Chapter 54 #3
“They were scared,” Julian whispers hopefully, and I nod.
“They were fucking terrified,” I confirm, smiling as I remember their shaken faces, but it doesn’t last long with what came next.
“A woman came in with something under her arms, and whatever she said made them panic. They all ran but she stayed. She stayed and pulled out these needles. They were different—they weren’t for my blood. ”
A finger flicking a syringe. A black, thick substance gathering at the top.
“I knew even then that something was wrong about that, that it was somehow worse, which is crazy because how could it get worse? There’s always worse though,” I whisper tiredly. “There’s always something worse.”
Julian slides his arm around my waist, holding tight as I lean against him.
“She stuck the needle in my eye,” I whisper as the phantom ache behind my eyes returns. “She managed to put another in my chest before my dad came in. Then it was … over.”
The word sounds like a bitter lie even to my ears.
Sighing, I pull myself free from Julian’s arms and stand. Julian follows but keeps his fingers to himself while he remains close. I need space and room to think of anything else, but there’s nothing else now that I’ve pulled my worst memories back to the surface.
“There’s this book,” I whisper, while my fingers claw at the skin at the back of my neck.
“I found it the first time I went back there. It’s filled with numbers, rows and rows of them.
I didn’t know what it was at first. It took me a while to figure it out, but the numbers were times,” I say with another dry chuckle.
“The first set is for my fingers, the next for my toes, the third for my arm, and so on, and so on.”
“They were timing how long it’d take for you to heal,” he whispers, his disbelief palpable. When I nod, his frown deepens as he shakes his head. “None of this makes sense. What did they want from you?”
“Reon said they wanted to make a pack, and what’s the one thing you need for a pack to be a pack?”
A second barely passes before Julian whispers, “… An alpha.”
“An alpha,” I confirm without shying away from his gaze when it shifts into something fearful as he starts putting two and two together.
“They were trying to find a way to make one of them into an alpha. I had the blood for it, which I’m guessing was the first thing they thought of.
I don’t know why they kept hurting me, though. ”
“They must’ve had a reason for it,” Julian says, telling me the same thing I told myself for years. I was sure it was true, but any possible reason would be hysterical to any sound mind. “What about the injections? What …What were those for?”
“I think it was some kind of fallback plan—a last resort to force me into being like them, while still keeping me as a potential alpha.” Julian’s eyes widen, stretching the blue within his irises until they’re misty.
“After that, my eyes changed from brown to black, just like Reon’s, and everything I felt after that day went haywire.
Every thought I had turned negative. I got angry so easily, and I couldn’t control anything I felt until it all settled into one thing. ”
“The rage,” he concludes as his hand rises to cover his mouth.
I nod, breathing low as I slump in my place.
That was it. My story, my dirty secret. I’d shared it, and now, I’m done.
I could put it all away again, pretend it didn’t happen, pretend it wasn’t still happening sometimes. But it doesn’t go away. The memories stay right where they are—at the forefront of my splintering mind.
They bring with them things I tried to pretend weren’t true—like the differences between who I was before and who I’d become after.
How my happiness had been stripped away from me, along with the safety I thought I had in my family—in my parents.
They’d destroyed that too because I didn’t trust anything again after, nothing and no one except …
I look up, meeting Julian’s waiting gaze, and my heart threatens to split inside my chest. His eyes are too kind, too sweet and accepting like I knew they would be.
“My eyes used to glow gold, you know. Not yellow or anything else, but gold,” I whisper, the longing filling my words as tears fill my eyes again.
“I tried for months to get them back—to see if they’d come back, but all that came was the red.
They gave me red eyes like them. They made me into one of them. ”
Julian shakes his head, but I knew the truth—I’d lived in it for long enough.
“You always say that my eyes are not just black, but that there’s brown,” I rasp as I try to speak around the pain in my chest. “You say you see these golden streaks, and I … I keep looking in the mirror, but I can’t see it.” My tears fall, blurring the image of him. “All I see is the darkness.”
“Aiden,” Julian croaks as he stops trying to give me space and comes closer.
“They broke me,” I mumble as he pulls me into his chest. I fall into him, sobbing into the guarded space he makes for me. “They broke me, and I don’t even know why.”
“They didn’t break you,” Julian dismisses, but he doesn’t get it. He’s too fucking nice to see the truth. I shake my head against him. “They didn’t,” he insists. “You’re still you, Aiden.”
“I’m not!” I shout as I shove him away. His blue eyes grow wide with concern as he reaches for me, but I step back. “I’m not—they fucking broke me.”
“They didn’t—”
I lift my hand and tug my thumb back until it snaps. Julian jolts, his eyes flooding with the horror before raw pain crashes into our bond. But it’s not mine, none of it’s mine.
“I don’t even feel it.” I break another. “I don’t feel any of this!”
“Aiden, s-stop!” Julian shouts as he takes my hands in his before I can break another.
His fingers tremble around my palm as he carefully hugs my hand to his chest. He holds it like it’s something precious, staring at my broken fingers with so much misery.
“Don’t—don’t ever—” Julian’s breaths stutter out of him, panicked and terrified, as he holds me close. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Guilt makes me look away. “I don’t feel it,” I try to explain.
“I don’t feel anything like I used to. If I don’t concentrate, anything can send me off the handle.
All there is, is the rage. All day. Every day.
There’s so much anger and it doesn’t go away—it never goes away unless …
” I glance at him and almost break in a whole new way as my chest eases. “… Unless I’m with you.”
Julian’s eyes deepen as if Goddess poured a darker shade of blue into them to make him shine even brighter.
“If you’re not there, all I feel is anger and pain, every. Single. Day. I try to ignore it, but it’s always there, in the back of my skull, in my chest—I feel it. And when it comes out, it’s like … it’s like I’m living through it all over again.”
“Aiden,” he says my name like he’s lost, but he doesn’t realise that just being here makes it better.
Jaw clenching, Julian hugs me to him, and I don’t shove away this time. I hold on to him while I bury my face into the crook of his neck so that I have somewhere to hide.
“My eyes,” I whisper, mourning them for what feels like the first time. “I don’t see like I used to. It’s all covered in red—everything is red and it reminds me every day of what I am … what they made me.”
“I’m so sorry,” Julian cries shakily, trying to keep himself together, but I can feel him falling apart. “I don’t know what to do, Aiden. I don’t know how I’m supposed to fix this.”
“There’s no fixing this,” I sob as I admit the truth. “I’ve tried.” And I did, in every imaginable way, but one truth always waits at the end. “They broke me, Julian.”
“Then, I-I don’t care if you’re broken, Aiden,” he says, pulling me up so that I’m forced to meet his eyes.
A world of love and care waits within them, flowing over the edges, and all for me.
“I don’t care if you’re broken because the broken you is the one I fell in love with.
I loved you before I knew about this, and I will continue to love you,” he says, pressing his head against mine.
“You’re broken and I will never stop loving the pieces of you that remain. ”
I stare at Julian, seeing only him while the past quiets, finally fading in full so that there’s only him.
Him and his words, his love, his devotion and promises that I know he means. There’s only Julian and me, and I … I didn’t think it was possible to break again, but he pulls apart what’s left of me to put me back into something a little brighter—something he intends to guard forever.
A terrible sound tears from my lips, making his eyes widen with renewed panic. He apologises, desperately trying to find out where he went wrong, but I can’t even tell him how much those words mean to me because I can’t stop crying.
The tears refuse to stop for the only person who still loves what is left of me.