Seventy-Seven
I come to with my eyes still closed, wanting to scream and cry and rage against an uncaring, unfair world.
I cut that thing out of me, braved the agony of it, and yet Antonio is still fucking here inside of me. He haunted my dreams while I was under, telling me Varius would let me die, that he’d save his heir, that I’d just tried to kill his child, so why the fuck would he want me to survive?
A woman’s only purpose is to breed…
I spent fucking hours flitting in and out of consciousness, perpetually being stuck in my nightmares, thinking I would not wake up… Yet now I have, and I don’t know which is worse. Which I would’ve rather have come true.
“Micha.”
Varius’ voice makes me want to cry. I know he must have been the one to find me. I did it in our fucking bathroom after all. Why didn’t I have the good grace to do it elsewhere?
Because I panicked.
Because I’m not fucking okay.
No, I am.
Now that that thing is out of me, I’m okay.
I have to be.
Otherwise, there’s no point in continuing on. Because if that didn’t fix me, then what else possibly can?
“Therapy, bitch.”
I ignore Dayne’s voice. He’s dead, so it’s not like he can talk.
My mouth pops open.
“Micha?”
Laughter erupts from me.
I can’t help it.
It just comes out loud and crazed and deep from my soul. He can’t talk. He can’t talk. Oh my gods, that’s terrible. And he suggested therapy.
“Micha!”
Varius says, concerned for my sanity. “Maddox, do something.”
“She’s laughing, bruh. Let her get it out.”
“She just ki–”
He clamps his mouth shut, but I already heard the words, the accusation, and now I know that thing inside me was ours. Varius’ and mine, not Bear’s or Sadist’s or Antonio’s… Ours. And I just killed it. Somberness hits me like a fucking truck. As quick as it started, the laughing stops, but I feel so utterly drained.
“I wasn’t laughing because of that,”
I say as I open my eyes and sit up. Everyone in the house but Sau is sitting around me. She must have used a lot of magic to save me. The build-up of magic in her system isn’t going down like it should be. Combined with her curse… I might’ve just killed her too.
My heart twists with guilt. “How’s Sau?”
“Resting,”
Varius says, but the way the other brothers are sitting rigid on the chairs they pulled up to my bedside tell me she isn’t good.
I look at Enoch, wondering if he’ll kill me for being a threat to his family. His face is an utter mask as he looks at me, and a shiver runs down my spine. For a moment, he looked too much like Khalid. A reaper through and through.
“How do you fe–”
“Did you know it was Varius’ kid when you did it?”
The men all shove to their feet as Sau’s voice wafts from the door. The twins go to help her stand, seeing her leaning against the door frame. Khalid and Maddox move in front of Varius as he turns on her in barely-controlled anger.
“Stop,”
he snaps. “She doesn’t need to hear this.”
Her fierce green eyes bore into mine. I shake my head. I didn’t know. “You will never have another child,”
she says. “That was his only heir.”
“Get her out,”
Varius snarls, his words low and lethal. My mouth falls open as I stare at her. I gasp for air as the grief in my chest starts to suffocate me.
I didn’t know. But…
“I can’t be a mother,”
I whisper.
“I’m not judging you.”
She stares deep into all the twisted parts of me. Sees me. “There was a time I couldn’t either.”
“Enoch –”
Varius snaps.
“No,”
I cut in, my voice raspy. I need to hear what she has to say. I’m floundering in that fucking sea I was adrift in for months, and her eyes are so damn calm.
He turns to me, studies me, but my eyes stay on Sau.
“When I came out of the Plane of Monsters and found out the last of my children was dead, I refused to have any more until I brought peace to this city. I aborted three of them, and I would have helped you abort yours too if I had known where your head was.”
Her lips tighten with self blame. “I thought you would be vocal enough to ask, so I assumed you were just avoiding it until you were ready. I kept the check-ups quick, thinking you wanted it because it was Varius’. But I shouldn’t have assumed. I’m s–”
“Not that phrase,”
Varius cuts in, and my heart flips over. He’s been paying attention enough to know that I can’t bear to hear those damn two words. Fucking hel, what did I do to deserve him?
