Chapter 56
Ivy
The barn reeks of sweat, rot, and blood.
Flies cluster at the edges of the hay where old gore has gone black, their wings whispering in the old stable with a constant drone. The air tastes of mouldy feed and burned hair, every inhale dragging up memories I’ve attempted to bury.
My feet barely touch the ground, the support beam above creaking under my weight. The course rope around my wrists scratching at already raw skin as I hang here, tendons straining.
But I can’t even cry anymore. My body is beyond that.
Cold clings to my naked body like wet cloth, useless against the burn across my back.
The leather strap whistles through the air again, splitting the atmosphere before it finds skin. My muscles seize with every strike, stealing my breath, but I can’t scream anymore. Voice ash in the wind. Gone.
A vile combination of smells stings my nose. Sweat splatters off Bennett’s arm and dots my back, stealing my breath as the sting from the salt blossoms into a heat like molten metal under my flesh.
The pain sinks deep in my marrow. My back is a ruin of welts, blood slicking down in crooked paths.
Ache. Exhaustion. It all hums beneath my skin like static.
“Gone quiet finally?” Bennett taunts. “Getting used to the punishment, hmm? Or just giving up?”
Circling in front of me, strap in hand, his fingers twitch to use it again. He’ll never be satisfied—despite the bulge in his pants.
“I was enjoying your screams,” he mocks as he shakes the fatigue from his arm. “Now look at you. It’s like beating a corpse.”
Behind him, Jeb and Rick laugh, watching from an old stall, eyes gleaming with something sadistic. They’ve been watching the whole time, like this is some sick show. And they’ve not been a quiet audience.
“Shame she gave up screaming so quick,” Rick says, spitting in the straw.
“She don’t look so feisty now,” Jeb snickers. “Didn’t take much to wear her down.”
I want to scream. To spit. Curse them all.
But my voice is so shredded, and my heart is so heavy. The only sound I can make is a ragged rasp.
Bennett grabs a fistful of my hair, yanking my head up. My scalp protests, neck straining.
“I gave you everything,” he hisses. “And you repay me by crawling in bed with the first pack of degenerates you come across? Did you even hesitate? Or did you beg them for it?”
His breath is sour, but his words are worse. “You think we didn’t know where you were? That we weren’t watching? Jade told us your plans before her last punishment.” He smiles wide as my breath catches.
Jade never made it out? I abandoned her.
Bennett chuckles darkly. “She died making penance for your sins. So selfish of you,” he sneers. “All while you were lusting after them. Like a cock-hungry Jezebel. After everything I gave you, you still bent over for someone else. Where’s the loyalty?”
He shoves my head away, and I let it hang, too tired to hold it high. But my chest aches for Jade. For the friend I failed. The sister I lost.
“Well, if it’s cock you want…” Bennett mutters, almost thoughtful now. “We can provide. Let my boys give you what you’re starving for, huh? Let them remind you what you really are.”
Derek leans against the stall behind him, a sick grin stretching across his face. The bite wound on his shoulder is dark and swollen, face still raked with red lines where my nails tore him open this morning.
“Bitch fought me like a rabid thing. Nearly took a fucking chunk out of my damn shoulder. And scratched up my face like a feral cat,” he says, touching his wounds like trophies. “But she’s finally quiet… I think it’s my turn.”
Bennett steps aside, extending an arm, gesturing to go ahead.
Derek’s boots crunch the hay as he takes his time to approach. Unbuckling his belt, he lets it slide through the loops with a deliberate snap.
As panic grips me, an idea claws out of my foggy brain. Tell them you’re pregnant. Claim it’s Bennett’s. Throw yourself at his feet and beg for his mercy.
For a flicker of a second, I almost believe he’d take me back. Then the image turns sour. My empty stomach heaves, but the acidic bile sinks back down, my body too spent to even vomit.
Bennett followed my cycle long enough to know it’s not his. It would be like handing him the knife to carve out the last piece of me and betraying their memory. The one thing I have left of them.
Derek circles me. I feel his eyes crawling over me before his hands do. His grimy fingers against my skin make my stomach turn, tracing stinging welts like he’s admiring them. He drags his hand over the curve of my waist before gripping my hip.
I stay limp—not because I want to—because I physically can’t move anymore.
“She’s so soft now. So obedient,” he says, almost reverently, before squeezing so hard that pain shoots through my side.
My tired muscles tense as I whimper helplessly. “N-no,” I rasp, barely audible.
“You fought hard this morning,” he murmurs, stepping behind me. “Thought about just knocking you out. But I wanted you awake for this part,” he groans, pressing against me from behind. His breath is hot on my back as his tongue darts out and licks over the bleeding welts.
Searing pain flashes over my senses, momentarily blinding me.
Jeb and Rick laugh again, jeering voices sharp and cruel.
“Go on then. Let’s see what she’s got.”
“Don’t hog her all night, brother. She’s got plenty of holes. Bet she’s tighter than she looks too.”
Derek ignores them, doesn’t even glance their way, as his hand slide between my legs exploring with sick satisfaction.
I flinch, but I can’t fight. I can’t even lift my head.
He notices. Of course he does.
“Oh… look at that,” he murmurs, tone dark and delighted. “No more fight left in her. That’s good. That’s real good.”
His fingers find my clit too easily and roll in lazy circles that make my stomach clench involuntarily.
“She’s perfect,” he praises, as if evaluating Bennett’s work. “This is where she belongs. She just forgot for a while.”
