Under His Rule (His 1)

My fist balls. She has no fucking clue, yet she jeopardized everything. “You know what? I bet you thought after I freed her, I would let her stay there. That she wouldn’t attempt to seek you out and that I wouldn’t find her. Well, you were wrong about both of us.”

“She was looking for me, not you,” she claps back. “You wouldn’t recognize a mother’s love if it was staring right at you.”

A mother’s love … how dare she speak of my mother …

Rage overtakes me, and I slap her in the face.

She covers her cheeks, which turn red instantly, and I immediately regret my decision, lowering my hand.

“I …”

“You’re a bastard,” she says, eyes filled with tears. “Get out.”

I take a step back and swallow hard. She pushed me to the brink, making me question my choices and even the love my own mother had for me … and now I’ve gone too far.

I slapped the mother of my wife, the woman who is married to the president … that same man who could have me killed for touching her.

I shake my head and stumble backward. “I’m sorry.”

“GET OUT!” she screams.

And I do, for my own sake … and hers.

Because if the president finds out someone else was in her room and touched her … he’ll hurt her too.

Chapter 28

Natalie

I waltz through the property, but I can’t escape the guards. They follow me wherever I go and don’t give me a second to breathe.

I spin on my heels. “Leave me alone!” I yell at them.

They don’t even seem to notice, let alone act.

When I continue walking, they do too.

How long will this go on? How much further will Noah go to keep me under his thumb?

He dragged me away from my mother when I’d finally found her. I tried so hard to speak with her, and now I can’t. Whenever I try to get close to her room, the guards block my path.

“Get out of my way,” I hiss at them.

“We cannot,” one of them replies. “Patriarch’s orders.”

“Well, I’m his wife, and I command you to step aside,” I growl.

“Patriarch’s orders are above those of a matriarch,” he replies.

I grunt out loud and march in the opposite direction, furious at this constant stalking. I’m not a child who needs to be kept from dangerous things. I don’t need to be contained to my room. I don’t need anything except peace of mind and freedom.

What I wouldn’t give for the latter …

But Noah is dead set on keeping me here, and it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll ever budge. I should’ve never assumed that I could worm my way into his heart and make him do the right thing. He’ll never give me what I want because I’m part of his “plan,” whatever that means. He says I’m so important, yet he won’t share any information. What am I supposed to do with that? Sit back and let it all happen?

Annoyed, I go back to my room and slam the door shut in the guards’ faces. I pound on it again with my fist for good measures and hopefully to scare them just a little bit. I don’t have any power, but at least I can do that.

I go to the barred window and look outside. There are far more guards out there than usual, probably because of me and my mother escaping the temple. Two matriarchs fleeing the Holy Land? That’ll surely put a dent in people’s faiths, which I’m sure the patriarchs would like to avoid at all cost. They’ll nip any resistance in the bud within a second.

Which is why I’m so confused about what Noah’s doing. Why would he get me out of here only to bring me back in when I’m much older? Why would anyone go through that trouble? Unless he changed his mind about letting me go …

But why? Is it because of my father, the president?

Just thinking about him as my father makes me cringe and shiver.

The president … the most powerful man in this community … created me.

The same man who rules this monstrous place.

My father.

I refuse to acknowledge it.

Even if it’s true, I’ll never once call him my father.

Does he even know? Does he know I’m his daughter, or did Noah not tell him? Did he know my mother and Noah schemed together to get me out? Probably not.

No wonder Noah wanted to keep me and my mother separated.

I sit down on my bed and take a few seconds to breathe. My lungs feel constricted, and my heart is racing from all the information swirling in my head. It’s all becoming a bit too much.

Standing up, I take off my dress and tear off my bra and anything left between, chucking it all into the corner of the room. Naked, I stand in front of the mirror and look at my body and at the scar that rests near my belly. My hand glides over the not so smooth skin, and it erupts into goose bumps. To think this scar was the result of love … and that it wounded me so much. Not just my body but my soul too. And now a man wants to claim my body as though it could do all of that all over again?