I finally turn to him to find him already looking at me with so much love in his eyes. Not an ounce of accusation lies within them even though I just killed his son, his only chance for an heir. I reach a shaky hand out for him, and he practically falls forward to grab it, and I hate myself even more for what I’ve done.
What I would’ve done again. Even knowing it was ours… I can’t bare the thought of leaving Bambi behind. Of moving on with another child while she should’ve been my first.
“I apologize,”
Sau says. “If I’d known, I would’ve given you an abortion. Though I would have also told you that the amount of damage you suffered under Antonio means you would have struggled to carry to term again. Now, you will never conceive.” Her eyes soften. “But your son is a fighter.”
“He lives?”
I ask as Varius tenses ever so subtly, his hand almost squeezing mine. He’s holding back his own desires and questions so this choice can be mine alone.
“For now. I do not know if he will survive. He’s twenty weeks and needs constant care. Louise is with him now.”
I shudder, my throat tightening. I don’t look at Varius. Can’t. I know what I’m going to say will hurt him, but… “I can’t be a mother.”
“You don’t have to be. He’ll have us. But if you are ever ready, then we can figure it out. Communication might not be my strong point. I’ve been making decisions all on my own for a long time. But learn from my mistakes, Micha. You are not alone.”
She smiles at me. “You’re my daughter.”
I swallow down the emotions clogging my throat. Varius squeezes my hand, then raises it to his lips.
“Yeah, sis, you’re family,”
Maddox says. “And we don’t leave family.”
“Except for Talon,”
Enoch cuts in. His twin hits him on the shoulder.
“Fucking hel,”
Ezriel says with a shake of his head. “Read the fucking room.”
“Sor-arwawar. It just slipped out.”
I stare at him, a smile pulling at my lips at his ‘correction’ despite the pain in my chest. Dayne would have said something similar –gallows humor being one of his favorites– and the last remnant of his soul buries into mine.
Swallowing hard, I look at Sau. “Thank you for saving me,” I say.
“Then don’t waste it.”
She turns to leave. “Go to fucking therapy.”
It takes me a while to feel emotionally strong enough to bare my soul to Maddox, but seven weeks later, I’m in his room, on his couch. Varius hasn’t been to see his son –I still can’t think of it as mine– because he’s ‘given his loyalty’ to me, but I know how much he wants to see him. I might have given the kid up, but it isn’t fair to force him to do the same.
“So what do we talk about?” I ask.
“Whatever you want.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Okay then.”
He doesn’t say a word for over half an hour. I blow out a breath, getting bored and irritated with how patient he’s being. “You’re really not going to say anything?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“Then why am I here?”
“You tell me.”
“You said you could fix me.”
“Therapy isn’t magic. The only person who can fix you is you.”
I start to open my mouth to say this is stupid, but he cuts in.
“But what do you think needs fixing?”
“What do I think –”
I clench my teeth together. I don’t know why I’m feeling so combative with him. I like him. He makes me laugh, and he reminds me of Dayne.
“Does the anger you have bother you?”
It bothers me that he can read my mind. “No,” I snap.
A flicker of a smile twists his lips and lights up his eyes. “Because it’s understandable that you’re angry.”
I glare at him. “No, it’s not.”
“It is.”
He’s completely serious now. “Because you were punished for being defiant. So you are testing us to see how we will punish you. You’re still in survivor mode, banging against the parameters of your cage to see where it’s faulty.” He leans forward. “But you are safe here, Micha. You can let that part of you go.”
I glance away, unable to handle what he’s saying because what if I let go, and there’s nothing that remains? Then all I’ll be is a victim.
My throat works hard as the silence stretches between us. But his patience eventually gives me the chance to give voice to my fears.
“I don’t want to be a victim,”
I say. “And if I let myself believe it’s over, that’s all I’ll ever be.”
“You’re not a victim, Micha. You’re a survivor.”
“A survivor?”
