Naomi’s POV

My wrists throbbed where the cloth had cut into them, each breath a hot, shallow thing. The bag had been ripped off hours ago, but darkness still sat behind my eyes like a second eyelid.

They moved me like I was an object, gripped under arms, shoved forward, limbs not my own. My skin still tingled from the bag’s roughness. Every muscle in me ached from the fight, from the bite of a tooth that had been driven into a knuckle. I tasted metal, bright and shameful: the memory of my own blood.

Footsteps. Voices. The men argued in low, clipped bursts, the language a kind I didn’t...