Page 8 of The Cult

“Well, I don’t plan to beat the hell out of you, Maren. Just behave and we’ll do fine.”

After taking a deep breath in and letting it out in a rush, she pulls her knees to her chest. “What about him? Something tells me he isn’t thinking the same way.”

I shrug because she’s not wrong. Adam is always up for inflicting pain on people. Male or female, adult or child, if he can take out his rage on someone, he’s a happy guy. Thank God he’s rarely given permission. He’s likely to get grief for the way he acted toward Maren today, but he doesn’t care about that.

“Let me handle him. I just need you to come with us. Keep quiet and don’t fight, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t step out of line, okay?”

Looking around for Adam, I’m happy he seems to be waiting in the car. I don’t need his bullshit for being kind to her. Just because he doesn’t have a nice bone in his body doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole to anyone.

Our job is to get her back to the farm. Nobody instructed me to use violence to do it. We’re guards for The Golden Light. That doesn’t mean we have to go around hurting everyone.

Maren continues to shake her head. “I don’t trust you.”

I crouch down and look her directly in the eyes. “I don’t care. I have a job to do. I need to bring you back so you can find The Golden Light again. It’s that simple. I have no interest in hurting you, but if I can’t get you to come peacefully, I’ll do what I have to. So what’s it going to be?”

“He’s going to punish me,” she says in a trembling voice.

Unsure who she means, I ask, “Adam? I just told you if you don’t fight me I won’t do a thing. He won’t either.”

Barely loud enough for me to hear, she answers, “No. Micah.”

I blow the air out of my lungs. “Probably. You knew the rules when you joined The Golden Light, Maren.”

She lowers her head to her chest so it’s even harder to hear what she says. “I just wanted to spend some time with her. We have a connection. Why can’t he understand that?”

This is not a conversation I want to have. I know why Micah doesn’t allow group members to leave the farm to be together. She does too. She just doesn’t want to admit it. It’s not like he ever makes his opinion a secret, especially when it comes to members doing things without his permission. She didn’t ask to be with that girl, so she broke the rules. It’s that simple. Why she wants to draw this out and make things worse is beyond me.

“Come on. It’s time to go. If we keep Adam waiting any longer, he’s going to come up here, and then we’ll both have to deal with what he does to you.”

I stand up and extend my hand to help her up, but she refuses to take it. Instead, she pushes herself up on her own, backing away from me when she gets up on her feet.

She makes her way to the hallway as I follow her, but when we begin walking down the stairs, she stops midway, shaking her head again. Jesus, this woman is a goddamned hassle. She agreed to the rules when she joined us, yet now she wants to act like she’s fucking surprised she’s in trouble.

Maybe I should just let Adam deal with her.

“Keep moving, Maren.”

Looking back at me, she starts to cry. “I don’t want to go into the box. Please tell Micah I wasn’t bad for you. He might not put me in there.”

She’s confused if she thinks anything I say will help her. I’m just one of his guards. Nothing more. As for the box, that’s where his favorite punishment happens, so she’s going in. She should just accept it and deal instead of dragging her feet like this.

But since she’s going to be a pain in the ass if I make her see the truth, I force a smile and say, “I will.”

That seems to put her at ease, and she begins walking down the stairs again. By the time we reach the first floor, I’m tired of doing this with her and almost ready to just throw her over my shoulder like Adam did with that other girl to expedite things.

As we walk through the house toward the back door, she mumbles, “I loved living in this house. It was left to me by my grandfather.”

Behind her, I say, “And now it’s Micah’s.”

She glances back at me and nods. Maren knows the rules. To be a part of The Golden Light, you have to sign over anything you own to Micah. He knows best how to manage everyone’s possessions, especially since they never fail to make people think of life outside the group. She heard all of this the day she joined, so I don’t understand why she’s acting like this now.

When we reach the kitchen, she stares straight ahead and whispers, “Please tell him I never stopped believing.”

I don’t respond, so she turns around and looks up at me with a sadness in her eyes that hits me in the center of my chest. “Will you? Please?”

Answering with a nod, I expect her to keep walking, but she stops like she’s waiting for me to tell her I will do as she wants. Since we need to get moving, I reluctantly answer her, even though I have no intention of getting in the middle of this mess.

“Sure. I will.”

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