64. Raphael
Raphael
SHE IS BLEEDING INTERNALLY FOR ME, BUT MOST FOR HERSELF.
Citizen Soldier Playlist
(for Briella)
“Limit”
“Invisible”
“Bedroom Ceiling”
“Who I Am”
“Born Without a Heart” - Faouzia
Briella lifts her head before I do it for her. As if she flawlessly predicted when the crying was supposed to stop.
Before anything else, I strip her of the lingerie, leaving her nude on my lap, apart from the compression sleeve on her leg and the arrowhead pin in her hair.
While hunger may consume my brothers, their honor, reverence, and respect for her are greater. They do not require my command to stay on their motherfucking knees before her.
Paying homage to our Queen.
With her back to my chest, the fragrant scent of her wild curls curling in the air before my face, I coil a hand around her throat.
Not quite gripping. Just anchoring. Her body is soft and warm, flushed, and glistening from sweat.
Her nipples are rosy pink and stiff, her lips still swollen. And her wetness still coats her thighs.
It’s taking everything for their eyes not to stray. I warn each of them with a pointed glare to respect the trauma she is about to release. They will only interact if I choose. But for now? I own her.
I will hunt her soul.
And hold her scars.
I will taste the blood when she opens them.
Now, she draws in air, presses her lips into a tight seam, and prepares to unveil the demons.
Time for her to stare down those demons, show them her pretty claws and fangs and the fire I’ve resurrected in her.
Tonight, she will use that fire to burn them down.
And cast them into the pits of hell along with ours.
With a whimper, she leans against my chest, her head tipping onto my shoulder like she’s trying to pull herself back from the ledge of a cliff.
She clenches her hands so tightly her knuckles turn bone-white. I catch the flicker of something ancient behind her lashes. Not age—no, worse. Memory.
I don’t breathe when she starts speaking.
“I was five when I saw my mother murdered.” Quiet words. Halting. Words scraped raw.
Rory’s snarl is sharp, animalistic. Vincent’s fist curls on his leg like he’s already gripping someone’s throat. Jude doesn’t speak, but his jaw flexes like he’s grinding something back. Seth’s watching her…as if he concentrates hard enough, he can take it from her.
I don’t move, apart from curving my fingers upon her lovely throat.
“I never knew my father. He died shortly after my mother gave birth to me. But the Prophet…” she hisses, digging her fingernails into my pants.
I tighten my grip around her throat, siphoning her oxygen for a few seconds
Force her to stay here. To stay with us.
Keep her inside our chains so she does not drown in her trauma.
Once I loosen my grip, she continues, “Easthaven was an asylum, but it was also a compound. A community,” she clarifies. “The Founder…we called him the Prophet. And he had a lot of wives. But no children.”
Her mouth twists bitterly.
“And of course, it was never his fault. It was always theirs. Weak wombs. Weak spirits. None of them were ‘worthy enough’ to carry his divine blood.”
Jude’s jaw flexes. His dark eyes hold her like forceps around something fragile and sacred. He knows better than any of us: there was never anything wrong with those women.
Or with Briella.
Only this Prophet.
Jude’s fingers twitch, aching to reach for her. To mend what he knows was made to suffer.
I cannot let him touch her yet. She may break down after she has purged the poison from her soul. And I am the leech bleeding her.
“My mother, she was his wife for five years. But she could never bear a child. I don’t know why.
I don’t know what happened because I was so little.
All I know is that she said we needed to leave.
Right away. She wrapped me in a blanket and took me through a weak panel in the fence.
But they found us. They were coming. So, she… ”
Raw emotion strips her.
I lower my other hand from her hip and reach for the compression sleeve. Pain slaughters her focus as I dig my fingers into the scar beneath.
She flinches but doesn’t pull away.
“She sacrificed herself so I could get away. She told me to never stop running until I found someone. I heard her screams. But I listened to her. I ran. Through mud, through brush, barefoot. I don’t remember much, just…
a truck. A woman named Maria C. something.
She was very kind, and she had this pretty Beauty and the Beast book with a Christmas tree on the cover and the word “Krampus”.
“Anyway,” she goes on, “I remember police and social services taking me to the orphan home the next day.”
A sob breaks from her throat when I press down harder and scrape my teeth along her jaw at the same time. A reminder of what happened that night.
I’m not prepared for her to elbow me in the chest.
