//Author's note: Chapter contains graphic violence.

† "God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day." -Psalm 7:11 †

Under the covers, enveloped in his warmth, there was no place safer.

She had the king. A king, chosen by the king of kings. A king, who chose her.

Her hand spreads over his bare chest as he sleeps by her side. Vulnerable, in this moment, when such a side of him stayed hidden from the rest. It's here where Audrey finds him enthralling. Memorizes, every angle of his face, every dust of hair over his jawline.

He used to have nightmares. Premonitions, horrible ones, this time of night, of the steps they'd have to take to get here. In the dawn of their days, nothing troubled Abel as it used to. In her, he confided what he couldn't in any other—not even his apostles.

Soon, her dear friend would be one of them, part of the chosen. Then, with his sign from God, they would be wed. Afterward, Abel promised her, they would have their first son. A child, it's been foretold by their God, that will smite all the demons and carry on a generation of pure souls—the king of kings returned.

Though she's laid like this for hours watching him, the grumble in her belly tells her she can no longer wait for him to wake. Easing out of bed, she dresses, then covers the moonlight creeping in through the curtains so to give Abel uninterrupted rest for the remainder of the night.

Leaving the door slightly ajar, she creeps out into the hallway. The women she passes that dust the railings look to her, then quickly divert their gazes. An apostle does the same. It was how they looked at her, all of them. All but Abel and Jael. The only two permitted to be within reach of her, to look at her, to address her first.

It was still early in the evening and though most of their order had their meal, Audrey had yet to eat with Abel's hunger for her.

She goes to pass the church but is caught in the cracks of the door with the sound of hushed voices.

She hears a male voice whisper, "We need to get out of here. We need to get everyone out of here. They can help us. Doyle will help us."

"No," Audrey hears another voice, one she recognizes well, "I can't leave Audrey. If I leave it might put her in danger. We are better off riding this out."

"They have weapons," the male replies, "guns, a lot of them. Bombs too. I'm sure my friend has shown them where all of the weapons are hidden in this colony. There was a bunker left behind by the ARMY here. If they have those guns and Abel continues to piss Doyle off...we might all be dead anyway soon!"

The air caught in Audrey's throat. Her protector, her friend, Jael, was within reach of the devil. As Abel warned in his sermon, a Judas was in their home.

Pushing the heavy wooden door open, Audrey reveals herself to the pair near the rows of lit candles.

Jael is panicked, just as panicked as she feels in her own heart with this treachery.

"Jael," Audrey begins, "I'm hungry. Can you come with me to the kitchen, please?"

The mother has seen this male before and with the newest member, she's not surprised by his plans against them. She'd saved his life before as she'd saved so many others from the wrath of Abel. In his eyes, she sees the fear of what she's overheard, the fear of what she'll do.

"As for you Brother Ethan, I think it's best you find your own way," Audrey says barely above a whisper, a plea, that he makes his own escape from this place and soon.

For, keeping this secret was asking far too much of her. If she kept her silence on what she's overheard, she herself would be taking part of the betrayal. To Abel, she could never betray.

As CiCi—Abel's Jael—makes her way obediently to her side, it's the shift in the young man that catches both of them off-guard.

He's on Audrey, hand around her throat. She's pulled, not knowing this violence in quite some time when she's forced to pin against his chest.

"Ethan...what are you doing?!" CiCi shrieks as low as she can, unsure of who to save at this moment as a small blade gleams against the dim candlelight.

The knife presses to Audrey's throat, where Ethan holds her hostage in the crux of his own panic.

"She'll tell if I don't kill her, which means I'm dead! It means you're dead too." Ethan's gripped in the terror all of them choke on.

"No Brother Ethan," Audrey utters under the threat of the blade, "Jael is safe, always. It's not her treachery that runs deep here. Judas is within you."

"Audrey, please!" CiCi begs her to stop, to come back to Earth, to the girl she thinks she still sees before her.

"I don't go by that name any longer. Audrey is dead." She replies in a disturbing calm.

As Ethan shakes in the apprehension he has to kill her, to take from Abel in a way that could possibly destroy him, Ethan begins to lower the blade when the floorboard creaks at the church's entryway.

The light from behind Abel casts out the shadow to stretch to where the darkness blankets them. Pressing the blade back to Audrey's throat, Ethan unknowingly begins to cut her in the frantic tremble of his hand.

She'd prayed and he came—just as he always did.

To her knees, Jael falls as any servant girl would. Though she'd never taken to the floor this quickly without questioning her own dignity, Jael took to her submission in the presence of Abel's radiating rage.

Behind him, a few of his apostles wait. Their shock, clear as ever, in witnessing something so forbidden to their order, to their prophet, to their God.

In Abel's face, his Eve has seen that anger before. The madness, uncontrolled. Death was on her offender's door.

She closes her eyes again, praying, for Ethan's soul.

The prophet takes his step forward as Ethan drags her back. Abel's footing is certain, where Ethan stumbles over himself and her own body. With his clumsiness, Abel takes hold of Ethan's arm holding the pocket knife.

When she finds the floor in her freedom, her hand clutches over her throat that wipes a faint line of crimson over the palm of her hand. Audrey's own blood never catches the floor of the church, but Ethan's begins to pool in their house of God.

Abel's shirtless, shoeless, only wearing a pair of grey sweatpants that slop up the red he's spraying everywhere with the flying of his fist. On his knuckles, the brass interlocked rings beat into the boy.

Crack. Thud. Thud. Crack.

The sounds of Ethan's body breaking with Abel's madness is a soundtrack Audrey's familiar with. The last man who dared to touch her met the same fate.

At the doorway of the church, she eyes Jael as she hides her face in her hands and the floor beneath her. As her body shakes, heaving with every other breath, she knows she's concealing her cries. She'd once done the same. Then, repeated it several times thereafter. For her own sake, for the sake of others, Abel saw as tainted. Now, all she can do is stare blankly at the boy that cut her as he stops moving.

Usually, Abel continued to punch until his target was completely flat in the lower-half of the face. Jaws went broken, hanging, smashed to pieces. Those, he marked for death and damned forever to walk these lands as a starving demon who can't consume.

When he rises with the blood of Judas on his chest, dripping down the trail of his abdomen and with it spattered all over the face she lovingly gazed at earlier, she's not afraid. She remains. Sitting, waiting, for him to come claim her.

As he scoops her up into his arms, she wraps her arms around his neck in their ritual of seeing her safe.

On his shoulders, so tight, she feels the last bits of his dying rage. A tremor below the skin, that his body gave off with his adrenaline that spoke for her life. She cradles the back of his head, trying to comfort him in return, and watches on in awe as the boy sputters blood out on the floor of the church.

He might die anyway with his injuries, but she's still shocked that Abel let him have any life at all within him.

As he stops before the apostles, she stares on to the beaten man closer to her age, then to shaking form of her friend on the floor.

Abel speaks to them in a flat English accent, "Isolate Jael till I know she's not a threat. She will answer for her inability to protect the Mother by my own terms, but she is under my own protection until I tell you otherwise. As for him...tie him up for our church to behold. Leave him for me for later."

He walks past with the clinging Audrey in his arms. Over his free shoulder, Abel casts, "And bring food to our room!"

//Author's note: Don't forget to add this to your reading list if you're enjoying it! And please vote! Thank you!

//Soundtrack song: "Man or Monster" - Sam Tinnesz ft. Zayde Wolfe

https://youtu.be/gMNcq_EvArU