The Heir She Loved (Shadows of Sin #4)

26 Olivia

October 14th, 2022

My body jerked, my eyes flashing open, heart racing, the panic settling in.

I could feel his hands on me. I could feel his cock inside of me. Hear his heavy breathing.

The face of them all merging into one monster taking from me pieces I would never get back.

Over and over and over—

“Everett,”

I said on a breath, and then inhaled sharply and shoved myself to a panicked sit, my mind working far too slow to register where I was, how I had gotten here.

It was dark.

Everything was so dark except for the city lights streaming in through my bedroom window.

It was too quiet. Nothing but my labored breathing and the roaring in my ears could be heard in the endless silence.

I needed Everett, but he wasn’t here. He was never here. Lucy, she was her though, watching me carefully, and Merlin, he was here. Somewhere. He was always there.

“It’s okay.”

My head whipped around, my lungs freezing when my gaze landed on a pair of bright green eyes.

Emily closed her book, her big eyes kind. She offered a small smile as Lucy moved closer, pressing herself into my other side, my hand instinctively finding her side, threading into her fur, squeezing, just to make sure she was real.

I had to make sure she was real. I had woken up too many times and she hadn’t been there. I had to be sure.

“It’s the first night in a long time you haven’t been given anything to sleep. We weren’t sure how you’d do, but you’re safe. You’re at your house.”

She nodded towards the door, sealed shut. Why was it shut? “Evelyn is in her room, sleeping, I thought I’d check on you. You were screaming.”

I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t breathe. Screaming? No, I had stopped screaming a long time ago, I made sure of it. I made sure I never screamed again. They weren’t allowed to have that noise ricocheting in their minds as if they owned it. Those things were mine. Mine.

But I went to touch my throat anyway, only to stop before my fingers found it. I hated not feeling the collar, so I forced my hand down and glanced towards my nightstand where I had put a little bed of paper and napkins for Merlin.

I reached over and gently pushed away a few of the napkins to make sure he was still there. Once I confirmed it, I was able to sit back a little more, Lucy adjusting herself so that her paws and head were resting on my lap.

My eyes found the window behind Emily, where I could see a partial view of the street and the house next door. Still there, still real.

“I don’t know if I ever told you how cute Merlin is,”

she smiled as I glanced towards the sealed door. I wanted it open; I wanted it…

I froze when I found Everett sitting in a chair on my other side, halfway between me and the door. His head had fallen back, his mouth hanging open, soft snores coming from his lips.

What was he doing here? He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was gone. I knew he was gone, so what was he doing here?

My brows furrowed the longer I watched him though. I had never seen him sleep before. He looked so…innocent.

“He’s been right there since you got back,”

Emily said, pulling my attention back. “Always next to you every single night. I’m actually shocked he’s still asleep, what with all of that noise you were making, but I suppose he must be exhausted too.”

What? No, he wasn’t. No. I would have seen him. I would have heard him. I would have felt his presence. He wasn’t there.

Emily searched my eyes and nodded. “We were worried you wouldn’t know that. Yeah, Everett hasn’t left. I mean he has, to go to the bathroom at night, after you’ve fallen asleep, to run a few errands with Grey or Azrael. But every waking moment of yours is a waking moment of his.”

I turned back to him, watching him sleep for a few seconds longer before I leaned my head back as I turned back to the window. I could feel the truth in her words, and it still hurt. I should have noticed him. I should have felt him.

But wasn’t it better that I didn’t? Wasn’t it better that I didn’t notice him? Because what would have happened had I turned around and he had been there? Would I have gouged his eyes out like I had those other men, the black fog taking over, forcing us into a deadly battle? Or would I have run into his arms and hugged him as tightly as I could, never letting him go?

I had no idea what would’ve happened. I wish I knew. I wish I knew so that I could tell him. I wish my voice worked so I could explain to him that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. That I needed help, but I didn’t want to hurt him.

But the words wouldn’t come. The emotions wouldn’t come, and I was left staring out the window again.

“Liv, I think the real problem that you’re facing right now is that you felt so much for so long that your mind is now trying to protect your body from feeling any more of it. I think that’s why you can’t talk. I think that’s why you haven’t reacted.”

My eyes found hers. Is that what she thought? That the reason I couldn’t feel anything anymore, the reason I couldn’t speak of my own freewill was because my mind was trying to protect me?

That had to be bullshit.

“You have PTSD, Olivia,”

she went on gently. “And the next few days, weeks, months, years maybe, it’s going to be really hard. Harder than what you just went through because now,”

she went on softly, “now you’ve got to figure out how to live with it.”

