine too,” I tell her. Though Barrett and I only use a fraction of the batteries the Sorority must go through.

Danna lays one hand over her heart and takes on a wistful look. “I pine for the days when my battery consumption was of a more personal nature.”

Sebastian snorts. “You need a cock that doesn’t require batteries.”

Kaya elbows him, a flush crawling over her cheeks. “Well, this one’s taken.”

“That one’s not.” Sebastian nods at Warren, and the grin that takes over Warren’s face seems to be part embarrassment, part…invitation. Aimed at Danna.

Ty clears his throat and sends a gruff look over the room in general. Several of the women laugh at him.

“Come on,” Danna grabs my arm. “I’ll take you to your room for the night. Warren can show Barrett his.”

Storm clouds roll over Barrett’s eyes, and he stops in the center of the room, a growl rumbling up from his throat. I don’t have to ask him what’s wrong. “We’re staying together,” I insist, and he punctuates my statement with a firm nod.

“Oh, but Audra said…” Danna glances at the blond woman in confusion. Everyone is staring, and I can feel tension rolling off of Barrett.

Audra’s frown is exaggerated by the flashlight beam. “I just thought…” She crosses the room toward us, while Maci and Callum begin herding most of the women out into the hall, toward their bedrooms. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Audra asks me in a whisper. “Considering those nightmares?” She glances up at Barrett, pointedly including him in the discussion, and I feel like a traitor for telling them something so personal about him. But I couldn’t withhold something like that from people willing to take us in. And if I stay with Barrett tonight and he gets violent in his sleep, Ty and the other guys will kill him.

I can’t let that happen.

“Maybe we should just stay in separate rooms tonight,” I tell him.

Barrett gives me a fierce shake of his head. Then he turns and scans the room. When he finds whoever he’s looking for, he clears his throat on his way across the floor, digging in his right pants pocket.

Sebastian sees Barrett heading for Kaya, and all humor fades from his expression. He slides between the two of them as Barrett pulls something from his pocket. “Back off, man,” Sebastian warns, as Kaya tries to see over his shoulder.

Barrett waves a folded sheet of paper at Sebastian, then points behind him, at Kaya.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, but you need to back down. Now.”

Ty heads toward them, motioning to Callum to join him, and they look bound and determined to overreact.

“Wait!” I shout, jogging across the room to intercept them. “I think he just wants Kaya to read something. She did that for us earlier.”

Barrett gives the entire room an exaggerated nod, along with a look that seems to scold them all for jumping to unfounded conclusions. He holds the paper up again and points to me.

“He’s written something for me. And he needs Kaya to read it.”

Ty crosses his thick arms over an even thicker chest, while Graham translates softly for Callum.

“Hey! Move, you big bully!” Kaya shoves Sebastian aside, swatting at his bulging triceps. “Barrett isn’t going to hurt me. He just wants to be able to say something, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

He shoots her a grateful look, and my heart aches for him.

Barrett holds the paper out to her, then points toward the hallway.

“You want me to read it to her in private?” she guesses, and he nods. “Okay.” She turns to Sebastian and plucks the flashlight from his grip. “We’ll be right back.”

“I’m going with you,” he says, and Kaya frowns up at him.

“No, you’re not. Whatever he wants to tell her is none of your business, and I take my solemn duty as a translator very seriously. So stay put, unless you want to cuddle with Warren tonight.” Without waiting for his response, Kaya heads for the hall, motioning for Barrett and me to follow her and her bobbing flashlight beam.

“They mean well,” Kaya assures us as we follow her back into the room where we ate lunch. It’s dark in here now, with little moonlight shining in through the single window. “They’re just protective, and with good reason. Sebastian and I were also on the blimp when it went down. He was the fighter all the guests paid to meet. So we’ve been in zone three for about six weeks, like you have, Mallory. But we spent that first week on our own, and I was both attacked and kidnapped in a span of just a few days. This place is not safe for women. If the guys overreact, it’s with that in mind.”

“I know.” I slide the door closed. “But Barrett’s not a threat to you. I swear.”

“They’re worried about you too,” she says. Then she turns to Barrett. “Because of the nightmares. They don’t think you want to hurt her, but it’s the result that matters, not the reason.”

He gives her a grim nod. Then he hands her the folded piece of paper, and when she shines her light on it, I can see that it’s the same sheet he was scribbling on earlier. But when she opens it, I realize that this time he’s written all over the blank back side of the paper.

Kaya begins to read:

Kaya looks up, and there are tears standing in her eyes, gleaming in the beam from the flashlight. “Not good with words, my butt.” She laughs. “If you’d written something like that for the background reels, they probably would have just given you the title ‘Champion’ on general principle!”

But Barrett doesn’t even look at her. He’s watching me.

I throw myself at him and climb him like a tree, fighting a losing battle against tears of my own. He wraps his arms around me and my legs settle around his hips as I pepper his face with messy kisses.

“Okay, then, I’m just going to see myself out,” Kaya says. “Someone will be by soon with a couple of bed mats for you two.”

“Thank you!” I say, breaking away from Barrett’s face just long enough to remember my manners, as she slides the door open.

“Any time, hon.” She steps into the hall, where Sebastian is waiting for her, in spite of her warning. “If that man doesn’t get laid tonight, the universe makes no fucking sense at all…”

“Did you just drop the F-bomb?” Sebastian’s eyes widen as he follows her down the hall. “What did Barrett say? Kaya? Should I be asking for pointers?”