“It’s an implant,” I said with a shrug and tapped my arm.
“Shouldn’t have said that,” Arsen said under his breath.
“What?” I asked him. My next question was cut off when Rafe jerked me to my feet. I gasped as his hand closed around my wrist, hard and impenetrable as steel. “What are you doing?”
Nerves fluttered in my belly as he grabbed a knife from the makeshift table they had set up and then continued dragging me over to the tent.
Inside, he gently pushed me down to the blankets and straddled me, his strong thighs holding me in place. His face was a determined mask as he grabbed the medical kit and searched around.
“What are you doing?” I asked, shock and horror mixing together in my voice as I watched him douse the knife in something to sanitize the blade.
Arsen and Sig crouched down in the opening of the tent. Their faces were grim, but they weren’t making any moves to stop Rafe.
“What is he doing?” I asked them, since Rafe was ignoring me.
Before they could answer, Rafe cut a glare at them. “Are you going to stop me?”
They both hesitated, eyes shifting over to me, then in unison they shook their heads. Rafe nodded in satisfaction.
“I’m going to fucking kick you in the balls if you don’t tell me what you’re up to,” I snarled at him. The sinking feeling in my belly told me my suspicions were probably correct. I hoped they weren’t.
Rafe’s legs squeezed tighter as he shifted downward just enough to keep my legs immobile. His strong hand gripped my forearm, holding my arm still.
Using one finger he felt around on my upper arm until he found the lump under my skin where my implant was.
My eyes widened and I shook my head. “You’re fucking insane. Don’t you dare cut me with that knife!”
He ignored me and focused on his work. I shrieked when the knife blade bit into my skin. My eyes darted around the tent as I struggled against him. Both Arsen and Sig looked worried, but they didn’t stop him.
I yelled every obscenity I knew at him as he cut out my implant. It was over faster than I thought it’d be and he quickly cleaned and dressed the wound. As soon as the implant was out he was back to being gentle and kind, like when he carried me off after I was cut. This Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde routine was getting to be a bit much.
“Keeping it clean and dry should be enough to ward off infection,” he said, as though he were a fucking doctor in a clinic, not some crazy asshole with a kitchen knife out in the desert.
As soon as he let me go, I yanked my arm out of his grasp and scooted away from him. I held it to my chest, panting as I glared at him. “You crazy, psycho bastard.”
He pinned me with a dark look. “You’re ours. You agreed to that.”
“I didn’t agree to you cutting me open with a fucking knife!”
“There’s no time to take you to see a doctor,” he said as though that were a reasonable explanation for what just happened.
“And there aren’t any real doctors around for hundreds of miles,” Sig added.
The sound that escaped my chest could only be explained as a growl. Sig quickly shut his mouth.
“I didn’t give you permission to do that,” I snapped at all of them. Rafe tried to hand me a couple of pills, but I slapped them out of his palm. They fell somewhere in the blankets.
“You’re ours,” Rafe said again, with a shrug. “You’re going to have to get used to us making decisions and you obeying. That’s how it works now. It’s what you agreed to.”
I gasped, but before I could say anything, he left the tent. Arsen started to say something, but I turned my back on him. They did the smart thing and left me to myself.
Shock and anger swirled around in my belly, but there was a piece of me that realized that this was how he was. Rafe had been doing exactly what he’d wanted to this entire time. He stole me away. Forced me to beg for food. Now this?
He was right. This was what life was going to like with them. And, damn him, he was also correct that I’d agreed to this. Agreed to letting them control me like this. It’d been easy to convince myself when they were being sweet that that was their nature. But Rafe was basically a sociopath. He did whatever the fuck he felt like and the rest of us got on board or got off the ride. Only I wasn’t sure if he’d ever let me off if I asked.
Anger pounded through me in jolting pulses. Had it been a mistake to stay? To open myself up to them? Could I live a life where I had to fall in line and do what they demanded? I wasn’t used to any of this. I could follow orders, the Army had seen to that, but this was a whole different level. I was abdicating all freedom to be with them.
My arm ached so I searched around until I found the pills. I swallowed them and laid down on my uninjured side. The last thing I wanted was to see any of their faces right now. I also didn’t want to think about the fact that even though I was extremely pissed off, I still loved them. I’d let their sweet actions make me forget how domineering these men were. I wouldn’t forget again.
Tugging a blanket up over me, I tried to fall asleep so I could forget the pain and anger.