Chapter 5
Lynn
“Whoa, Lynn,” Giant said in a rush of panic. “You’re not supposed to be walking yet; you risk ripping your stitches.”
“Don’t care,” I said in a dead voice, limping towards the door.
I could feel the stitches, and I wanted to scream.
The darkness rose, swelled, crashing like a wave over my head.
I could smell the barn now. Could hear the endless cries, the smack of flesh into flesh, the grunts of satisfaction, the growls, the sick purrs, the taunts that branded their laughter into my skin.
“Stay. Let’s talk about this,” Giant tried, catching up to me, clasping my elbow with remarkable care.
“I’m not a fucking dog,” I snarled in his face, canines bared, a growl crackling through my voice. I snarled at this man who’d been kind and considerate and shown me nothing but care.
“I know,” he said patiently, watching me with no judgement, just sadness.
“I don’t need you to fucking pity me,” I said, my skin crawling, body itching. I didn’t want it anymore—this body that betrayed me again and again, that had broken under repeated assault, that had taken the one light from my future that would have made all this survival worth it.
“I do not pity you,” he said very clearly, trying to catch my gaze and failing.
“And I can’t know what you’re feeling, but I do know you need to talk about it.
I’ve seen PTSD, Lynn. I’ve watched it reduce the strongest alphas to ruins.
I’ve seen my brothers become strangers. And that’s without a hysterectomy. ”
The darkness shoved into every wound, every cut, every orifice in my body until I choked and drowned. Hysterectomy. I wasn’t an expert but even I knew what that meant. No womb, no babies, no family ever.
I shoved Giant in a surge of adrenaline and rage and explosive pain, and only the fact that he was decent and good allowed me to make it to the door and through the doctor’s office on the other side.
He could have barked me into obedience if he was dominant enough, could have grabbed me and trapped me in the room.
“Let me walk you back to your room,” he offered instead, keeping pace with me easily because I was hobbling and he was six-foot-something with legs like tree trunks.
“I don’t want to go to that room,” I hissed, trying to curl my hands into fists and hampered by the splints.
Only the painkillers allowed me to get from the small medical building to the clubhouse, but where was I going?
The idea of being back in that peaceful, comfortable room where I should have died was—unappealing.
I didn’t want comfort. I wanted the rage and darkness and screams out.
“Is there a gym in this place?” I asked impulsively. I needed to hit something, over and over.
“Your fingers are far from healed,” Giant said without answering my question.
I stumbled into the clubhouse, picked a hallway at random, and limped down it. “That’s my problem.”
“Lynn, you really can’t—Cobra!” he blurted, desperately relieved when our paths crossed with the tattooed asshole. I would have laughed if I wasn’t drowning. “Hey.”
Cobra slowed, but didn’t stop, narrowing his eyes on Giant. “Hey,” he said suspiciously. “What do you want?”
“Want? Nothing. Just—saying hey.”
“Is there a gym in this place?” I demanded, locking eyes with Cobra as I limped down the corridor.
“Yeah, that way,” he answered, then stepped into my path with a snort. “Aren’t you injured to shit?” he asked, scanning my body, marking the bandages, the awkward way I held my weight, probably smelling it on me—how close I’d come to death.
I tried to step around him but he flowed into my path. “Get out of my fucking way.”
“Hilarious,” he said with a little smirk.
“What?” My teeth were on show, but I didn’t feel guilty for it unlike with Giant.
“How you think you can fight even a butterfly in your condition.”
“Butterflies haven’t done shit to me; why would I fight them?”
“A fly then.”
“A fly would be less of an irritation than you.”
He grinned, wide and unsettling, something about him making my instincts tug at me, telling me to run.
“Lynn,” Giant tried again, his voice that soft tone that abraded me. “The gym is a bad idea. A really bad idea. I know you—you’re struggling—”
“It’s either the gym, or I find where you’re torturing the filth from the farm, and I help murder them.” I tried not to glare so hard at him. “Dealer’s choice.”
“You wanna kill someone, asshole, I can arrange that,” Cobra offered.
I turned, slowly because it was difficult to move, and narrowed my eyes. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”
“The what of my what? Not sure I’ve got either of those.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” Sweat had beaded on my upper lip, and I knew when the painkillers wore off, everything would hurt like a bitch. It was almost preferable to the darkness drowning me, to the noise in my head. The screaming, the taunts, the threats, that fucking word. Hysterectomy.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t feel my face. Darkness and blood rushed in my ears, blocking out all other noises. A hand approached, but I knocked it away with my wrist, snarling a noise I couldn’t hear.
Time passed. Seconds stretching, endless. No children, ever. Alone, forever. A constant, eternal stretch of time with the darkness in my head.
Something met my hand. Cold. Slick.
It startled me out of the darkness long enough to frown at the cool bottle of water Giant pressed into my hand.
“Drink,” he encouraged, his voice audible again.
I followed his instruction automatically, but the cold liquid tasted like relief, like air after suffocation.
My pride was too battered, my heart too ruined to say thank you, but I met his kind eyes and hoped he saw the words.
“Do you game, asshole?” Cobra asked, not quite neutral but almost… polite. For him, at least.
I nodded. Accepted the second bottle Giant passed to me, the cap unscrewed for me.
“Can you hold a controller with those hands?” Cobra considered my bandages and splints without judgement but critical, strict.
“Get fucked,” I snarled, and it was such a relief to hear my voice, to sound like myself instead of the broken, screaming, wild thing trapped inside me. I sounded angry, not broken. A little feral maybe, but that would work in my favour and keep people away.
It didn’t scare Cobra off, unfortunately. He tilted his shaved head, drawing my attention to the snake inked around his ear, so realistic it could bite me and I wouldn’t be surprised. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said after a moment. “Come on. I’ll show you my set-up.”
He turned away, but stopped when a bark of laughter left me. “Why?” I asked, that laugh still there, maybe a little hysterical. “Why would I go anywhere with you? Why would you offer to help?”
He crossed his arms over his tight black vest and watched me long enough that I squirmed. “I’ve smelled that mix of blood, rage, and apathy before. The meds, the sickness. I know that smell, I know that dead look in your eye, and I don’t fucking like it.”
Giant’s words replayed in my head, enough for me to put together Cobra’s reason for helping me. He’d known someone as fucked up physically and mentally as me.
I doubted they survived.
“It’s a better idea than the gym,” Giant said softly, watching me. Always fucking watching me, like he was waiting for me to break down. “You can trust Cobra, he would never hurt anyone.”
I snorted.
“He’d never hurt a woman,” he corrected.
“Depends if she deserved it,” Cobra disagreed, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
“You’re not helping,” Giant grumbled.
I rolled my eyes, taking a step in a random direction. “Kill me if you want, I don’t give a shit. Anything’s better than this conversation.”
“Doesn’t smell like it’d take much from me to kill you,” Cobra remarked. “It’s not really worth the effort.”
I gave him a glare over my shoulder and kept hobbling on.