Chapter 22 #2
A green light runs along the monitor, and it’s all I need to see to know that I’m in a hospital. I glance down, lifting my finger that is clamped between a pulse oximeter.
“She’s awake!” a male voice calls out.
I turn my head to the left and find Kole sitting next to the bed with a strained expression. He shoots up out of his chair and takes a step back just as Thane appears, looking down at me, no longer wearing the Phantom mask.
“Is she okay? Is everything normal?” Thane’s rough voice trembles slightly as the questions pour out of him.
“Yes, Alpha. She’s going to be just fine. It was probably just a panic attack,” an older woman in a white coat reassures before gliding away like some kind of angel.
Thane’s brows pinch as his eyes narrow on me. If I didn’t know him, I’d think it was the look of concern. But I do know him, so I’m assuming it’s the look of irritation from me messing up his plans to have me repeatedly dropped into the dunk tank of blood.
Blood.
The smell isn’t as strong, but it’s still all over me. Dried and cracked like a shell of death. I sit up, ripping the monitors off of me before jumping out of the bed. I’m still dressed in the slave costume, so I make sure to adjust the thin strips of fabric that make up the skirt as I move.
“Whoa. What are you doing?” Thane demands, grabbing a hold of my shoulders. I immediately roll them back, knocking his hands away.
“She just said I’m fine. It was a stupid panic attack.”
The dunk tank was meant to humiliate me, but my panic attack did that all on its own. Everyone got to see the human girl fight for breath as she coughed up blood, drowning in the horrifying memories they left me with. Memories that I had tried to forget.
“Just let me take a look at you,” Thane snarls.
“Why?” I bite back. “So you can admire your work?” I throw my hands out and turn around, showing off the layer of dry blood coating my body. “Happy?”
His jaw ticks as his gaze falls. “No,” he answers with a grunt.
He reaches for my wrist and pulls me into him so tightly that I can’t push away. For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to toss me back into the hospital bed, but instead, he shoots off through the building. Before I know it, he’s buckling my seatbelt and slamming the car door in my face.
“Where are we going now?”
He skids onto the street like he’s fucking Dominic Toretto, and my grip on the door handle tightens when he immediately takes a sharp right.
“We’re going home so I can get that blood off of you,” he answers in a voice so deep I have to strain my ears to hear him.
“You mean the blood I almost drowned in? The blood that you forced me into, because of your obsession with getting revenge on humans, even though you’ve already killed them all!
” The restraint on my anger vanishes as the words spew out of me with their own venom.
“When will it be enough? When will you stop blaming me for a world I was never welcomed in either?”
The car jerks to a stop, and when his head snaps to me, I can see the wild animal within him, demanding to be let out.
We stay stopped in the middle of the road for a long moment before he takes off again, not saying a damn thing.
Maybe he finally realized just how insane his whole reasoning for punishing me is, but I doubt it.
A guy like Thane would rather double down than admit that he’s wrong.
Somehow, Kole beats us to the penthouse, where he’s waiting by the wall of windows with his hands clasped behind his back.
There’s an anxiousness about him as he shifts from foot to foot, eyeing his brother like a hawk.
He usually has a calm demeanor, so seeing him on edge makes me feel even more uneasy.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to go scrub my body until it’s raw,” I say over my shoulder with a hiss.
Thane darts in front of me, blocking the bedroom doorway, but Kole is already between us, holding his hand up against Thane’s chest.
“Careful, brother,” Kole warns, taking a small step closer to Thane.
The both of them are eye to eye. Two powerful beasts locked in some sort of standoff.
I’m not sure what this is all about, but I know better than to get in the middle of it.
Thane pushes Kole aside with enough ease to let me know Kole allowed it, and though the thought of that should make me feel a little more relaxed, it doesn’t.
“I’m in control,” Thane tells Kole with a nod before turning back to me.
What am I missing here?
“Let’s go.” Thane shifts out of the doorway and motions for me to pass through.
“Excuse me?” I plant my feet and cross my arms defiantly.
“The shower. Go,” Thane orders with a point.
“Not with you!” I spit, taking a step back.
His scowl deepens as he stalks closer to me, and out of the corner of my eye, I catch Kole move closer too. Almost like he’s readying to pull Thane away from me at any moment.