I worked my jaw. I didn’t want to have to do that. I shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t have to figure out how to live like this now.

Emily searched my eyes, so many thoughts going through them, that it was hard to keep track. “I don’t know what it is about them,”

she finally said, glancing to Everett and back, “but they all seem to have this…this knack for finding the most broken girls in the world. Girls with impossible stories. Girls with pasts that should have destroyed them. Girls who either push them away with everything they are or fight them every chance they get.”

Her eyes fell to her arm, and she ran her fingers over raised lines. I could only just make them out from the light streaming in through the window. Perfect straight little lines.

My brows furrowed and my head lifted. “You cut yourself?”

Her eyes shot up, relief flooding through them before she cleared her expression and nodded. Emily pushed herself to a stand, and walked over, sitting on my bedside, holding out her left wrist for me to see.

Lucy sniffed at it, running her tongue over the lines as I studied them carefully. There was a really dark one running up the length of her arm, and many others running across it.

“I did,”

she answered. “Not for long. A few weeks. Everything just…it came to a catalyst. My dad’s wife’s kid was a drunk. He was beating the shit out of me since the affair started, but it got worse after my mom and sister died. He moved in and blamed me for everything bad in his life. Grey showed up and I pushed him away because…”

My eyes lifted to hers when she paused, and I could see that the pain was still there. The suffering she had gone through last year still lived within her, deep and excruciating. “I never wanted anyone to suffer because of me,”

she told me, her eyes filling. “Ever. But he wanted to. He fought for it. Every single day he fought to be there in the suffering with me. I thought what was going on in my head was so much darker and so much worse than he could handle. Despite knowing what he did, despite finding out about his family, I still questioned it. Because there was no way he could ever possibly understand what they had put me through. What I put me through every single day.

“But eventually,”

she shrugged, a smile touching her lips. “Eventually the pull of our atoms was too much to ignore. We fell together just as the universe had always intended.”

She flipped her hand over, showing me the ring. “He proposed not a year after we first met, and we’re getting married in December.”

I searched her eyes for a moment before looking back at her hand. I watched as my hand, of its own accord, reached out and gently flipped her hand back over. My fingers ran the length of that long, thick scar, my mind racing and slowly ticking away at the same time.

I didn’t know what I was thinking until the words left my lips, and then it was all I could feel. All I could know. It was all I could breathe. “What if mine is a broken he can’t ever learn to love?”

I asked, my eyes slowly lifting back to hers. “What if my scars are too deep?”

Her smile fell, such intense emotion in her eyes, I wondered how she was able to feel it so fully.

She slid her hand over mine and leaned in. “He already does, Olivia. You two aren’t the kind to say it, I’ve seen and heard enough of the both of you to understand that, but what you need to understand is that love can be expressed in more than just words.”

Emily looked over, placing a hand on Lucy’s head. “Love can be expressed in sacrifice. In the giving of all that you are and all that you believe in.”

She glanced at Merlin and smiled. “In the absolute trust of a not so innocent heart.”

I had to clench my hand to keep from reaching for the collar I knew wasn’t there. It was a habit I had gotten into that I still couldn’t break.

There was sadness in her gaze as if she knew exactly what I was fighting. “Love is everything all at once,”

she told me. “Even if it doesn’t make sense to the people on the outside. And while you go through all of this, while you figure out how to walk again, how to breathe again, how to feel the strange new beat of your own heart again, you need to understand that healing for you and love for you doesn’t have to be healing for us and love for us. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone, not a single person, you just have to figure out how to heal in a way that will one day turn these new wounds of yours into scars you can wear with pride.”

I felt, for the first time in a long time, tears burn the back of my throat, and I could feel something like sorrow growing in the pit of my stomach, but there was something else too. Something familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Emily straightened, offering a small smile. “I’ve been reading your books,”

she told me, glancing to the book on the table beside her chair. “I think your type of healing may be closer to our boys than you probably realize. Your heart will tell you what you need, okay? Don’t force things that don’t feel natural and don’t expect to ever feel like you did before again. It won’t happen.”

I searched her eyes. I already knew the truth of that. Olivia Rose was dead. She was. That weak, whiney bitch was never coming back, ever. She had let too many people take advantage of her, beat her, hurt her. Too many people had ruined her. But me? I was different. I was stronger, and I would never let anyone else ever touch me again. I had gotten a taste of blood in that room, and I wasn’t going to ever let it go. “My name is Olivia Kingsmen, I am a writer, I am unbreakable, I am Claimed.”

Her smile widened, her eyes glistening. “Yes, you are.”