Dawn of Deception - Book 2 - Undone

"I watch in horror as they take my daughter from me. All my preparation can't save her. I feel helpless as they drag her away, her hand slips from mine. It's a horrible feeling.

But my will is strong. I can't let them win. I will fight back with everything I have, but is it enough? Will I find myself trapped as well, unsure of how to escape? And what about my other daughters left behind?

As I sit in the darkness, I think about Wren and what horrors she might endure at this very moment. It's a nightmare that sends chills down my spine.

What they don't know is that if they lay a hand on her, that's the last thing they'll ever do."

“We cannot possibly move back into the big house,” Kent whispered to Sloane after the girls went to bed. 

She slipped up onto her right elbow to study him more closely as he lay next to her on the old mattress they’d hauled in from the big house, as they called it now. A log settled in the old woodstove in the corner of the cabin, cascading sparks like glowing leapfrogs. “You’re still afraid. You’re afraid of the house.”

“I am not. I just mean it’s…drafty. Harder to heat than this old cabin. We’ll waste our time trying to find dry wood to burn. This wet wood takes forever to dry out as it is. That’s a big risk.”

The right edge of her mouth lifted slightly as she shook her head at him. The long lengths of her hair shimmied over her bare shoulder.

“I mean it. It’s just a logical decision. We use fewer resources in here. All the wood’s wet and takes too damn long to dry out before we use it, or else it smokes too much. Think of how much harder it will be doubling that effort.”

“We’re tripping over each other in here,” she whispered with a raised eyebrow. “We can board off a few rooms on the main floor. We’d have more…privacy.”

He smiled then…more with his eyes than his lips, now partially covered with a graying blond beard. He’d run out of blades a few months ago and scavenging for razors seemed like a silly endeavor when what they were in constant need of was food. As it was, she and her oldest daughter, Wren, shared the same lady razor for their legs and underarms. Sloane had taken to very carefully sharpening the delicate edges a few swipes along the unglazed strip of a mug’s bottom she’d found in the kitchen cupboard. The process wore away a tiny bit of the metal each time she did this. It was a temporary fix until they found another razor. Sloane couldn’t take the stubbly feeling for more than a few days at a time. Especially when she and Kent found the time for privacy.

“We seem to…make it happen…often enough,” he said and ran his hand up her thigh and then leaned in. “Hey, remember that time…” his voice lowered and became gravelly as he spoke.

“We…can…hear…you!” Wren said sternly from the other side of the cabin. 

“Get a room!” Mae said as Nicole giggled.

Kent’s hand lifted straight up several inches, hovering there. The part of his cheeks not covered in a beard turned a rosy color.

Sloane grinned from ear to ear as if to say…told you so