Chapter 28
Everything hurts. It hurts in a way I didn’t realize was possible. My wrists are raw, circled in angry red lines. My ankles throb. My throat burns. I’m sore in places I forgot existed.
And yet, even now—after everything—I still want him.
I expect him to leave. Just like last time. He got what he wanted. Used me like he promised he would. I’m just a broken toy now, aren’t I?
But then his large hands wrap around me and pull me into his chest. I flinch, bracing for more. More pain. More sick pleasure. More of that twisted, chemical need he lights in my blood. But all he does is pull me closer, his fingers gently brushing through my hair.
“Little one,” he whispers in my hair. “Arlo.” His tongue drags down my shoulder, and he kisses my cheek.
I don’t understand what’s happening.
And then I’m crying.
I turn in his hold, pressing my face to the hard heat of his bare chest, and I sob. Ugly, broken sobs that wrack my whole body and tear out of my throat. His hand never stops, still stroking my hair, the other arm locked around me.
I hate him.
I hate him.
I hate him.
So why do I feel safer here than I ever have?
I bury my arms around his neck and cling to him, crying into his skin like I’ll dissolve if I let go. And he doesn’t stop me. Doesn’t mock me. Doesn’t say a word.
I don’t know who I am anymore. What I’m doing. What he’s turning me into.
“You don’t have to stay.” I sniffle, hating how weak my voice sounds. “You got what you wanted. You can leave.”
His chest rumbles with a sound I don’t understand. Not quite a laugh.
“This is my room too, kitten.”
I look up at him, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe. His ice-blue eyes are locked on me. He lifts his hand to my face, dragging a rough thumb across my cheek. He catches a tear with his mouth and kisses it.
“Fuck. I love your tears.”
His lips softly brush mine before his mouth drags lower, across my jaw, down my throat, tongue ghosting over the bruises he left behind.
“Why do you enjoy hurting me?”
“Because you like it. Don’t you?” He kisses another tear away, softer this time. “You fucking melt when I break you. You breathe when you stop fighting. So tell me, kitten…why do you like it?”
I can’t answer. I don’t know. The truth twists inside me, heavy and sick.
“I don’t understand it…why I want it. Why I want you. It’s wrong. It feels…broken.”
His thumb finds my mouth again, tracing the curve of my bottom lip. “Sometimes it’s the only language some of us ever learned.”
He presses his forehead to mine. “Pain’s all I’ve ever known. It’s the only thing I know how to give. Sometimes it’s the only thing that feels real.”
I swallow hard. My voice cracks. “I don’t know why I want you when I hate you.”
He smirks against my skin.
“You do know. You just don’t like the answer.”
He kisses me again—harder this time. Then he pulls back, looking at me.
“What do you want right now, Arlo? Tell the monster what the broken little thing in your head needs.”
I close my eyes. I don’t want to admit the truth. But it spills out anyway.
“Just…hold me till I fall asleep?”
“I do that every night. You just don’t remember.”
My breath catches. I pull back enough to see his face, but he doesn’t meet my eyes. His hand keeps moving slowly up and down my spine.
He holds me? Every night?
It shouldn’t mean anything. Not coming from him. But it does. It means everything, and I hate myself for how much it matters.
“Why—”
“Go to sleep, little one.”
I bite my tongue, swallowing the questions. There are too many, and none of them have answers I want to hear. I press my face back into his chest, his heartbeat thudding steadily beneath my cheek.
Maybe he’s right.
Maybe I do like it.
Maybe surviving for so long—just surviving—left something inside me twisted. Maybe growing up with my body in fight-or-flight taught me to crave the feeling of losing control, of finally letting go. Of handing the monster the leash.
Because when I’m pinned beneath him, when the world narrows to pain and heat and breath, I don’t have to make decisions. I don’t have to pretend I’m fine. I just have to feel.
And somehow that feels safer than hope ever did.
What does that make me?
I hate how badly I want him to keep holding me. I hate the part of me that never wants this to end.
I close my eyes and drift, the exhaustion finally taking over, his warmth sinking into my skin like a poison I’m no longer fighting.
And in this moment, I don’t know if I want to run…or stay until there’s nothing left of me.
The door slams behind me, echoing through the bunker as the lock clicks. Dalton’s already pacing, fury burning through every muscle.
“So this is your fucking plan, Priest? Keep us locked up until Sterling comes to kill us?”
I don’t answer. Just stand there, arms crossed, watching him unravel.
Raze leans back against the wall, smirking. “You finally admitting he wants you dead, Dalton? Thought that might be a tough one for a pussy like you to swallow.”
“Fuck you.” He spits, the glob landing inches from Raze’s boot.
