21
EMERSYN
I didn’t know how I made it home. I was naked, bleeding and covered in dirt, mud, and things I didn’t want to think about. By the time I recognized the forest near the cabin, it took everything in me just to take the next step. I heard Fang bark—Sacha was home?
Sacha was home.
Fang’s barking grew louder, and when the pale light of dawn filtered through the trees to reveal the dim outline of the cabin, the relief caused all my strength to leave, and I fell to my knees.
Sacha’s form blurred as I burst into tears.
He knelt in front of me—his hands grabbed my shoulders.
His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear him, even though it looked like he was shouting.
He wrapped something around my shoulders—I hadn’t even realized I was freezing cold until that moment.
Everything sounded far away. Sacha yanked my chin towards him and my brain slowly understood that he was asking me who did this, and where.
“Men. North shore,” I gasped.
It was several minutes before I realized he was gone.
I lurched to my feet and forced myself the last few yards to the front door.
The visceral need to wash them from my skin gave me the strength to make it to my bathroom.
I wanted their touch gone. I showered until the water ran cold, and scrubbed until my skin was red and inflamed and the cuts bled again, but it still wasn’t enough.
I wanted to turn myself inside out and scrub my bones clean.
The thought that I wasn’t able to do that, was enough to reduce me to tears as I sank to the shower floor in despair.
The water grew cold enough that I was compelled to turn it off.
Somehow I made it to my bedroom where I put on my loosest clothes and grabbed a firearm I kept in my nightstand.
I went out into the living room and huddled in the chair by the fire where I watched the door.
I vaguely remembered Sacha had left, but I also knew those men were somewhere out there.
If they came while Sacha was gone, I’d put a bullet in each of them before they even crossed the threshold.
Except, the longer I sat there. The shakier my hand became and the more my mind drifted.
It wanted to shut down. It wanted me to sleep until there wasn’t a difference between living, and a sleep as deep as death.
The gun slipped from my hand and I went somewhere else, empty as a void and numb to everything.
I was so deep in a dissociative state, I had no idea how much time had passed, but when Sacha burst through the front door, it startled me out of it.
He looked beyond furious, and his gaze darkened further when he noticed the gun I’d dropped on the floor.
He stalked toward me, surrounded by the dewy smell of the forest in the morning and the coppery tang of blood, which only intensified my terror.
I cowered into the chair. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I cried and dissolved into tears again.
I didn’t even know what I was apologizing for.
Not listening to him? Being too afraid to defend myself?
I wasn’t sure. Sacha seemed to realize he needed to tread carefully because I watched his anger soften into a neutral expression.
He knelt in front of the chair and picked up the gun which he quickly stashed in his belt.
I watched him warily, my hands clutched against my chest to stop them from shaking.
“We need to talk about what happened,” he said firmly.
I closed my eyes. That was the last thing I wanted to do.
“I killed—one of them,” I stuttered.
“I know, I saw,” Sacha answered patiently. “But you let the other two go. Why?”
I opened my eyes. “I was scared,” I whispered.
The intensity that radiated off him was visceral and heavy. His jaw tightened and his knuckles were white where they gripped the armrest on either side.
“Did they touch you?”
I showed up naked, of course he had to know they touched me. But, I couldn’t get the words out. I stared at him and he repeated the question.
“Emersyn, did they touch you?” He asked, firmer this time.
My lip quivered, but I bravely kept my eyes open and nodded once. A darkness rolled over Sacha that caused goosebumps to break out across my skin. I shrank back against the chair again, suddenly very aware of how dangerous a man Sacha actually was.
“Then, I’ll ask you again, why did you let the other two live?”
“I wasn’t–wasn’t sure if I–I could do it,” I stumbled over the words. “And I–I didn’t want–them to keep–touching me.” By the time I managed to get the words out, they were nothing more than gasps of air around breathless sobs.
Sacha abruptly surged to his feet and paced the room. He glared at his surroundings, but I doubt that’s what he saw. I think he envisioned those men, because the violence bled off of him in waves. He slammed his fist abruptly into the wall and turned to face me.
“Damnit, girl!” I jumped. “After everything I taught you—” He cut off his words and turned his back.
Tears ran down my cheeks. “I’m sorry—”
“No,” Sacha barked. He stalked back over. “Stop apologizing to me. Apologize to yourself.”
He must have realized he was being too aggressive in my distraught state because he closed his eyes and took several steady breaths before he got back down onto his haunches and tried again.
“You’ve come such a long way from that lost little girl I found in the woods. Don’t let yourself go back to that place. Are you really going to let these men undo everything you’ve been working toward all these years?”
“I froze—I couldn’t do anything,” I whispered.
Sacha’s jaw tensed. “I’ve been too easy on you then. We’ll fix that.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I whimpered.
“Yes, you do—”
“No! I’m weak, I’m—”
Sacha’s eyes narrowed and he dragged my hands away from my throat. He gripped them hard between his own.
