Read Online Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) by Matthew S. Cox - Free Book Online

indifference, Althea had no idea how to feel.
    “She will not be hurt.” Zhar shook her head. “All want the Prophet… she’s no good dead.” She spotted Althea watching, and crawled to the mesh, leaning her face up to the grating to whisper. “When we escape, I will bring you to my home. It has mountain walls. You would be safe there… no one can ever take you again.”
    Althea furrowed her brow. “If it is so safe, why are you captured?”
    Zhar growled. “Stupid gamble. I made a bet I could go hunting alone and take a bigger kill than Finlay. They got me outside the town. Inside my home, no raiders can ever steal you.”
    “If I had a home like that, I would stay in it,” said Ramani, barely above a whisper.
    “You are a mouse, which is why you are in this cage.” Zhar rolled her eyes.
    Aya perked up. “You are in the cage too, lioness.”
    Zhar drew a breath to yell something, but the sound of an approaching raider startled her away from the partition. A large metal bowl of beige slop slid into the harem cell, and a man offered two skewers of charred meat to Althea. Famished from healing, she dove on the food and savaged the first chunk before hesitating. Chewing, she glanced to her side at the other women fighting to choke down the beige goo. Zhar glared at her, jealousy wafted around her like perfume.
    Althea crept to the partition and knelt. “We can trade if you want. You look starving.”
    As soon as she swallowed the food Ramani’s hand had put in her mouth, Rachel blurted. “You’re not going to take real food away from a little kid?”
    “If she’s gonna offer it, I’m gonna eat it.” Zhar watched Althea eagerly as she nibbled bits of meat off the hunk small enough to fit through the gaps in the lattice.
    She passed them through and the older woman devoured them.
    “Share,” Althea said in a demanding tone, talking at the women as if she was their mother.
    Showing no signs of anything but greed, Zhar continued gobbling them up. Althea narrowed her eyes, the radiant blue glow flared. Tousled blonde hair stirred in a breeze that did not exist as she projected fear. The four women stared with trepidation, like mice in the path of a diving eagle. Zhar’s mouth hung agape, Aya ran to the corner shivering, and Ramani hid behind Rachel, whose only noticeable reaction was the handcuffs clicking apart.
    “I said share.” Althea fixed Zhar with a dire glance, relaxing the radiant fear after a small spike.
    The women divided one skewer while Althea ate the other. The way the harem attacked it made her think solid food had been a long distant memory for them.
    With the meal gone, Althea settled into the tattered scraps of old sleeping bags. They lay in silence as the last vestiges of daylight faded from the broken windows, mourned by a cool breeze that circled the room. The women huddled together at the center of their bedding as the moon drew great shadows across the floor in the distorted shapes of the old machinery. Althea rolled onto her side, staring at the keyhole in the door of her cage. Behind her, the soft clinks and rattles of Rachel’s endless search for a comfortable position mixed Zhar’s chiding whispers asking her to settle down and sleep. Ramani whispered a repetitive phrase in a strange language, while Aya passed out in less than a minute.

    The rattle of steel followed by Rachel’s screams shook Althea from her approaching sleep.
    “No! Get the fuck off me!”
    Althea shot upright; the sight of Vakkar dragging the woman by one ankle through the door as she kicked at him blurred through her semiconscious brain. Trying to contain and move her at the same time, he failed to do well at either. Rachel thrashed while the other three watched. Ramani shook in the corner, a guilty stare at the floor, glad it was not her turn. Aya had little reaction aside from an annoyed moan at the noise. Zhar seemed unconcerned with Rachel’s situation; her stare jumped between the open door and