Chapter 15
fifteen
Liana
I wake up already feeling sick.
Not just tired or disoriented, but properly sick, the kind that sits low in my stomach and moves upward in waves, making everything feel unstable before I’ve even moved.
When I open my eyes, the room doesn’t come into focus straight away, and for a second I don’t know where I am, which feels worse than remembering.
Then it comes back.
The cabin.
The bed.
The chain at my ankle.
Him.
My stomach twists harder.
I push myself up too quickly and the room tilts, sharp and immediate, forcing me to grab the mattress to steady myself. My head feels thick, like my thoughts are delayed, and even when I try to focus on something simple it slips before I can hold onto it properly.
“You’re awake.”
His voice is behind me.
Close enough that I flinch.
I turn just enough to see him in the doorway, watching me like he’s been waiting for this exact moment.
“I don’t feel good,” I say, because it’s the only thing that comes out clearly.
“That’s normal,” he replies, stepping into the room. “Your body is adjusting.”
I shake my head, trying to clear it, but it doesn’t work.
“I just need to lie down.”
“No,” he says, and this time there’s something firmer in it. “Today is important.”
My stomach drops.
“What do you mean?”
He steps closer, his eyes moving over me in a way that makes my skin crawl.
“Today is the day you’re cleaned from them,” he says. “Then you can be mine properly.”
“No.”
The word comes out before I can stop it.
I try to shift back on the bed, but my body is too slow, too heavy, and he’s already reaching for me.
“I said no!”
“You don’t mean that,” he says, like it’s obvious.
“I do!”
My voice breaks as his hands close around me, pulling me upright with more force than I can resist, my balance slipping immediately as the chain drags behind me.
I try to push him away. My arms don’t cooperate. Everything feels delayed. Wrong.
He starts pulling at my shirt.
“Stop—”
I grab at it, trying to hold it down, but he forces it up anyway, dragging it over my head before I can stop him. The movement is rough enough to knock the breath out of me for a second, leaving me exposed, my skin prickling under the cold air and his attention.
“Please—”
The word slips out before I can stop it.
It doesn’t matter.
His hands move to my jeans.
I try to fight him again, to step back, to twist away, but I can’t get the movement right. My body doesn’t respond fast enough, and he doesn’t hesitate, forcing them down, making me step out of them before I lose my balance completely.
I’m left standing there in my underwear, shaking, my chest rising unevenly as I try to keep myself upright.
Then he goes still.
His eyes fix on my upper chest. On my collarbone.
I feel it before I fully understand what he’s seeing.
“What is that.”
The words come out low, wrong. My stomach drops.
His hand comes up suddenly, gripping my shoulder and turning me slightly, forcing me into better light.
The tattoo.
Property of Jackson.
The bite mark just above it.
Everything inside me tightens.
“Don’t—”
I try to pull away.
His grip tightens painfully.
“How dare you,” he says, his voice rising, cracking into something unstable. “How dare you let him put that on you.”
“I didn’t—”
The words don’t come out properly.
He drags his fingers over it, not gentle, not careful, pressing hard enough that it hurts.
“You let him mark you like that,” he says, his voice shaking. “Like you belong to him.”
“I do—”
I don’t mean to say it. It just comes out. That’s what breaks him.
His expression snaps completely, whatever control he had disappearing all at once.
“You don’t,” he says sharply. “You belong to me.”
His hand leaves me just long enough for him to turn, to grab something from the table behind him.
When I see the knife, something in me kicks hard against the haze.
“No!”
This time I move before he reaches me.
I stumble back, the chain yanking tight at my ankle as I try to put distance between us, my balance slipping as I hit the edge of it too fast.
“Don’t touch me!”
My voice is louder now, sharper, panic breaking through the fog as I try to steady myself, my hands coming up instinctively, ready to push him away.
He’s on me in seconds.
His hand slams into my shoulder, forcing me back, the impact knocking me off balance completely as I fall sideways onto the bed, the mattress catching me but not stopping the shock of it.
“No—stop...”
I scramble, trying to get away, trying to twist out from under him as he follows, his weight pinning me down before I can move properly.
My hands push against him, nails digging into his arm, trying to shove him back, but it barely slows him down.
“Get off me!”
My voice breaks as I try to twist again, my body not responding fast enough, my strength not landing where it should.
“You don’t get to keep this,” he says, his voice low now, almost calm again in a way that makes it worse. “I’ll remove it.”
I grab his wrist as he brings the knife down, both hands locking around it, trying to hold it away from me.
“Stop! Please fucking stop!”
My grip slips.
My arms shake. I can’t hold him.
The blade presses down anyway. The first cut is across my collarbone.
The pain hits instantly, sharp and burning, ripping through me hard enough that my body jerks violently against him.
I gasp, the sound tearing out of me as my grip breaks.
“Stop! stop!”
I try again, pushing at him, trying to twist away, but he holds me there, stronger, faster, completely unmoved by anything I do.
The knife drags again.
Across the tattoo.
Not clean.
Not careful.
Just tearing through it.
I cry out this time, my voice breaking fully as the pain builds, my body thrashing under him in uneven, desperate movements that don’t get me anywhere.
My hand slips on his arm, blood already making everything slick, my strength failing me faster than I can fight it.
“You don’t get to carry them on you,” he says, his voice uneven, breath heavier now. “You don’t belong to them.”
“I do!” I choke out, even as my voice shakes. “I do!”
The blade presses deeper.
I scream.
It rips out of me before I can stop it, my body finally giving up the fight as the pain overwhelms everything else, my hands falling away, my strength collapsing under me.
And then he stops.
The silence after is suffocating.
My chest heaves, my whole body shaking, my skin burning where he cut me, blood running down from my collarbone, warm and wet and impossible to ignore.
He looks at it.
At what he’s done.
At me.
And then he shifts again.
Like it never happened.
Like nothing just broke.
“You see,” he says quietly, his voice soft again. “This is why you didn’t want to be mine.”
I can’t answer.
I can barely breathe.
He sets the knife aside carefully, like it was never anything dangerous, and reaches for a cloth, pressing it against the wound with sudden gentleness.
I flinch anyway.
“I’m fixing it,” he murmurs. “You don’t need that anymore.”
My head is spinning again.
The room tilting harder.
The pain mixing with something heavier.
Something pulling me under.
He guides me back properly onto the bed, my body no longer fighting him, my limbs too weak, too slow, my strength gone.
The chain shifts at my ankle.
Still there.
Still real.
He lays me flat, still in my underwear, my body trembling, my breathing uneven.
Then I feel it.
The sharp prick.
Another dose.
“No—”
The word barely forms.
“You just need to calm down,” he says softly.
My arm lifts weakly.
Falls.
He picks up his phone.
I see it through the blur.
“This is how they’ll understand,” he says.
I try to speak.
“They—coming—Elijah—Zach—”
The words fall apart, slurred, broken.
He smiles slightly.
Satisfied.
“Good,” he says. “Now they can see.”
Everything fades.
The pain is still there, but distant now.
The necklace is gone.
The ring is gone.
The tattoo...
My chest tightens, something breaking deeper this time.
It feels like he’s taking everything. Everything that connected me to them. And I don’t know how to hold onto anything anymore.
My eyes close.
And this time I don’t know what I’m losing when they do.