Chapter Twelve
Feralyn
Water.
I couldn’t swallow.
I needed water.
I needed a breath that didn’t hurt.
I needed….
The scent of disinfectant and cold air struck me first. Then I smelled it.
Familiarity.
Soap, laundry detergent, him.
I opened my eyes.
Sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, staring at me, wearing the same clothes I remembered from when he’d had his rifle, Helios eyed me for a second. Then he pushed to his feet, and his huge frame extended almost to the ceiling as his massive biceps stretched the sleeves of his shirt.
Two silent strides, and he was standing over my bed, picking up a cup with a straw and holding it to my mouth, all without taking his eyes off me.
I parted chapped, cracked lips that didn’t feel like my own.
The straw slid to just my tongue.
Then physiology took over.
I sucked.
The first sip of water hit my parched mouth and burned my throat as I swallowed. But immediately after, euphoria took hold, and I was sucking so hard, a lewd sound echoed around the confined space.
I’d barely begun to quench an insatiable thirst when he pulled the cup back, and the straw momentarily stuck to my poor bottom lip.
Wordlessly setting down the water and picking up a small tube of something, he uncapped it and squeezed a pea-sized amount of a viscous gel onto his finger. Then Helios cupped my chin and gently smeared ointment across my lips.
A burning coolness spread in the wake of his finger, and tears welled.
“Don’t cry.” Rough, grating, but spoken too quietly to be a reprimand, his voice was more soothing than any balm he could’ve spread on my broken, pain-imprisoned body.
“Tell no one,” I managed in a hoarse, scratched whisper.
Bending at the waist, leaning forward, his larger-than-life chiseled features that were covered in more than a shadow came in so close, I could both smell his anger and see every ringed shade of gray in his colorless blue eyes.
“Broken collarbone, four cracked ribs, fractured left wrist, fractured right ankle, multiple hematomas on your head, a fucking grade three concussion, and so goddamn much swelling and bruising that I don’t need a team of doctors to tell me how badly those motherfuckers tortured you.
” Inhaling fury, his nostrils flaring, Helios lowered his voice.
“But what I don’t know, because I wouldn’t let them fucking look, is if you need a SAK. ”
Laboring to breathe, I blinked.
Leaning closer, he elaborated. “Sexual Assault Kit, Feralyn.” Every muscle in his body vibrated with rage, but his voice became impossibly gentle. “Did they rape you?”
All of the oxygen left the room, and his tortured gaze held mine as the reel of my personal hell and the scarred man’s evil replayed in my head with excruciating cruelty.
Yes, my body felt every single one of those injuries Helios had listed and more. I may never not feel them.
But I had not been… “No.”
My single syllable hung in the air like suspended judgment for a mere fraction of a second that lasted a lifetime as Helios searched my eyes.
Then my stepbrother, my savior, my one anchor to a reality I never wanted to go back to, exhaled on a curse.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” His huge hand slid behind my head as his forehead met mine.
“They’re dead. Every last one of those motherfuckers is goddamn dead.
No one is gonna touch you ever again. You hear me?
” He didn’t wait for a response, and I didn’t have one.
His eyes closed, and he whispered in a broken fury, “But so help me, Haven, I’m gonna find every last one of those motherfuckers in hell.
” His eyes opened, and his voice turned to steel.
“Then I’m going to kill them all again.”
The door to the room opened, and a ghost walked in.
My body tensed, pain shot through me, and I cried out.
Helios was across the room, weapon drawn, before I saw him move.
With his gun to my half brother’s temple, his other arm across his throat, he threw Ghost against the wall and growled. “You’re a fucking dead man.”
Puffing through a shallow breath, I begged. For Helios’s sake. “Please.”
Two sets of eyes met mine.
I only looked at Helios. “Please don’t kill him.” But I never wanted to see Ghost again.
Furious, holding the gun to Ghost’s head with a steady hand, not backing off, my stepbrother, a warfighter, a Delta Force operative, stared into my eyes like he could see every memory.
Then he dropped his arm, but he didn’t holster his weapon. Keeping his intense gaze on me, Helios shoved Ghost toward the door. “Get the fuck out and don’t come back.” He spared my half brother a glare. “If I ever see you near her again, I won’t give a fuck where we are. I’m pulling the trigger.”
Ghost held up his hand, and a set of keys dangled. “Understood, but she can’t go home.” He tossed the keys to Helios. “New house. Ready to go. She’ll know the security code.” He rattled off an address. “The deed’s under an alias I set up for her.”
Then my half brother’s gaze landed on me.
His expression unreadable, his arms at his sides, his stance nonthreatening, his body language was another story.
Ghost was as much of a lethal warfighter as Helios.
Maybe more so because he almost hid it. “I’m truly sorry.
I know you were abducted because of my actions, because they wanted to get at me.
I understand, though, that an apology isn’t enough.
The threat has been eliminated, and you have a new, secure identity if you wish to use it.
Which I hope you do. The name’s Ferrah Morgan.
Everything you need, including a bank account, is good to go.
” He pulled an envelope from his back pocket, set it on the windowsill, then glanced at Helios.
A second later, Ghost was gone.
Helios holstered his gun. Then he picked up the envelope and shoved it into the cargo pocket of his pants.
My head was throbbing, my mind was spinning, and it hurt to breathe. But the look on Helios’s face hurt more. “You can’t kill him.”
“What fucking better place to eliminate that motherfucker? Morgue’s in the basement.”
I closed my eyes. “No one,” I whispered, too tired and too beaten to say more.
A chair scraped, then a hand landed on my forehead. My hair was gently pushed back from my face. “I can’t keep this from Ares.”
So he had understood me. I opened one eye. “Parents?”
“Didn’t tell anyone shit and don’t plan on it. Only me and Ghost know. But Ares is already asking questions. Says you never texted him back. Didn’t buy the bullshit text I sent him saying you were studying.”
I tried to nod, but it proved to be too much. My eye closed, and I took a shallow breath. “No new house.” I would worry about Ares later.
His heavy exhale pierced the quiet room before it floated across my face. “Hate to say it, but that motherfucker’s right. You’re not going back to that fucking house, Haven. Dead fucking traffickers or not, the location’s compromised.”
“Dead,” I whispered.
His voice lowered. Got closer. “Don’t fucking argue with me.” A finger dragged across my cheek. “Pushing your morphine drip now. Sleep.”
Morphine? “Home.”
“When the doc says you can go, we’ll go.”
Heaviness weighed down on me. My veins felt cold. I was cold. “Helios.”
A hand engulfed mine. “Right here.”
Tears fell. “Don’t leave me.”
“Never fucking leaving you again.” Something brushed against my forehead. “Sleep, Haven.”