She wrenches her jaw from mine, twists her neck, her eyes narrowing upon mine. “Fuck you, Raphael.”
There’s my Queen.
I slide my fingers out of the sleeve, releasing her scar.
But I will give her a new one. Soon. So she will not forget this night.
“The Prophet has connections with the police. And the government. That’s why I was there only one night. They took me back to Easthaven.”
Her hands begin to shake.
“I had purple hair. They said it was the mark of the demon-born. I was revered. And feared. They called me the Violet Heretic.”
I rip the arrowhead pin from her hair. I place it in her palm. Press, just enough. A tiny puncture blooms red across her skin.
Her pupils sharpen. Her fingers close around the arrowhead like a lifeline.
“I never got my period. It happens.” She shrugs. “And I was glad. Because I knew the way the Prophet looked at me. Like he was biding his time until he could replace my mother…with me. But only if I bled. And they found this…mark on the back of my neck under my hair. It’s just a birthmark, but—”
I grip her braid, yank her hair up, and move the strands to uncover the mark. “The fuck?” I growl, finding the circle, no longer a circle due to the diagonal scar line crossing it out.
“I took a razor blade and I—”
I yank hard on her hair, so she winces, but I command her, “The only one who gets to scar you, to even fucking slice you, or give you so much as a paper cut is me, Briella. Is that understood?”
She lifts her pert nose in defiance. “It was years before I met you.”
I tug harder, thrilled by her yelp. “Is that understood?”
“Understood, my scar master.”
I forgive the not-so-subtle sarcasm and do my best to mask my twisted expression. Because she broke the chain of where she came from. She substituted for five other chains. Unbroken. Eternal. Infinity.
“They had me on so many meds, I could barely remember my own name half the time. Fertility treatments. Hallucinogens. I forgot colors. I forgot time. Even my own body. All I remembered were concrete walls…the straitjackets… the shocks. They used a cattle prod sometimes. Called it discipline. Trying to shock my body into bleeding or some shit. I’d swear to this day, it did the opposite. ”
I close my hand around hers, hear her sharp intake of breath from the arrowhead slicing deeper. She moans and tips her head back again, giving me her face. But if she sheds tears, it will be only when I command.
“The Prophet got tired of waiting for my cycle. He took another girl instead. He assigned an orderly to me, which is code for ‘this is your future husband’. We weren’t allowed to do anything.
Purity and all that. But he pretended to care, made me trust him…
until I caught him fooling around with another orderly. ”
Her glare is fierce. But it is not for me. I still hold her gaze regardless. She blinks, then laughs. Bitter and hollow.
“The one Seth dismembered?” I ask.
She nods and continues, “Then, when I was eighteen…I met her.”
Her smile is soft and sad.
“Another girl. She had hands like birds—delicate.”
Her hands shake. I clench harder until she cries out from the arrowhead. Blood drips down her palm, onto her chest, a tiny rivulet trickling along her peaked nipple.
“She and I shared the same scars. Lost mothers. Didn’t fit in. We would go to the little woods bordering the compound. Or the basement. But Joah…found out. Mmm, Raphael, God!” she moans from the pain endorphins.
“He reported me. When he found out I was with a…girl, he helped them hold me down while they…God, JudeJudeJude!” Her plea for him is a whisper. She lurches, the tears streaming down.
A raw pain born from his black heart overcomes him, but the second he tries to reach for her, I coil a possessive hand around her waist and drag her back to my chest.
One fierce warning from me, and Jude backs off, but tension invades every muscle in his body.
Hurt first. Heal after.
She is mine. Mine to hunt. Mine to hurt. The scar is open. She is bleeding internally for me, but most for herself. They punished her for having a body, for having a goddamn heart. She must feel it again. But now, she will associate it with my punishment, my pain.
Rewrite the script.
“They cut me open.” She spits out the pain she’s kept inside her for too long. “I was numb but awake when they…they sterilized me.”
Now, I see Rory. Not just kneeling. He’s on all fours, hackles raised, every muscle hard as bone. I lower my fingers from her waist below her belly to tap at the scar. His being is defined by one word: ferocity.
The beast inside him thrashes at its chains, a thousand warriors screaming through his veins, aching to rip, to punish, to eviscerate—
—to tear out the hearts of those who stole the one sacred thing she was born to give freely…and made it a wound she would carry forever.