I lurch back, but Thane grabs me and throws me over his shoulder. “Put me down!” I thrash and kick, but it does nothing to free me.
“There,” Thane snarls, setting me down in the shower and closing the door behind him.
I attempt to push him away from me, but it’s like pushing a marble statue.
“Get out!” I demand, pressing my back against the wall in an effort to get as far away from him as possible.
“I can’t,” he grunts, almost as if he’s in pain. “I have to do this.”
“Do what?” My voice shakes, fearful of what the answer might be as he presses his palms against the wall behind me, caging me in.
I watch his chest rise and fall in front of me, wondering what pain I’ll endure next when I’m hit with ice cold water as it rains down from the showerhead above us.
“Turn around,” he orders with a threatening look that tells me not to put up a fight.
I swallow hard before reluctantly turning my back to him.
The heavy sigh he exhales into the back of my neck sends a shiver down my spine, but I try not to let it show.
Instead, I fixate on the drain beneath me, watching the blood run into the water as the shower begins to wash away the remnants of the horrible night.
“Take out your braid.”
I do as he says, removing the few extensions Sienna had added for length and tossing them over the glass wall.
There’s a feeling of relief as I work my fingers through my scalp, massaging out the mild headache the braid had been causing all night.
By now, the water has warmed, and I find my head falling back as the water lightly pelts my face clean.
“Stop.” Thane’s hands wrap around my wrists, pulling them down to my sides. “I need to do it.”
“Do what?” I ask again, whirling around to look at him.
His raven hair has fallen over his eyes, water dripping from the tips. “I have to clean you.”
I shake my head. “No. You don’t get to do this again. You don’t get to be the cause of my torment and then act like the mark is somehow forcing you to undo the damage that you caused.”
“It’s not an act!”
“Yes, it is!” I slam my fists against his chest, but he doesn’t budge.
“You act like the mark controls you, but it doesn’t.
And your desire to wash away the proof of what you’ve done has nothing to do with the mark!
It’s just another way for you to control me.
For you to torture me! Because as much as I hated suffocating in that vat of blood, I’d rather endure that a hundred times over than have your hands on me! ”
A violent growl tears through him, and I recoil against the shower wall, waiting for the wrath of his fury. But it never comes. Kole already has one arm locked around Thane’s throat, pulling him from the shower.
The two of them struggle against one another, but I can tell Thane is too strong for Kole to hold him back for long.
Eventually, Thane breaks free and whirls around, pushing Kole so hard that he goes flying into the mirror above the sink, shattering it into a million pieces.
Kole quickly recovers, but Thane is already gone.
“Are you okay?” Kole asks, stepping into the shower.
“You were just thrown into a mirror and are bleeding, and you’re asking me if I’m okay?”
Kole shrugs. “I’ll heal.” He takes a step forward into the falling water and runs the back of his hand down my cheek. “So, are you okay?”
There’s so much worry on his face, and for a moment, I don’t understand why, but then I realize I’m shaking.
I clench my fists in an effort to gain control of it, but Kole pulls me into him, wrapping me in a tight hug.
I melt into him, allowing myself to feel safe in his hold.
It’s a feeling that is so foreign, and yet in this moment, it feels completely natural.
I only allow myself to embrace it for a few seconds before I pull away to look up at him.
“What’s going on with you two? You’ve been on edge since we got back.” I ignore his question, because we both know I’m not okay.
Kole nods to the broken mirror. “Because of that. I get that you think Thane is just using the mark as an excuse, but he’s not.
I know my brother, and I can see his control slipping when it comes to you.
” He shakes his head, raking his eyes down my body.
I’m still dressed in the slave costume, and though most of the blood has washed away, bits of it still remain.
Kole runs a hand through his wet hair, pushing it back out of his face.
“I haven’t seen him lose control in a very long time, and after seeing the way he reacted when he pulled you out of that tank, I didn’t want to take any chances. ”
“What do you mean, ‘the way he reacted’?”
“We can talk about it later. You’ve been in that outfit long enough. Go ahead and shower, and I’ll clean up the shattered mirror when you’re done.” Kole reaches for the shower door, but I grab a hold of his forearm to stop him.
“Thank you. I know going against your brother wasn’t easy.”
“I just wish I could do more.” There’s a somber tone to his voice that makes me feel like he really means it.