Chapter Thirty-Five
Feralyn
Suddenly I was choking, and I woke with a start.
Sucking in breath after breath, my heart pounding so hard it hurt, I glanced around in the dark at the momentarily unexpected but not unfamiliar space.
Helios’s room.
His bed.
I sucked in another breath, except this one came with a lungful of fresh laundry and his masculine scent instead of molded, damp cement permeating my constricted airways as the hand of evil choked me out with a punishing grip around my throat.
Fighting eight long years of memories, fighting hours-old memories, the flash of the man’s face from the farmer’s market this morning—his eyes, his facial hair that didn’t fully hide the scar on his bottom lip that ran down to his chin—I told myself it wasn’t possible.
The man I saw this morning couldn’t be the trafficker who’d abducted me.
I remembered exactly what Helios had told me as I’d lain in a hospital bed eight years ago.
They’re dead. Every last one of those motherfuckers is goddamn dead.
I couldn’t not remember what he’d said six months ago after the seemingly impossible, when he’d cupped my face.
I can’t give you details, and we’re never gonna speak of this again, but trust me. They’re dead, Feralyn. Every last motherfucker. Eliminated.
Then later that night, in his bed.
You’re safe now, Feralyn.
The man with the scarred face, my abductor, every terrorist involved, they were no longer alive. Helios had promised.
But this morning….
I shook my head and pushed the tangled blanket away so I could get up, but the second I was on my feet, a wave of vertigo made me sway.
Sitting back down on the edge of the bed, I folded over until my forehead touched my knees.
Then Ares’s quiet voice carried into the room. “Feeling faint?”
“I’m okay.” I started to sit up, but a large hand landed on the back of my head.
“Hold position,” Ares ordered. “Slow breaths, in and out.”
It was hard to breathe when your diaphragm was pressed against your thighs, but I did it.
On my third inhale, Ares’s concern came out in the form of an interrogatory question that didn’t hold back on judgment. “Are you going to use again?”
“No.” God, no. “Never again.”
His hand still holding firm, he didn’t let up. “What happened this morning?”
My breath was deeper this time, a time-buying inhale that had nothing to do with faintness and everything to do with avoidance. Of Ares’s hand on me, his tone of voice, the way he’d silently appeared the second I’d gotten up. He wasn’t going to let this go like he had earlier today.
Deciding between a lie and a truth, or a truth that had nothing to do with today, I thought through another breath before I slid dangerously close to the facts. “I saw someone at the farmer’s market I couldn’t have seen.”
“Who?” he demanded.
“Someone it should have been impossible to see.” Someone who shouldn’t have looked like he had both aged eight years and hadn’t aged a day. Someone whose evil smile was burned into the fear cortex of my brain as permanently as his scarred face.
For a suspended beat of my heart, Ares didn’t move.
Then his hand fell away, and I watched his booted feet retreat a step. “Flashback.”
Flashbacks weren’t living, breathing embodiments of your worst nightmare. I needed my camera. I wasn’t crazy or delusional, but I knew exactly what Ares was saying.
Flashbacks were a part of my existence.
But so was Helios, and I trusted him with my life. I trusted that he gave me his word. I trusted him, period. As insane as it was to put all of my faith in that right now, maybe I needed to.
Maybe Ares was right.
I knew without a doubt that Helios would step in front of a moving train for me. He would leverage his body and his training in every manner possible to protect me. If Helios said every last person responsible for my abduction was eliminated, then they were dead.
But if who I saw today was real, and Helios hadn’t….
That was why I ate the candy from Raine.
Because I didn’t know how to cope if the foundation of my rebuilt world wasn’t safe. I didn’t know how to breathe if I couldn’t trust the place where I had put all of my trust. I didn’t know how to live if Helios’s word wasn’t my safe haven.
Haven.
“Feralyn?”
Ares. Right. “Sorry, I’m good. Just groggy. I slept later than I thought.”
“Do you know the psychology behind flashbacks?” he asked quietly.
