The Cult

By S L Davies

We were told that the monsters lived outside the walls. That they wanted to hurt us. The monsters would kill us. But what about the monsters on the inside?

It was a rule that if the woman didn't conceive within the first year she would be taken, have her head shaved and placed on the street for all and any of the single men to use. My sister, Willow was already out there. So when it came my time to be married off my greatest fear was that I wouldn't fall pregnant.

What I never expected was that one of my mother in laws was helping lead a resistance against the tyrannical rule of the High Priests.

After being punished for sins that were out of my control, I convince my husbands join the resistance. We will bring this community to its knees. No more will girls be nothing but a vessel to be used. We want freedom and will take that freedom by any means possible.

Meet Luna and her husbands, Zeek, Jovian and Xavier as they fight against oppression to taste freedom.

This is a reverse harem. There are triggering subjects. M/M scenes. Suited to 18+

• Language: English
• Publisher: S L Davies
• Release date: Sep 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215832486

S L Davies

S L Davies is an Australian Author living in Country, Victoria. She is inspired by the world around her. 

Book preview

Prologue

Luna (Aged Twelve)

I roamed the border wall as I did every day. High Priest David spoke of monsters on the outside of the wall. Monsters that would eat our flesh and pick their teeth with our bones. As much as I knew I should be afraid of the monsters, his stories didn’t scare me. They made me curious. I wanted to know what the monsters looked like. Were they big? Hairy? Did they stink?

Every day I set off after my chores and went to the border wall. I would walk slowly listening for anything I could hear. Occasionally I would hear voices in the distance. They were too far away to make out what they were saying. I wondered if they were the voices of the monsters.

When I was on the south side of the boundary, I often heard engines like what my father’s used in the fields. My Mama always said that my curiosity would get me in trouble one day. But I couldn’t help it. I knew that we were supposed to follow everything the High Priests, David, Abraham, and Ryland said. I understood as a girl I had a role to play, but my brain didn’t seem to work like other’s.

My sisters, Summer and Willow were happy to take on the role of wife and mothers. Summer was eighteen and had been with her husbands for two years, while Willow was only married on her sixteenth birthday the month before.

I heard my father Anrick worrying to Father Orion that Willow wouldn’t fall pregnant. Girls that didn’t get pregnant in their first year of marriage, were stripped of their wife privileges. They would have their hair shaved off, stripped from their clothes, and made walk the streets for the single men to use in any way they wanted.

I worried for Willow too. It didn’t seem fair. Willow told me she was trying to get pregnant. Her husbands would take her many times a day. I prayed to the higher power every night that she would fall pregnant soon. I didn’t want to see her put out on the streets.

The women on the streets had dead eyes. They were covered in bruises and cuts from the way the men treated them. They scratched at their skin, like bugs were crawling all over them. The wounds caused by their scratching would be festering and oozing. They smelled unclean and I suspect that many of the women were sick. They were so thin and malnourished.

If any of them managed to get pregnant whilst on the streets, the baby would be taken from them and given to the High Priests to raise. The boys would be raised in the church to become Priests. Any girls that were born were treated like sexual objects. Their bodies didn’t belong to them from the moment they could walk. Men with penchant for children would be given the honor of raping them. It disgusted me. I never said a word though. Speaking out about the High Priests was  a death sentence.

A lot of women killed themselves because they couldn’t bare their child being taken away. They couldn’t stand the abuse that they received at the hands of the men on the street. It made me sick to my stomach when I thought about it.

I couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t better to take the chances with the monsters. Surely there couldn’t be that many monsters out there that we couldn’t hide and live a better life. A life where women didn’t get abused. A life where children were allowed to be children.

High Priest David preached the rules every night during our services. I listened to them allowing them to flow around my head. It just didn’t seem fair. He said that women were paying for Eve’s sins. And that was why we couldn’t be trusted. We needed to be ruled by the men, because without the men controlling us, we would sin, and lead our men to sin and death.

So, men were the head of the community. And women were there purely to produce children. Those that couldn’t were there for pleasure only. My Mama was lucky, our Fathers, Orion, Anrick and Andri loved her. They treated her well. She still had to follow the laws set out by the High Priest.

But Mama and Father’s would often sit and laugh. Mama was allowed to have her own opinion. My Father’s said they didn’t agree with everything High Priest David taught, but they followed his laws because they would be put to death if they didn’t. If they weren’t around, Mama would be stoned to death and then me and my brother’s would be taken away to be raised by the High Priests.

In public Father’s and Mama would put on the perfect face. They would do everything that was expected of them. But in the privacy of our own home, Mama and Father’s became different people. Mama was able to relax. My Father’s would even do household chores that was expected of women to do.

They raised all of us kids to have thoughts of our own. Father’s encouraged my curiosity, which worried Mama often. But Father Orion would just laugh and say, even if he didn’t encourage it, I would be a curious little bit. He said that I was just born different. He would often tell me that it would be me that would make a difference in the community.

