30. Chapter 30
He grabbed me by my hair, sending shocks of pain through my scalp. He slammed my face into the steering column. Bone cracked and hot, wet blood coated my face. My entire head throbbed with every beat of my racing heart.
The car came to a halt, slamming my head into the column again. My ears rang as my vision went black. I think I passed out for a micro second before ripping pain brought me back to the real world.
He yanked me out of the car, dragging my skin across the rough cement. The smell of burnt rubber filled my nose as my cheek scraped across the asphalt.
Even out of the car, there was this sensation that the walls were closing in around me. It made the air thinner and harder to inhale.
“You were supposed to be mine!” His voice sounded like a bunch of beetles chirping. The way he said it didn’t make me think his intent was to obsess the same way Abiel did. “You think you can do this to me and get away with this?”
No, he intended to punish me for eternity.
“Why did you let him claim me?” Monsters weren’t shy about marking their territory, and he’d been awfully quiet.
That was a line they didn’t cross, unless they were ready to fight to the death over it.
His fist twisted my hair tighter, but he didn’t say anything else.
He’d hovered in the background all this time and didn’t say a damn thing to me. Because Abiel would have ripped him apart and he knew it. This shadow was only a few days old.
Abiel would eat him for breakfast.
And I’d put as much space between me and my only possible savior.
A laugh left me, but it was a mad sound devoid of any amusement. If I’d taken even a second to ask myself why this second entity was creeping around in the background, the answer would have been obvious.
I’d even thought to myself that Abiel was why he kept his distance.
So not only did I ruin the only good thing I had.
I actively launched myself out of the pan and into the fire. All while I burned the whole kitchen down.
“What’s funny?” He pressed my face into the gravel harder. Skin ripped and burned off my cheek.
I screamed, trying to grab him to make him stop, but it was useless.
Why could they touch me, but I couldn’t touch them? Shadows were nothing more than reflections of the items around them.
He put his knee in my back to hold me in a submissive position that made my pulse race hard enough to give me a headache. “You’re going to pay in blood and screams.”
I’d pay in a lot more than that. If he’d intended to claim me, that meant he didn’t intend to kill me.
His only goal was to make me suffer.
Claws sliced through the skin on the back of my neck. The pain was more than skin and nerves. It ripped at something in my chest that was essential to who I was.
“Stop!” I hated the way my voice quivered. He didn’t care that he was destroying me from the inside out, cutting strings inside me that I needed to live. “Please!”
Every slice sent a panic through me. Like the room I was trapped in was shrinking, and I wasn’t sure there would be any space for me.
“Who do you belong to?” Claws dug deeper, hitting something inside me that was as real as bone and blood.
“Abiel!” I shrieked before I could consider that silence would have been a better option.
The silence echoed loudly as if the entire world had been waiting for my answer. My breathing stuttered as I realized what I’d said.
I belonged to Abiel. I felt it in the frayed edges throbbing inside me, radiating from the fucking mark until I felt it in my toes.
It was a hell of a time to start spouting the truth, but I couldn’t take it back.
I wanted nothing more than for Abiel to wrap me in the safety of his darkness and make me believe I was more special than I was.
It was the most honest I’d been in decades.
“You don’t believe that.” He roared enraged with something solid and possessive.
He’d never understand exactly how much I did believe it. More than I ever wanted to admit, and I shouldn’t have admitted it here with him.
He tossed me to the side, and I tried to catch myself, but my muscles gave out. I grunted as I slid across the rocks and hit my tender head on the ground.
“You won’t believe that if I carve my mark into you.”
I understood now.
That wasn’t how it worked.
These weren't a few cuts scarring my skin..
The mark was more like a contract that etched into my very soul. Which meant some part of me, signed on the dotted line. Magic that even my people didn’t know about.
He could do whatever he wanted to my body.
I’d never be his.
And he was going to kill me trying.
I went limp, accepting my fate, and that my own actions led me here. There was no one to pin the blame on. Aunt Jackie always said that panic killed a witch faster than anything else. She was right.
Rage bubbled inside me. Why did I always have to be so stupid?
The invisible prison shrinking around me turned to flames. I was being burned alive.
Howls filled the air, sending shivers down my spine. Fear and relief poured over me like a balm.
He was here.