“Don’t you fucking dare say those words. Ever. Again,” he growled. “Am I clear?” The look in his eyes scared me into silence, but I gave a jerk of a nod. “Now, think, girl. What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? They–they’ll be long gone now—”
“I disabled their vehicle,” Sacha said, flatly.
“What?”
“And made it very—uncomfortable—for them to go very far,” he continued. “Now, that leaves only one question—what are you going to do with that information?”
I blinked. “You–you want me to go after them?”
“I want you to do what you think is appropriate given what they did to you.” Sacha’s eyes glimmered with shadows. “I saw how you killed the one. I know that must have felt good.”
My lips thinned as I remembered the satisfaction of watching Jas die, and of him no longer being able to touch me. Whatever Sacha saw on my face must have confirmed something for him.
He gripped the back of my neck. “You told me you wanted to hurt the people who hurt you. Did that change? Are you going to let it all go?”
I frowned. I’d said those things when I was thirteen. Thirteen. Nothing more than a teenager. At the time, the idea of holding them accountable had been so abstract—who was I to hurt such powerful men? There was such a vast difference between childhood rage and adult revenge.
But, I couldn’t deny the dark thoughts I had in the deepest of night when the nightmares wreaked havoc on my sanity.
In those moments, all I wanted was revenge as I thought about everything that was taken from me—by Vetticus, Octavius and Albatron—and now by those hunters.
The anger roiled inside me. It simmered to the forefront in a way that demanded acknowledgement.
No, I didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t want to let any of it go.
I shook my head.
Sacha’s grip tightened and his words grew fervent. “Then take the power back. You are a predator. Act like it.”
I thought about how it would make me feel to see Harry and Pete dead. I thought about the satisfaction I’d get from killing them in a similar way to how I’d killed Jas.
“There she is,” Sacha breathed. “There’s the girl who fought and killed a bear. Now, you just have to find the woman inside you who can do the same to a man.”
Sacha stood up. “Go get changed. Meet me in the armory.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but disappeared into his bedroom.
I shakily got to my feet, choking on residual emotions.
Sacha was right—I needed to take back control.
But, as broken as I felt, it seemed like a daunting task.
A task that would require sacrifice and pain.
What was I willing to do to ensure they wouldn’t win?
What was I willing to sacrifice in order to become what I needed to become?
The answer hit me as I walked into my bedroom and an eerie calm gave way to clarity.
Everything.
The little girl—that skittish deer—was dead. I had to let her go, because beyond her grave stood the woman I needed to become.
I pulled on a pair of thick black leggings and a long thermal. My body protested the tight clothing, but I knew it would allow me to move the way I needed to move. A harness with pockets and holders for firearms and knives went over the top of that.
I walked into the bathroom and pulled my hair out of the way into a ponytail.
Then, I yanked on my gloves and after taking a few steadying breaths, turned toward the mirror.
The woman who stared back at me was predatory, cold—wounded in a way that went beyond the visible.
I touched the cut on my lip and the bruise that mottled my cheekbone.
The stab of pain pulled my lips into a scowl—how fucking dare they put their hands on me.
I realized at that moment, the little girl was no longer the face in the mirror.
She’d stopped looking over her shoulder for someone to save her, and was now looking at me.
It was time to make her proud. The thought was more comforting than I expected, and I left the bathroom with a renewed sense of responsibility.
Reality crashed back down when I moved too quickly descending the steps of the armory and remembered the extent of my injuries.
I was not in top form. Still, I didn’t think Sacha would send me out there if he didn’t think I’d succeed.
Although, I was past the point of doing this because he wanted me to.
I needed redemption. I’d been paralyzed by fear before, I wasn’t going to let that happen again.
Sacha had an assortment of weapons already laid out, except the first thing I asked wasn’t about weapons.
“Are there any painkillers?” I asked.
Sacha shook his head. “You need to learn how to fight through the pain, and push past your breaking point.”
When I didn’t respond, he glanced up. “And after you heal from this, we might want to talk about putting you through SERE.”
“SERE?”
“Captivity simulation training,” he explained. “Puts you through physical and psychological duress to teach you how to survive it in a real situation.”
“Did you go through it?” I asked as I strapped a few knives to my harness.
He finished checking the gun in his hand and handed it over. “Yes.”
“Did it teach you not to break?”
A soft scoff. “Everyone breaks eventually.”
“Then what’s the point?”
He slid a few mags my way, but when I went to grab them, he held my wrist until I looked up.
“Nothing can prepare you for the real thing,” he said. “That’s not what it’s for. But, it does give you a solid fortress to operate out of which gives you time, and in captivity, time is what will save you.”
That all sounded horrible, but also necessary. It sounded scary as fuck too. But, my future plans were dangerous and there was every possibility that I could get captured and tortured. Maybe, it wasn’t such a bad idea to go through the training.
“Don’t think about that right now, though,” Sacha said. “Focus on the hunt.”
When we were done, Sacha walked by my side to the front door. He held out the hunting knife I’d brought back—it still had Jas’ blood on it. My adrenaline spiked as I gripped the hilt and watched Sacha’s eyes turn to steel.
“Show them what it means to have you as an enemy.”