Chapter 18 Xeni
Xeni
War drums echo in my skull, and my mouth is so dry my tongue clings to the roof like a flag of surrender. I try to pull memories from the incessant thudding in my brain, and the night comes back to me in a fuzzy blur.
Ordering Talia to unlock my door.
Swiping a few bottles of booze from the cupboards.
Deciding I needed to wear one of Bash’s shirts, and how we giggled on our way to the laundry room.
“Fuck,” I whisper, refusing to open my eye and face the new wave of headache the light will undoubtedly stir to life. I reach for the edge of the bed and the water bottle I keep stored there, but my hand thunks into more mattress.
Confused, I crack my eye open and find my face smooshed into a fluffy pillow in a large, clean room. Bookshelves line the wall, and a familiar stack of comic books rests on the shelf directly in front of me.
My heart races as I take a deep breath, breathing in his scent.
“How are you feeling this morning?” Bash asks from behind me, his voice gentle.
I roll to find him sitting in a chair beside the bed.
His smile is heavy as he leans in and pushes the hair from my face. “Do you have a headache?”
“A little,” I manage to rasp through my confusion.
He breathes a laugh, and I wonder where this tenderness is coming from.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he says, “considering how much of my good rum you polished off last night.”
I open my mouth, but words fail me again.
“Drink this.” He hands me a cold water before he stands and walks through a doorway across the room. Water runs from inside, and as I’m greedily finishing my drink, Bash returns with a toothbrush and another glass to rinse my mouth.
“Thank you,” I mutter, thankful for the care even if I don’t understand its source.
He takes everything back when I’m finished, and I’m still watching him carefully as he walks it to the bathroom then returns.
“Why are you being nice to me?” I ask.
Try as he might to hide it, I don’t miss the sorrow in his eyes. Bash sits back in his chair and drags his thumb across his mouth like he does when he’s deep in thought, and I take another long sip of water to distract myself from the loaded silence.
“How much do you remember about last night?” he asks after a long stretch.
I duck my head as my cheeks flush. “Um, I remember most of it at the beginning. I was… mad.”
“Mad?” he repeats.
When I glance up, his brow is lifted, and the barbell reflects the light. It accentuates the motion, but he seems more curious than angry.
I nod. “You were ignoring me.”
“Yeah, you never did well with that,” he mutters.
Despite the tension, I huff a quiet laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“So, you were mad, and…?” he presses.
I shift uncomfortably as I sit taller and recline against the headboard. “And I made Talia release me. We, uh, got into the liquor cabinet…”
“Uh huh,” he drawls.
My lips twitch in a tiny grin. “Then I, um, stole your shirt and… well…”
“Barged into my meeting half naked?”
“Yeah,” I say with a cringe. “Yep. That’s the gist of it.”
“What do you remember after that?”
“Not much,” I admit, chancing a glance up to meet his eyes. “Though I’m quite curious how I ended up in your bed.”
My teasing falls flat, and Bash leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
Nothing would've happened between us last night. Bash would never take advantage of me in that condition, regardless of how much I begged.
I cringe.
I'm sure I begged.
“Lay back,” he finally says, then stands and hovers over me.
My neck cranes to follow his eyes as I try to read them. They’re intense, and I swallow hard as I nod and let my back fall onto the mattress.
Bash tugs the blankets, then levels me with a stern glare as I scramble to hold on to them. I force another hard swallow as I let my hands fall limply at my sides.
He pulls the sheets away, and shame burns hot on my face as he stares at my thighs.
Slowly, he kneels, then slides his arms along the mattress until he grips my hips and tugs my body closer. Deft fingers lift my shirt and push the side of my underwear down.
His fingertips drift over my mark. “What happened?”
“Bash, no,” I whine.
“I deserve to know.”
The firm grip on my hips leaves no room for argument, but the sternness of his voice is countered by the gentle way he leans forward and kisses that cursed skin.
“Xen, please,” he murmurs as his lips drag over my hipbone.
My resolve falters, and I squeeze my eye closed. “I told you they found out,” I finally say.
He freezes like he didn’t expect an answer before he sits back on his feet, his thumb still tracing delicate little shapes over my skin.
“But,” I continue, “I didn’t tell you everything that came with that.”
“I’m listening.”
My eye opens and I stare at the ceiling for a minute, gathering my courage.
I never wanted him to know about this part of my past… never wanted him to carry the weight of what was done to me.