I didn’t know what that meant, but I held onto it. I wanted to make a change in the community. There would be so much that I would change. First, I wouldn’t punish girls just because they couldn’t get pregnant. I would stop the torture. I hated it. I would want the community to be a place that the people loved, like my Father’s and Mama did.

But for now, I would continue to walk the boundary fences learning all that I could. Gaining the knowledge that girls weren’t allowed to learn.

1

Luna

Happy birthday Luna, Mama called with a broad smile as I came into the kitchen on the morning of my sixteenth birthday.

Thank you, I replied, returning her grin.

A chorus of happy birthday’s called from my brothers and fathers. You don’t have to do any chores today Luna. You need to be prepared for the raffle, Father Anrick said.

My heart fluttered in my chest and a boulder plummeted in my stomach. I had been growing more and more nervous about the raffle. My sister Willow hadn’t been able to conceive, and her marriage was abolished. The High Priests banned us from speaking to her when we saw her in the streets.

I still snuck her food from Mama’s cooking. I patched her wounds up as best as possible. Of a night we would sneak her in through the back door where she would shower and be given dinner to eat. She would borrow Mama’s clothes while she was here.

I was terrified that I was going to face the same dilemma. If I didn’t conceive, I would be on the street. In one way I thought it would be better, that way I could care for Willow. No matter how much food she seemed to get, her body was nothing but skin and bones.

She always had bruises around her eyes. Willow scratched at her body as if bugs crawled over her. Her nails were bitten down to the quick and her eyes flitted around with fear. I asked her what it was like. Willow’s eyes welled with unshed tears and she shook her head.

It’s the worst kind of torture. The men don’t care what hole they take or how much I cry. They just take what they want. The only good part is when the High Priests give us the needle every morning. It takes me away, but by the afternoon I’m hurting, she explained.

What is in the needle? I asked.

Willow shrugged her slim shoulders and scratched at an oozing wound on her face. She didn’t look any different to other women on the street. She was cleaner than most. Some of the men would insist the women showered before they took them. But that didn’t always happen.

A lot of the women that walked the streets had grime ingrained into their pores. Their hair was a giant matted mess and the wounds on their bodies often carried infection. Once a month the High Priests would order that the women have their heads shaved to prevent lice, but not all of the women went. Some managed to hide in the woods that surrounded the community for months.

Every time I saw them my heart broke some more. I hated it before Willow’s marriage was abolished, but now that my sister was forced onto the streets it literally tore at me.

It was cruelty. I started to doubt more and more the sanity of the rules that the High Priests set. More and more I clung to Father Orion’s words, that I would one day change the community. I knew that I would start by abolishing the street girls. They didn’t deserve to be there just because their bodies wouldn’t give babies.

I have a dress ready for you that High Priest Ryland sent over, Mama said breaking through my inner thoughts of Willow.

I bit my lip and nodded my head. I’m scared, I admitted.

Mama gave me a small smile. I know. It’s to be expected. I was scared too when I was raffled. I was lucky to end up with your fathers. I have been praying to the Higher Power that you too will get good men. I have been lucky so far, she said before looking down at her hands. Except for Willow.

It will be okay little one. I’m sure the men that you are raffled to will be good men. And I believe that you will find yourself pregnant within the year, Father Anrick said. He was my biological father.

I looked more like him than I did my Mama. I was slim, with blonde hair that hung down over my bottom. It was a rule in the community that no one cut their hair, man, or women. It was a punishment, one of the first things that happened to a banished woman was that their hair was shaved.

As much as I wasn’t all that attached to my hair, I found it annoying being as long as it was, I couldn’t stand the thought of being forced to have my hair shaved. I bit my lip and sighed. I had been wondering for the last year who my husbands would be.

I’d taken more notice of the men that lived in the community. A lot of the single men were old, and I was nervous that I would end up with someone who was older than my father’s. Then there were rumors floating around that High Priest David wanted to take another wife. They were the only men that didn’t have to share, and they could take as many women as they wanted.

The thought of ending up with High Priest David made bile roll up into my throat. I would rather be dead or on the street than being forced to be in that repulsive man’s bed. He was so fat that just walking along the street made him drip with sweat and breathe heavily. His breath always stunk of rotting meat. His thinning white hair was long and greasy with sweat.

I shuddered at the thought. I couldn’t face it. I closed my eyes and sent a silent prayer to the Higher Power, that my husbands were going to be good men. Handsome men. Men like my Father’s.

2

Jovian

High Priest Ryland called for an assembly the night before. All of the single men were to gather in the courtyard. A raffle was going to happen. I hated the raffles. I watched for seventeen years as my father’s beat my mother stupid. They would take her anyway they wanted, forcing her to push out child after child. If she gave them a daughter, then they would beat her and take her daughter away from her.

I hated it. Their actions made me sick. Not that I ever told them. But I made the decision as a young child that I would never treat a woman with the same cruelty that my father’s treated my mother. I would celebrate any child that my wife would bring forth. My father’s tried to encourage me to use the street women once I turned sixteen.