I rasp in disbelief, my head whipping to him, sudden fury building in my chest. “A survivor!” I yell, my rage spitting free. At him, at the world. At fucking me. I beat a hand against my chest. “What part of me survived, Maddox?”
I jump to my feet, incapable of sitting still. “I can’t even look at my reflection! I can’t eat. I can’t breathe. I cut open my fucking stomach because I couldn’t –”
I cut myself off, not wanting to think about what I’ve done. Or why I did it.
Because he’s right. I’m not strong enough to face it.
I’m not capable of fighting this enemy.
I’m not who I used to be.
I’m weak.
I’m scared.
I’m fucking terrified that Antonio is still out there, and he will come for me.
He will come for me, and I won’t be strong enough to face him.
To fight him.
To stop myself from giving in if he offers me V.
I love Varius.
I love the Shadow brothers, and my sister. But I can’t seem to stop myself from hurting them.
So maybe I am better off with him.
Maybe they should’ve left me to rot on that yacht for eternity.
I slam my fist against my chest again, wanting it to stop beating. Wanting it to just cease.
“I’m nothing but a broken shell!”
I say. My words crack and splinter apart like the rest of me. “So you tell me… you fucking tell me what part of me – what part of me…” My words are choking me, killing me. I’m so weak, even they are breaking me down. “Fucking survived!” I finally manage to spit out. Then I collapse back onto the sofa, sobbing too hard to speak.
And I hate that. I hate me. I hate that I can’t run from that truth anymore. Can’t bury it under smiles and laughter and a masked face that pretends it’s not screaming all the fucking time.
I hate myself.
I hate my tears.
And I hate that I am keeping Antonio alive inside of me. But I don’t even believe he’s gone. I want to see his body. I need to see his body. But I can’t. I can’t put that fear to rest. He will always haunt me. I’m never going to get better. I’m never going to want to get better because I need to be on edge. I need to be watching every fucking shadow and be ready to fight. I can’t take the time to heal. I can’t.
Maddox rises slowly from his chair. I tense, so damn tuned for danger. He walks back and forth, and despite my tears, I clock him. Always aware. Fully prepared to explode into action if someone moves in a way that threatens me.
My tears start to slow as I focus on him more and more. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t moved in my direction. He could cover the distance easily now that he’s standing.
“You still have your heart, Micha,”
he says firmly, making said heart pound. It bangs like a drum, giving me another thing to focus on other than the fear. “You still have your utter need to defend those you love.” He stops now, and I stare at him fully, no longer looking at him through side eyes of unease. A few tears still trickle down my cheeks, but the rest of them are caught in the dam at my throat. My pulse skitters, waiting for his next words, holding on to them like a lifeline to keep myself afloat in the sea of pain and bitterness rolling around inside of me.
“You have your compassion and your love of those you trust.”
His voice softens as his eyes bore into mine. “They broke the outside of you, yes.”
My lips waver, feeling that loss, that black hole that’s consuming me.
“But they couldn’t touch your core. You were too strong for them because you are a survivor, Micha.”
I tremble as I stare at him. Looking into his eyes, I try to pull his opinion of me into my soul. Fill up that black hole. But the words feel too hollow. Just silly wishes born from rose-colored glasses. “I don’t want you to die for me, Micha. I want you to live for me. I want you to fucking live.”
How can Maddox claim I’m a survivor if I’m not even living? Sorrowful tears roll down my cheeks.
“You are still you,”
Maddox says. “If you take a vase and you drop it, what’s it called?”
I flounder, not sure what he means.
“A broken vase,”
he says. “It’s still a vase despite its new shape. You take a bottle and you break it over some guy’s head, and it changes from being safe to drink from to being a weapon because of its jagged edges, but it’s still a bottle. The core of it is still the same. The destruction of it does not change what it is. And you, Micha, are still a fighter. That is why you’re here, fighting to work through this. You are still a protector of children –”
I shove to my feet, clawing at my shoulders, ripping off lines of skin. “I’m not!”
