Page 28 of Regressive

“He blesses you?” Imogene repeats. “Re-educates?”

“It’s how I regain my status. Only Anex can work me though the levels of re-education.” I didn’t know for sure what Anex did with the Fallen. I didn’t really care but seeing this girl—seeing Imogene’s reaction to her—it stirs something in my chest. Charlotte looks up at her. “You’re part of his family, aren’t you? His son’s mate.” Imogene nods. “Will you tell him I won’t be a bad girl anymore? I won’t call my family. I can get the money. I’m here for him, always. I’m devoted.”

Clutching the calendar against her chest, Imogene nods and turns abruptly, pushing past me to exit the room. Silas and I share a look and I follow her out. In the hall she’s frantically peering into each window. I grab her. “Hey, I need you to settle down.”

“Settle down?” she shouts. I drag her down the hall to the door and push her outside of the wing. The door slams behind us. “You want me to settle down after I saw that?”

“It was a lot,” I admit, cupping the back of my neck. “What’s happening down there—”

“He threatened to send me there,” she says, cutting me off. “He said if my Bonding with Rex isn’t real, he’ll send me down with the Fallen, in the ‘room I saved for your mother.’”

“Jesus,” I mutter. “He’s not going to do that.”

“How do you know?” Her eyes are wild, full of uncertainty.

I grab her and pull her to me. “I know because he has to get through me to do that. He has to get through Silas and Levi and most of all Rex, who is more than willing to have an excuse to kill his father.”

“Those ‘blessings?’ That’s just him having sex with her, Elon,” she says, as if I hadn’t just spoken. She thrusts the calendar at me. “Multiple times a day all under the guise of ‘re-education.’ All under the concept of being ‘Better.’” Her voice rises. “He locks her up and uses her for his personal needs all day and night. Did you know about this?”

“This?” I ask, looking at the calendar—at the dark pencil marks documenting each and every time. “No. No more than you did.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Anex uses the people of Serendee, Imogene. You know that. You’ve experienced it first-hand. You were raised in it just like the rest of us. We are at his mercy,” I tell her. “He is our path to Enlightenment, isn’t that how it goes?”

“What do you believe, Elon?” she asks. The tremble in her voice implies she knows how risky that question is. I answer it anyway.

“I don’t know how I feel,” I admit. “I’m caught somewhere between Rex and Levi. I know there is a bigger world out there, but unlike Rex, I don’t believe I deserve it. I’m in Serendee because this is where I belong. I work for Anex because he is better than I am. If I deserved more, I would be given more. Until then, I have a job, and I’m thankful for that.”

“And what exactly is that job?” she asks.

“Right now, it’s training you to be a better mate for my best friend.” I swallow, knowing it goes deeper than that. The secrets and lies. “Tomorrow it may be something different, but until I’m given different orders, my job is protecting the future of Serendee.”

“And if that means leaving that girl in there to be,” she swallows, “‘blessed’ by Anex every day for the rest of her life, then you’ll do it.”

I will. She knows it and so do I, but there’s something else she’s not admitting.

She doesn’t have what it takes to save that girl either.

15

Imogene

When we return home,Rex and Levi are waiting.

“Where have you been?” Rex asks, eyes darting between me and Elon. Neither of us spoke on the way back to the house. The disgust and guilt over what I’d witnessed is too much to bear.

“Silas needed help,” Elon says. “I took Imogene with me rather than her be here all alone.”

“Anex has called a late-night basketball game for the men,” Levi says, “Mandatory.”

“Son of a—” Elon mutters. “Tell him I’m sick. Or running a job. I’m not in the mood.”

“Who is?” Rex says. “You’re going. I can’t afford having him look into any of our activities right now.”

Elon glances at me, jaw hard. Rex is right. Anex doesn’t need to ask questions about where I’d been earlier, at the women’s meeting, or then up at the house. It puts us all at risk for being defiant.

“Fine.” He walks over to the refrigerator and opens the cabinet above. He pulls out a bottle of clear liquor, unscrews the cap and takes a swig. “But if I’m going, I’m going drunk.”

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