I would lie and tell them that I did. In truth I couldn’t bring myself to ever do such a thing. The idea of fucking a woman when she didn’t want to give herself to me, made me sick to my stomach. As long as my father’s believed that I was using them and they believed I was just as awful as them, then they left me alone.

I hated this place. The High Priests spoke of monsters on the outside of the walls, but I always wondered if the truth was that the monsters were on the inside. I knew of men that had attempted to escape the walls. Some had been caught and made an example of through torture that the Higher Power would instruct. Other’s never returned. The High Priests said those that never returned were taken by monsters. But I wondered. I always wondered.

As I stood in the courtyard looking at the array of single men surrounding me, I couldn’t stop the nerves from floating through my system. We weren’t given a choice who the other men would be that we were married off with. It was all chosen through a raffle system. I could be paired with anyone. And that was what made me nervous.

I hated the thought that I would be paired off with men who were brutal and would treat our wife with their fists. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand back and take that. I couldn’t allow that to happen. But the rules were strict with men. If you fought a fellow man, then you were to be punished.

I ran my hands up over my face and through my hair. I closed my eyes and prayed to the Higher Power that if I were to be chosen this time, that it would be with good men. I just hoped they would be fair men. That they would treat our wife with love and respect.

A voice cleared into the microphone and I opened my eyes to see High Priest David standing on the wooden platform. Beside him stood three girls, all with wide eyes and visibly shaking. They had been dressed in the standard white wedding dress that all girls wore to the raffle event.

Good morning gentlemen. Today we have three lovely brides for you. Introducing you to Starla, High Priest David said waving his hand over towards a girl who had long dark curls that hung down over her shoulders. Her dark eyes were wide, and she flitted across the crowd. Her teeth bit into her bottom lip hard enough that a trickle of blood formed at the corner of her mouth.

Right the men that will be marrying Starla are, High Priest David said as he reached into the bag that contained all of our names. He pulled out the first block and read it, Edward.

A stocky man with thinning grey greasy hair cheered and stepped forward. Starla looked terrified as she watched Edward approach her. Edward stepped onto the platform beside Starla and reached out taking her hand in his. Starla lowered her eyes to the ground. Her other hand was curled into a fist.

Congratulations Edward, I’m sure that Starla will make a good wife for you. The second husband for Starla is Rison and the third Erikson. High Priest David announced.

The other two men were clapped on the back by their friends and strode up to the platform to stand beside Starla. They shook hands with each other and turned to the High Priest who watched them with smiles.

Starla, these are your husbands. You are to obey them. They will rule over you. They are now your owners. If you do not conceive within a year you will be disgraced and sent to the streets. Do you understand? High Priest David said firmly.

Starla nodded her head and glanced back down at the ground. Good girl. She appears to be a very obedient child. Men take her to your wedding night room. Break her in and show her what is expected of her. Then tomorrow your home will be ready for you.

The men all smiled and thanked High Priest David before they guided a visibly shaking Starla from the platform and down the steps. My stomach swirled with disgust. I knew without even knowing the men that Starla was going to be abused. There was something in the eye of all of the husbands that had been chosen for her. I rubbed at my chest to wipe away my distress. This was a cruel practice and everyone I was forced to attend disgusted me further.

3

Luna

I stood on the stage as Starla’s husbands were announced. My stomach revolted as I watched the awful men that were led up to her. I glanced over towards the back of the crowd where I knew my family was standing. My father’s all stood with their arms folded, flanking my mother who was visibly weeping.

That morning my mother had prepared my dress and hair. She had sobbed for the majority of the process. I was scared but put on a brave face so as not to worry my mother further. Father Anrick saw through my façade. He squeezed my shoulder and whispered in my ear, words of encouragement.

Before we left the house for the courtyard, my father’s all told me that they wouldn’t allow a man to mistreat me. That if they raised a violent hand to me, my father’s would kill them. It was the same promise they had made to Summer and Willow. Thankfully, Summer and Willow’s men had been good men. It was just that Willow hadn’t been able to conceive.

My brothers stood amongst the crowd; they were all of age now. Jobe was nineteen, Alexi was eighteen, Lucian was seventeen and my twin brother Malachi was sixteen. I hoped that they would be paired with good men also. Especially Malachi, he was a soft-hearted man. He wouldn’t cope with being paired with harsh men.

High Priest David began to introduce the next girl, Aurora. I knew Aurora from the town, we lived only a few houses apart. Aurora stepped forward. She didn’t appear to be as afraid as Starla. I wondered if it were because she saw being married off would be better than living with her violent fathers. I glanced over to where her parents stood. Her father’s stood in front of their mother; all wore scowls on their face.

Aurora’s fathers were known for their cruelty. Not only to her mother but to all of their children also.

The first husband for Aurora will be Alexi, High Priest David said. I quickly scanned the crowd as my brother’s name was called. Alexi’s cheeks were pinkened and he looked to be forcing a smile to his face. When I looked back at Aurora, I noticed her take a visible breath of relief.

I knew that Alexi would