Savage Dom (Savage Island 1)

“Cy,” I say. “Wait.”

I hold up a hand to him. He turns back around to look at me.

“What is it?”

I point wordlessly to the pile of black metal and plastic on the ground.

Hand in hand, we walk together. I tell myself there isn’t a dead man lying on the ground beside us. I pretend it isn’t there.

It doesn’t help.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, shaking my head.

“Is that what I think it is?” Cy’s frowning, when he falls to his knee in the cave and lifts the broken remains of something plastic and electronic in his hands.

“What does this mean?” I ask on a whisper.

His jaw tightens grimly. “It means Derek and Will aren’t the only ones watching us.”

I feel my eyes go wide, and I swear I feel panic right down to my soul.

“Watching us?” I whisper.

He points to the broken remains of security cameras on the ground all around us.

“Watching us,” he repeats. “These are security cameras, babe. And they aren’t old. We need to get back to Derek.”

He stands and looks out beyond us. “It makes sense. It all makes fucking sense.”

“What does?”

But he shakes his head. “We can’t speak freely here.”

Foreboding grows in my belly with every step we take back toward the shelter. I remember the dead, vacant eyes of the man killed in the cave. The savage, feral eyes of the man waiting for us in the shelter.

Will I become that way?

Will Cy?

And why the fuck were there—are there—cameras?

Cy knows something I don’t, and I mean to find out.

We make it back down to the shelter as the sun is setting. What are we going to do with the man waiting for us?

“If he’s fucking gone…” Cy begins, but when we get there, he isn’t. He’s waiting for us, still lying in the same position we left him. He watches us with cold, calculating eyes. I’m glad Cy is here. If I came across this man alone…

“We have questions for you,” Cy says. “And I want you to answer.” He swallows hard, and I can tell it costs him something to ask the next question. “Can you talk?”

The man nods.

“Take ‘em off,” he says. His voice makes my skin crawl. If a rabid, ferocious wolf could talk, it would sound just like this. I take another step toward Cy.

“Take what off?”

He nods to his restraints. “I’ll talk if you take ‘em off.”

Cy narrows his eyes and crosses his arms on his chest.

“No.”

“Then I ain’t talkin.’”

Cy looks at me. “We need answers,” I tell him. “The two of us can take him if we have to.”

Cy stares at the guy. “Fine,” he finally concedes. “You make one fucking move toward her, and I kill you without a backward glance. You get me?”

“Yeah.” Frowning, he kneels and slices the rope at the man’s wrists but holds the knife. The man sits up, rubbing his wrists, and looks me up and down before turning to Cy.

“Figures you got the girl.”

I shudder at the thought of this guy putting his hands on me.

“I thought you were dead,” Cy begins.

“Yeah,” the guys says. “I was bitten by something venomous. It didn’t kill me like you assholes thought, though.”

Cy watches him through narrowed eyes. “Jesus,” he says.

“You buried me in a fucking shallow grave. You remember the rain?”

Cy shakes his head. “We were already half starved by then,” he says. “I don’t remember much.”

“Rain washed away the grave or I’d have been buried to death,” he says.

“Jesus,” Cy repeats. “I—”

“Shut up.”

Clearly this guy has not forgiven him.

“I got out. Came to. Wasn’t dead but in a partial coma. Starving. With every fucking day that passed, I felt more and more like an animal.” He shakes his head. “A month in, I found the cameras.”

The little hairs stand up on my arms. “What cameras?” I whisper.

“The cameras that are watching your every fucking move. My move. Made by the same people that brought us here. That brought you here.”

“How do you know?” I whisper.

“Doesn’t take a rocket scientist. How’d you get here?”

I tell him, and now that I’m saying this in light of what we know, it sounds implausible.

“Won a fucking cruise?” he says derisively. “You didn’t win a fucking cruise.”

“Christ,” Cy mutters. “I knew that something was off. I knew that none of this was accidental.”

“Like… like how?” I ask.

He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Not hard, sweetheart,” he growls. “Brainwashing and drugs that honed your fuckin’ animalistic instincts. The food that went missing? Manipulation. It’s there. Fuckin’ cameras and shit hide it. Sharks? Planted. Undercurrents? Planted. Poisonous fuckin’ insects? Same. You ever hear of a wolf on an island? Me neither. Fuckin’ planted.”

“Why?” I whisper. “Are they watching us now?”

“I got some of the cameras,” he says. “There are three left. I did my job. Now you do yours.”