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Fuck.

The thought goes straight to my cock. Something dark around his neck. My hand on the other end, controlling how far he gets to move. That pretty face tipped up toward me while I decide when he gets closer and when he stays exactly where I put him.

My own fucking pet.

I groan, tightening my fist. Precum slicks over my knuckles as I wrap my hand properly around myself, stroking harder while he breathes on the feed. On the screen, he shifts in his sleep, his mouth parting around nothing, and my grip tightens again.

Good fucking Light.

I spit into my palm and work it down my shaft, the wet sound filling the quiet cabin. Moving faster now, I lift my hips from the chair and fuck my fist while staring at him. His throat. His mouth. Those wide eyes from earlier when I told him to ask nicely.

P-please.

“Fuck.”

I stroke harder, watching him breathe, imagining that rope around his throat and my fingers hooked beneath it. Imagining him looking up at me with those fucking eyes while I tell him what I want and he does it.

Good.

My cock jerks in my fist.

Why him?

What did the machine see?

Nothing answers.

My balls draw tight. The groan tears loose this time, filling the cabin, and my whole body pitches forward over the console.

“Fuck.”

I come on the word, hard enough to gray the room at its edges, with hot cum spilling over my fist in pulse after pulse while he sleeps peacefully in camp and never knows.

I clean up and watch as the feeds go dark one at a time, his last, the cabin dimming around the final square of him until that disappears too.

Why the fuck do I care?

Still no answer.

It follows me to bed anyway.

5

JADE

Iwake, sleep-wrinkled and stiff-limbed, to a camp already in motion.

Around me, candidates are pulling down their shelters. Boots splash through the mud as they shoulder their packs, and a line has already formed at the dispenser under a gray sky. For a second, I don’t know where I am. Then I do, and my hand is already on the knife before I’m fully awake.

Nobody comes near my square. Candidates glance at me, then look away quickly. Apparently, they remember last night.

A guard stands at the rope gap while an Adjudicator I don’t know moves along the queue, sending one candidate forward with a word and another with a raised finger.

Not him.

Relief hits before I can stop it. I shove it down, pack my things, and get in line. The dispenser hands me dry bread and a bottle of water, free like the intake hall. I think of Maren as the line inches forward. She’s out there somewhere with a wrapped ankle. Did she find shelter? Is she still in this at all?

Rain drips from my hood onto the bread as I eat.