I scream. The memories of what I did with Bear slam into me. I drop to my knees, still tearing at my flesh to get it off me. To get him off me. To get to the sickness of my soul so I can rip it out too. He thinks my only sin when it comes to kids is cutting out that parasite while Varius slept. But he doesn’t know all I’ve done. He wouldn’t be saying this if he knew. “I hurt them,” I rasp, the words tumbling out.
“You traded yourself for that little girl.”
I shake my head as I start to hyperventilate. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t fucking understand!
“You could have killed yourself in my cage so Antonio could never get to you.”
I stare at him, wanting to confess my sins, but I can’t. The words lodge in my throat. The shame. The self-disgust. Bear didn’t violate me that day. I violated me.
“But you didn’t. You accepted Rudy’s –”
He falters on a hard swallow. His eyes flick away from mine for a second, moisture painting them with an unbearable pain. But then he looks back at me, lets me see the truth of his words. “You accepted his trade because you still wanted to protect her. You’re a protector, Micha. That has not changed.”
“I’m a pedophile!”
I scream. I might not have actually hurt a kid, but I was able to think of it. I was able to role play it to get high. “You don’t know what I’ve done! You don’t know who I’ve hurt! So don’t sit there and tell me – don’t tell me that I’m not – that I survived! Because they broke me. They fucking – they fucking destroyed who I was. And I let them. I let them just so I could get high. I did that! That was all me.”
I stumble back as he stares at me. And I finally see it. The horror, the disbelief, the inability to know what to say. All this time I thought he saw me, but he only ever saw the mask I was putting up.
I shake my head, my heart grieving. It hurts too much just thinking about what I did. I need some V. I need to stop the pain. Stumbling towards the door, I yank it open to find Varius. This session is over. I can’t do it anymore.
“Micha –”
“Just stop!”
I run out, my skin itching, my mind infested with fire ants and boiling tar.
I pick up the pace as I hurry down the hall. By the time I reach the stairs, I’m flat out running, so desperate to escape my own skin. My own mistakes. My own misery and self-betrayal.
How can he call me a protector of children when I did that?
When I killed Varius’ child too?
Tears streaking down my cheeks, I start to run towards Varius’ room. He appears in front of me before I can take more than a few steps. Gathering me up in his arms, he lifts me, and I wrap my legs around him as I bawl my eyes out on his shoulder. He doesn’t take me to our room though. Not to a bed. Not to those memories I’m trying to escape.
He carries me outside so the wind will stroke my face, and the fresh air will fill my lungs, grounding me in a world so different to the prison I knew. He’s trying to stop the memories by overriding my brain with different smells, present smells.
He sits down on the ground in the middle of the woods, with me on his lap. “You’re safe here, monster,”
he murmurs as he runs his fingers over my body. “Feel my hands. They will never hurt you.” He reaches down and digs one hand into the dirt, then lifts the earth to my face, which still lies buried against his shoulder. “Smell the woods. This is home.”
I squeeze him harder, starting to hyperventilate as my heart runs wild. But I can feel his safety. I can smell the roots of home.
“And take this knife,”
he says, removing one of my hands from around his back and pressing a blade into it. “This moment is yours, Micha. I’m yours.”
I grip it hard, finding solace in its presence, in the gift of it coming from him. He lifts it to his neck.
“I’m yours to stop, monster. You have absolute control over this.”
My hand trembles. Fear swamps me at the thought of cutting him open by mistake. The fucking idiot shouldn’t have given me a knife right now. I could hurt him.
“You’re still you, Micha. You still want to protect those you love.”
My lips wobble as that truth hits me. But that just makes me cry harder. Because that confirms it was me doing those things. Not a shell. Not someone too broken to know right from wrong. It was me. It was all me.
Tears rush down my cheeks.
“Please,”
I beg, crying into his shoulder, “make it stop.”
“I don’t know how,”
he says, his words twisted in pain, in a desire to know how to help me.
“It’s simple.”
