Chapter 21
Twenty-One
B astian ordered Callum to carry her back to her room and put her in the box. She was half conscious as he dragged her battered figure off the floor and tossed her on his shoulder like nothing more than a sack of potatoes.
“It didn’t have to be this way. You could’ve been happy, you know.” Callum murmured as he carried her reluctantly to her room.
“How could I have?” She whispered with a slur. Her swollen lip made it hard to speak.
“All you had to do was choose me.” His voice was pained.
She felt the thud of him tossing her on the bed, but never heard the door of her prison slam shut.
W hen she awoke the pain that flooded her entire body made her scream. Loud and long until her last raspy sound erupted from her. Deep and guttural with so much disdain and frustration, her sobs followed.
Betrayed and hurt, Ren felt the walls of the room close in on her. A sense of dizziness and the room spinning made her feel nauseous enough to heave. She tried to hold the contents of her stomach down. Not remembering eating anything, she let go of what she thought would’ve just been bile.
Blood.
She spewed blood. Maybe a swallow’s worth at first, and then a bit more on a second cramping hurl.
The pure white of the linens on the bed soaked in the thick red readily. Seeping out to the surrounding pieces of fabric with ease.
Ren wiped the back of her hand across her mouth to clear the last vestiges of the spew vomit.
The words that Callum left her with resonated inside her mind, over and over again.
“You could have been happy…choose me.”
Playing like a broken record. Echoing the sentiment.
She curled herself up on the bed and wrapped her arms around her knees. The bruising from the night before was already healing and turning into those shades of greens and yellows.
The brothers' dark world was not one of romantic allure, but of hidden agendas and calculated maneuvers. The taste of betrayal was bitter on her tongue, overshadowing any romantic feelings she had for them.
Her current feelings were agony and a building hunger she couldn’t explain. Slowly the ache of her bruised flesh was replaced by cramps in her stomach that doubled her over.
She retched as they threatened to break her mind in two, the muscles throughout her body tightening up with such excruciating force that it caused her body to twist and fold at odd angles.
Pain erupted from a depth inside of her that she had never experienced before. She had no idea what was going on and started to question what had been done to her.
Grayson walked through her door with a bag of blood like you might find at a hospital and tossed it in through a small compartment door in one of the clear panels of her cage.
“This is your final test. It must be your choice. You will forever be bound to us if you drink. If you don’t then your choice is death.”
Something about the blood in the small plastic container looked off. It didn’t hold the same color as you’d think, there was a sheen of black that flowed through it as if it were alive itself. Swirling like the fog on a warm lake after a cool night in the fall.
The trust she'd reluctantly placed in the brothers shattered. She was left alone and vulnerable, a prisoner in a world that was darker and more dangerous than she'd ever imagined.
“What do you mean?”
Grayson just closed the door behind himself and left wordlessly.