I laugh under my breath. “Careful, Dalton. Wouldn’t want to test his aim. He’s jumpy when he’s bored.”
Alistair drags out a chair, plants himself across from me. “I’m not admitting shit,” he sneers. “You’ve lost your goddamn mind. Locking us in here? For what?”
Dalton spins. “I’m not staying in here another fucking second. You can’t keep us here—we’ve done nothing wrong!”
I sigh, planting myself in a chair, the metal groans under the weight. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“This whole thing,” Alistair snaps, “is in your twisted fucking head. You’ve always been fucked, Priest—but now you’re completely gone.”
Raze flips his knife open, cleaning his nails with the blade. Alistair sits up, his body tensing at the sight of the blade.
“Everyone knows Valcross fucked you up,” Alistair sneers. “This isn’t strategy. It’s a PTSD psychotic break and you’ve got so many goddamn people scared of you, no one’s brave enough to call your bullshit.”
My eye twitches. The one-eight-seven inked into my neck burns. The mention of Valcross peels back my skull like a can lid.
I lean forward slowly. “Are you scared of me, Alistair?” His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t speak. “Because you fucking should be.”
I slam my fists onto the table so hard the whole thing jolts.
“He’s been playing you, you stupid fucks.
Just like he played me. And when the time is right, Sterling will slit your throats,” I snarl through my teeth.
“And if he doesn’t get the pleasure?” I lean even closer, close enough for him to see the whites of my eyes.
“I will. I’ve dreamed of putting you down like the fucking coward you are. ”
Dalton tenses, but I’m not finished.
“I don’t give a fuck if either of you live or die.
But I give a fuck if Sterling thinks—for one miserable fucking second—that he can take me out.
” I stand up straight, towering over them now.
“We both know he’s not working alone. We just don’t know how many of your rich daddy’s friends are helping him. ”
Dalton looks away, but Alistair stares up at me with that founder-born superiority complex he inherited from his bloodline of cowards. I can see it all over his face—the disbelief, the disdain, the blind trust in a system that was built to protect him.
“Fuck. You. Priest,” he spits. “You won’t get away with this.
And if you’re implying our fathers had anything to do with your paranoid bullshit, then you better be prepared to lose your life.
You’ve always been dead set on ruining the reputation of the founding members.
That’s all this is. If Sterling wants anyone dead, it’s you.
You don’t follow orders. You don’t fall in line.
You do what you want, when you want. And now you’ve convinced all these weak-minded fucks—” he gestures toward the other Sovereign soldiers in the room “—that everyone’s out to get you. Pathetic. You’re a goddamn coward.”
Raze points his knife directly at Alistair’s chest. “You need to watch your fucking mouth.”
I tilt my head, gaze still locked on Alistair.
“You think I’m keeping you alive? You think I give a shit about saving your miserable fucking life?
You should be thanking Arsen. Because if it were up to me, I would’ve carved your fucking name into the morgue wall years ago.
You’re a waste of fucking air. Just like your pathetic father. ”
The door opens and Wolff steps in, “We’ve got to move. Arsen and the team are back…” he pauses, “with Lev.”
The bunker’s already stacked with more bodies than it can hold when we return. Arsen’s cherry-picked Facility 42 team is unloading gear, tension coiling in the air.
“Fucking Christ, Priest. What kind of shit did you pull this time?”
I don’t need to turn. I’d know that voice anywhere. He strides in, yanking off his gear and dropping it onto the table.
Axel fucking Hawthorne. The Reaper.
The only other monster in this goddamn organization who might be more fucked than me. We’re cut from the same rotting cloth. He’s a legacy, just like me. But his family didn’t survive him.
Only his cousin Griffen’s left—somewhere in the bunker, probably getting on everyone’s last nerve and laughing while doing it.
“How bad?” I ask, glancing down the hallway. I can hear the hum of medical equipment behind the cracked door.
Axe just shakes his head.
Fuck.
I knew it.
And still…I’d hoped I was wrong.
Not for Lev.
Not for Arsen.
Not for the mission.
For her.
Some dead part of me still hoped he wouldn’t be this far gone. That maybe, somehow, Lev would walk out of 42 and Arlo wouldn’t have to break all over again. I never had a father. But a father is all she had.
And now—
I inhale deep and head down the corridor, swallowing whatever the fuck that feeling is before it festers. Arsen’s voice drifts through the cracked door in sharp Russian syllables. I lean against the frame.
Inside, Sovereigns are trying—and failing—to get an IV into what’s left of Lev. Arsen catches my eyes across the room, and his shoulders drop a fraction. I’m three steps in when I hear it behind me.
“Daddy?”
The room stills.