My hand slides to my hip, covering his as we trace the mark together. “This was my penance.”
“For what?” he asks.
“Hiding us. Lying about being mates. It was the price I paid to keep you safe.”
His hand stops moving in those comforting pets and flexes against my hip. “What do you mean by that?”
My breath shakes as I brace myself for what’s coming, the silence stretched so thin that one heartbeat might crack it wide open.
“When Aeliphis found out, she was going to report it to Leadership,” I explain, “and I couldn’t allow that to happen. I couldn’t put you in that sort of danger, so I begged her. Told her I’d do whatever it took to keep you safe, and she… offered me a deal.”
“What sort of deal?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I whine.
Bash cups my hip like he’s hugging it, soothing me even as I prepare to break his heart all over again.
“If we’re ever going to move past this, I need to hear it,” he says.
“Can we move past it?”
Temporary insanity forces me to ask the question before I can consider its consequences, and I don’t dare to even breathe as I wait for his answer.
He stares at me, and I can see the assessment in his eyes as he considers it. Risk and cost on one side, potential reward on the other, and each passing second another shift in the balance.
The longer he takes, the further my heart falls.
“I don’t know,” he finally says, and the honesty lands like a blow. “But this is how we try, Xen. This is what I need to figure that out. What sort of deal did you make?”
“Aeliphis agreed to report that you died,” I say, the words tasting like ash.
“That way, no one would look for you. Only a few people knew about us—the ones she trusted. They filed a report saying we were mated, but that you were killed in an accident right after. And they…” I trail off with a shaky exhale.
He strokes his thumb over my hip again. “They what, princess?”
Deep, desperate longing overtakes my body at the pet name, and I tighten my hand over his.
“They said you had to disappear,” I whisper as a single tear slips free from my eye. “You had to disappear and I couldn’t know where you were, because no one would believe it if the pain wasn’t real. They knew I’d come after you if I had any idea where they’d taken you, and…”
My quiet sob fills the empty space, and Bash releases a pained whine as he climbs my body and wraps his arms around my back. He hugs me so tightly I can barely breathe, and I revel in the loss of air as I squeeze him back.
“I had to do it,” I whisper. “I swore I’d protect you, and I had to keep you safe.”
“You said you’d kept tabs on me, though.”
“It took me almost two years to find you and when I learned you were here…” I trail off, but Bash’s mind is already two steps ahead.
“What about the other side of this deal?” he demands as he pulls back to look at me. “What did they get from doing this?”
“She wanted to… study me,” I whisper as his heartbreak turns to fury.
“She… she wanted to see what would happen when we were separated. Learn how the bond would react when we were forced to be so far apart. She wanted to see how it affected me and my health, and what it would do to my mind. Every night after work, they’d pull me into a lab, and they’d… ”
I trail off, but after years of seeing the horrors performed in that place, I don’t need to go into details. Anything he imagines is equally as horrific as the reality, and it doesn’t need to be spoken out loud.
“What else?” he rasps.
My lip quivers as I fight to steady my breathing. “They tried to… sever the bond—”
“Xen,” he whispers, horrified.
I shake my head, needing to get it out now while I have the courage. “They tried, over and over again, but they couldn’t do it. It…”
Another quiet sob leaves me as he watches, shock slacking his face.
“It fought back. It wouldn’t… wouldn’t let them. It almost killed me, Bash, and they backed off. Went back to studying me and…”
“How long did this go on?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I try to look away, but he grips my chin and holds me there, eye to eye.
“How long?” he whispers.
My lip trembles at the memory of being strapped into those chairs and onto those tables. The bindings weren’t to stop me from running. My need to protect Bash guaranteed I'd stay.
It was to prevent the agony from sending my body onto the floor.
To hold my flailing limbs still so their studies wouldn’t be interrupted.
To keep my arching spine from launching me across the room because the pain demanded it.
“It never stopped,” I answer quietly. “They were never planning on stopping.”
Bash’s entire body quakes with his outrage. “But you said… you said the chief was moved to Glaston. She wasn’t there anymore.”
A wet, humorless laugh pushes from my nose as I shake my head.
“And I also said I was moved with her. She fully intended to keep me under her thumb for the rest of my life. It was a stalemate. She had my secret, and I had hers, but the stakes were never the same. Her sacrifice would’ve been her life. Mine would’ve been yours.”