He slides one hand around my throat, the support beam creaking from the added weight of him behind me. Derek’s bite wound oozes against my weeping back as he presses closer, a wet heat squelching.
Gagging, I pray the bile clawing up my throat will make it. Pain and nausea ripple through me in cold sweats before fire consumes me again.
Then his fingers dip lower, invading my entrance. I try to twist away, but I barely swing the rope.
A broken, pitiful sound escapes me, and he just laughs.
“There it is. Still got that little fire, huh?” he hisses, voice hot against my ear. “That’s cute. I like it when they fight a little. It usually never lasts.”
He starts thrusting his fingers as his other hand releases my throat to fumble with his pants. “You remember this, don’t you Ivy?” he whispers at my ear, breath hot and foul. “The way it felt this morning before you got stupid. This is where you belong. Not with them. With me.”
My body droops in the bindings, legs weak, the strain in my arms distant now, like it’s someone else’s pain.
Then his fingers yank out of me, the head of his cock lining up.
I brace for it, but the moment stretches thin.
“I waited for this,” he growls, leaning into my ear. “All those nights you slept under our roof, thinking you were better than us. Look at you now. Rope-broke and marked up. I own you.”
“No… y-you don’t,” I rasp, voice a hoarse whisper. “You… n-never will.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Derek roars. “You’re ruining my moment!”
He grabs me by the hips, lifting my feet off the ground as he pulls me like I’m just hanging meat. My wrists scream with the entirety of my weight as Derek drives into me.
The speed and dryness knock the breath out of me as my insides burn. I think something tears. Fingers spasming, the cord tightens around my wrists.
For half a heartbeat I see Zane’s eyes, feel his gentle hands at my shoulders. But his eyes narrow, lip curling in disgust as he wipes my blood off his fingers. Then he turns and walks away like I’m already dead.
I almost whisper Zane’s name. But the sound curdles before it leaves my throat.
He won’t come. Not for me. Not after this.
Derek groans low in his throat, yanking me back into the present. “Such a tight little thing. There. She. Is. So warm.”
The pain is so sharp I think I black out for a second. Then a strangled scream rips through my shredded throat, half from pain, half in hope that someone will hear me.
But there’s no one left to hear the cries of a stranger.
Myles appears next, looming at the barn door, eyes blazing like they did the night he found me.
Relief swells—then shatters as he laughs, a low cruel sound, and spits at my feet before turning away. “Filthy,” he mutters.
Any hope for rescue is a foolish fantasy. All I can pray for is a quick death and if I keep pushing them, they might just grant me that.
“She still thinks they’ll come,” Bennett mutters, pacing back into view. “Those dogs. The ones that stole her and hid her away. She thinks they’re going to save her.”
“Nah, she realised it this morning. Should’ve seen the way she cried. It was embarrassing,” Derek laughs as he drives into me again. “They’re probably dead already. Or maybe they’re fuckin’ some other whore in that safehouse of theirs.”
Each thrust is violent, punishing. He grips my hips hard enough to bruise, spitting curses into my ear.
“She still thinks she’s worth something,” Bennett says coldly. “Strip her to the bone. Let her learn.”
I imagine Phoenix, cutting me free of the restraints, wrapping me in his shirt like a shield.
But then his fingers tighten, not gentle at all. “Look what you let them do,” he snarls, shoving me back toward them. “You’re theirs now.”
The picture burns away, leaving only hollow pain, and shame that I let myself hope.
They never felt anything for me. It was all a trade, and I was the fool that believed it was more.
Wanting safety so badly made me na?ve. Now I understand why they reacted to my pregnancy the way they did.
Shutting my eyes, my tears stream down my cheeks as Derek swings my body into his.
I try to focus on anything else. On the sound of the beam creaking, the wind outside, what I could do to antagonise them enough to end me.
My legs hang like meat, my skin on fire as the thump of his hips against me continues. My wrists strain in the rope, skin tearing, blood dripping down my arms onto the dirt below.
His rhythm slows, deliberately dragging it out like he wants to savour every second.
Hands slide up to grip my breasts roughly as he fucks me like he earned this. As if the bite in his shoulder and the gouges in his face were the price he paid, and this is his reward.
“Got nothin’ left now, huh?” he pants against the back of my neck. “No claws. No teeth. No fight. Just this ruined body hanging quiet and obedient for me.”
He groans again, pressing in deeper like he wants to leave something permanent behind.
The two men behind him jeer again, but it’s all background noise now, blurred and distant.
Derek’s lips graze my ear, breath heavy and drunk on the power. “Took me a while, but I finally got what I was owed. You remember this next time you think too much of yourself, yeah?”
His grip tightens. His pace quickening. Every thrust is a jolt through my spine and a deeper tear on my wrists. Derek grunts louder now, panting like an animal. His fingers dig into my hips as he chases his release like a man who can’t find it anymore.
Derek groans, a sick sound hinting he’s nearly done with me. “This is what happens when you forget what you’re made for,” he growls. “You get corrected.”
Letting my head fall forward again, I try to leave my body. To be anywhere but here.
The world narrows. My vision blurs at the edges, Derek’s voice becoming muffled.
I drift, floating somewhere outside the pain.
My body and mind are disconnected but I can see what’s happening as if I’m standing next to myself, watching in horror.
Somewhere deep in my memory, their voices try to resurface, but they skip away again like sand through my fingers.
I’ve ruined everything.
They’d never touch me again.