Of course I knew the psychology behind anxiety and PTSD. I knew it so intimately that for the first time in my life, I resented the person I loved like a brother because he should have known better than to ask.
Ares knew me better than any blood relative.
He’d been there before. He’d been there after.
He knew the two Feralyns. He knew the second version of me that had hidden in this house until Helios forced me to first go into the backyard.
Then the front. Then for a terrifying ride on Helios’s motorcycle, and eventually to the grocery store and all the other places I needed to go to get the basic necessities of life.
Ares had stood by while Helios had forced me to live.
Ares knew I knew the damn psychology of this.
He’d watched Helios use all of his PSYOP training on me.
I shouldn’t have had to say it, and it should’ve been Helios standing here and not Ares, but I didn’t get choices in life. Control was an illusion, and I wasn’t going to answer Ares because that was all the power I had in this moment—silence.
Ares’s voice, the very voice I used to find soothing, came too quiet and with too much judgment. “Subconscious triggers can cause lifelike illusions.”
I knew what the hell subconscious triggers were.
“Sounds, scents, a visual association,” he continued.
I didn’t look at him. My skin itched, anxiety was crawling up my spine, and I only had another few seconds before I needed to be up and moving. “I got it.” I stood.
Ares stepped closer out of protection.
I stepped away. “I’m good.” My seconds were up. “I’m going for a run.”
“I made you dinner.”
Ares had always made me food, but somewhere along the way, he’d stopped eating it with me.
He’d stopped eating with me and Helios. Mealtime had become meal prep.
Dinners had become plated food. The three of us around the kitchen table had become me and Helios in front of the TV as Ares walked out the door.
“I’ll eat later, after my run.”
“You need the calories. Eat first,” Ares ordered.
I finally looked up at him. “I need to run, Ares.” I needed those miles in my system and my adrenaline bled out before I went for my camera.
Holding my gaze, his expression giving nothing away, Ares scrutinized me. Then he stepped back as he tipped his chin toward the door. “Go change. It’s late. I’m coming with you.”
This was what my life had become—wanting or needing two opposing things at once.
Want and need. Need and crave.
I needed to run. I needed to be alone. But I didn’t want to go by myself.
I wanted to know where Helios was. I wanted the safety of Ares pacing me, but even more, I wanted it to be Helios with me.
I craved Helios right now. Except Helios was never silent on our runs, not like Ares, and I was done talking.
I needed to think, and I needed to be by myself to do that.
But I wanted the security of Ares running at my side.
Except I wouldn’t be able to breathe if he came.
I wouldn’t be able to shake this clawing anxiety.
I wouldn’t be able to freely think about what I saw this morning and what I possibly didn’t see.
I wouldn’t be able to concentrate and analyze the small details, like if the scar and tattoo were fake.
Or if they were real but a different scar and a different tattoo, and it had been a different man simply leering and scratching his chest. Or maybe it was someone who just looked close enough to my worst fears that it was enough to trigger what Ares had said. A flashback.
I needed to look at those photos, I needed to do it by myself, and I needed to do it sooner rather than later, in case….
But I couldn’t until I ran.
Which I knew was counterintuitive because if it was the worst possible scenario, then compromising my safety by running alone right now was suicide.
But I’d taken precautions when I’d left the farmer’s market.
I’d had enough sense not to drive directly home.
I’d watched for a tail and used every evasive maneuver Helios had ever taught me. No one had followed me.
So I was going to run.
Not in the gym and not in place.
But on the streets. My streets. The ones Helios had made me comfortable with. Which was the only other safe place I had right now.
My outdoor runs.
My version of therapy.
My time to think.
To reset.
To check out.
To be grounded.
To run free.
I looked up at Ares, and the flashback came without warning.
“Last chance, whore. Tell me where Ghost is, or I’m going to kill those two Delta Force brothers of yours. Right after I hang them in shackles and force them to watch what I’m going to do to you.”
“I-I’m going running alone.” Sidestepping Ares, I rushed out of Helios’s bedroom.
“Feralyn, wait,” Ares called after me.
I didn’t wait.