It’s so fucking simple. “Give me some V.” The words tumble out of my mouth. The shame hits right on their curtails, but I don’t draw them back. My hands shake as I say, “You can take a Rick and stop all your pain too.” The nightmares that keep him from sleeping when I do still. “We can do it together.”
His eye closes briefly, a mask falling over his face. But he won’t deny me in this. I have a knife to his throat. I’ll make him get me some V.
I need it.
It’ll help more than therapy.
If he loves me, he’ll get it.
And I know he loves me. I can use that. Use him. I just need the V.
“Micha,”
he murmurs as he opens his eye, and I look into it looking into me.
I see his disappointment at what I’ve asked. But I also see his willingness. His need to help me in some way when I’m this broken.
Fuck.
I can’t do this. I can’t use him like this. I’m tainting even the purity between us. He walked into hel for me and called it heaven purely because I was there.
And I’m repaying him by doing this.
I’m nothing but a monster. He should’ve left me in hel.
Cupping my face with his dirty hands, Varius rubs the earthy scent over my skin, grounding me in the scent of home. “Will you let me touch you without the V?” he asks.
“It won’t be enough –”
“We could strengthen the blood bond,”
Varius says softly. “Then it will be.”
I tremble, wanting to deny him. I don’t want to use the bond. Don’t want to infect it with my disease.
But I need the pain to stop.
It’s consuming me.
Breaking me.
And there’s not much left to break. Just splinters of a soul dead and gone. Why couldn’t they have left me be? I was fine until they pushed me into therapy.
The hollowness of my womb mocks me. The fact that it was Varius’ child.
I’m a terrible mother.
A terrible person.
But at least I did it while it was still a fetus, incapable of feeling pain.
Instead of letting it grow. Be born. Then hurting it with all my addiction. My sickness. My bad decisions and trauma packed brain, where there’s no room for nurturing and love.
“Just make it stop,”
I beg. I don’t care if it’s a poor man’s version of V. I just need it all to stop.
“I will try, little monster,”
Varius murmurs as he slips one hand between our bodies. Under my waistband. My panties. Until he’s stroking between my lips.
I tense, feeling fear rather than the pleasure I expected. His other hand feathers its thumb across my cheek. “Smell the earth,”
he murmurs. “You’re not on that ship.”
I inhale deeply, clinging to the aroma I never smelled out at sea. The grass and the flowers and the bark of the trees. The outdoors. The freedom. The safety.
“Hear the birds.”
They chip around us, feeling at ease in our presence. They’re not hiding from the monster in their home. They see a part of me I do not.
He leans his head down, hovering an inch away from kissing me. “Feel my breath on your lips,”
he murmurs. He dips his head even lower trailing his mouth across my neck. “Feel my fangs.
“See me, little monster. Look at my face and know it’s me. I’ll never hurt you.”
I duck my head. But what if I deserve to be hurt?
Stop.
You’re going to infect him.
You’re dirty. A disease.
The blade wobbles at his throat, and panic hits me harder than the fear. I lift my head to check he’s okay, and I find him staring at me, his heart in his eye, his life in my hands.
“I’m yours, little monster. To kill or fuck as you see fit.”
I can practically hear his thoughts through the calmness of his eye. He’s really willing to risk dying in order to help me.
My heart twisting, I tell myself to drop the knife.
But I can’t.
I need it, and he knows it.
Holding my eyes, he pushes a finger into me. Slowly. So tantalizingly slowly. When he settles to his bottom knuckle, I close my eyes on a shudder.
“Can you look at me, monster?”
Not a demand like it would have been before. “Eyes on me.”
I refuse, wanting to fight him on something…
“You’re testing the limits of your cage.”
Maddox’s words come back to me. “You’re just trying to see if you’re safe. “
“I need you to look at me,”
Varius says, an edge of panic to his words. “I want to take care of you, little monster. But let me do it without hurting us. Please. I need to know you see me.”
Shuddering and swallowing hard, I tell myself I’m safe.
He’s safe.
He’ll never hurt me.
He’ll never punish me.
Knowing that in my heart, I breathe out.
Open my eyes.
And I finally let Antonio go.