Chapter 58
Phoenix
The station door hits the wall with a crunch. But I don’t slow down. My heart hammers in my chest like a piston.
Myles rushes past, clutching Ivy to his chest like he’s holding a corpse.
Zane’s been colder than ever. Since she was taken, he’s shut himself down and unleashed the beast.
Only Ivy will bring him out of it. But she’s still unconscious.
She stirred a little on the drive back, but she was clearly delirious. Kept apologising to us in breathy whispers as if we weren’t really there. Asking us to forgive her. For what had been done to her! As if it’s her fault.
Every word was like driving a red-hot blade through my gut.
While I drove, Zane climbed in the back and dressed Myles’s gunshot wound as he clung to Ivy, refusing to let go.
About halfway, the truck started making ominous grinding noises. But I pushed it to keep going, because Ivy wouldn’t have made it if we had to trek on foot. Now it needs major repairs.
Now that we’re inside, the three of us move in sync without speaking, barely breathing.
It’s Gemma all over again.
Only this time, I wasn’t too late. I was right on time to witness the horror first-hand.
But I still wasn’t early enough to save Ivy.
When we get her onto the table in the weapons room, my knees give out. I can’t look at her face. I can’t look at her body, the battered, bleeding form of my sweet, innocent angel.
The composed leader I thought I was, crumbling to the floor as all my priorities shift. The only thing I truly need, hanging onto life by a thread.
Zane’s already moving for the first aid supplies, steady as he rifles through the cabinets. As if the urgency calms him.
Myles hovers close, shaking like a leaf. He keeps reaching out to touch her, then pulls back, as if he doesn’t know how to help. “She’s burning up,” he chokes. “Zane, her back. What the fuck do we do about her back?”
“We clean it,” Zane answers, voice tight. “We dress it. Keep her warm. She’s in shock, deeply dissociated, but she’ll come back.”
I can’t stop seeing her hanging there.
“She was—” I rasp, the words catching in my throat as I press the heels of my palms into my stinging eyes. “Hanging from her fucking arms. Her feet weren’t even touching the ground. She was barely conscious and that fucking bastard, he—and we—”
“Do you really want to talk about it now?” Zane barks. “She needs us. Help me.”
He’s right. I need to lock my emotions down. They can’t get in the way of my focus now.
Forcing myself to move, I grab a clean rag and bottle of alcohol, hands trembling.
But Gemma’s apartment flashes behind my eyes. Her cold flesh as I carried her body down twelve flights of stairs just to feel like I’d done something.
Now Ivy lies in front of me, fever scorching my palms, eyes closed, breaths shallow, but she still flinches when I touch her. She groans when I lift her arms, cleaning the grime and blood from her once unblemished skin.
I can feel her pain bleeding into my own. As if her heart pumps mine. Her breaths fill my lungs. And if it all stops… I stop too.
She’s still breathing, but it’s so much worse.
Because buried underneath all the rage and guilt is something I don’t want to name. A grief so potent it gnaws at my spine. After years of meticulous control, I thought I was stronger than this.
Myles won’t stop whispering her name. Crouched by her head, his face is gaunt and drained of colour. Constantly mumbling things like ‘you’re safe now’, ‘we’ve got you’. As if words will make up for what we didn’t do.
My hands hover over her thighs, bile clawing up my throat as I see the smear between them. Gritting my teeth, I wipe it away and pray the image won’t haunt me.
“She tried to fight him,” Myles mutters, shellshocked. “I saw the scratches on his face… the bite. She—” His voice cracks, rising an octave. “He whipped her, Phoenix. Like she was a slave. As if her life didn’t matter.”
“She was a slave to them,” Zane grinds out.
My throat tightens. I don’t want to think about it. The reality that was Ivy’s life before she found us.
“Why do you think she never tried to escape us? Even with all the shit we put her through,” Zane snaps.
Myles flinches.
My gut churns.
Because the truth is, we never gave her a reason to trust us. We locked her up, manipulated and lied to her. We treated her like a prisoner who had to earn the right to even be in that cage.
Now she’s lying here. Body carved open, because we didn’t protect her well enough. Our hearts hanging in the balance of her fragile hands, the weight of them draining her strength.
If she wakes, will she see me as a saviour or another monster? Or worse—the man who wasn’t fast enough?
“I can’t do this.” My voice wobbles, nose burning as a painful lump in my throat chokes me. “I can’t lose her. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.”
Zane shoves a pack of gauze into my chest. “Then help me keep her alive,” he says, voice unwavering, calm in the storm, as always.
But I feel as if I’m being thrown around by the storm.
I need something practical to focus on, and he knows it.
The old habits claw back up. Assessment, action, command. She needs me to be steady right now, even if it’s just an act.
We need to get her to the ranch. Where wide open spaces and cozy clean sheets wait. I can already picture it. Her bare feet in the grass, baby asleep against her chest, sunlight in her hair. Safe. Whole.
Ivy can’t travel like this though. She needs to heal.
As we clean her wounds, Myles washes the dirt off her feet and legs, muttering about her precious skin. Zane’s movements are precise, methodical, but I can see the tension in his jaw every time she whimpers.
The lashes run across her back in ragged, swollen lines. Some broke the dermis, others bruised down to the bone. I can’t tell which ones hurt her more but even in her state, her muscles jump at our touch.
The tang of disinfectant burns my throat, but it’s better than the coppery smell of blood. I’m still shaking so hard the bottle rattles against the table.
She groans when I press gauze to the worst of it, and I freeze, my heart clenching as I slowly pull back.
“She’s strong,” Zane assures, as if willing it to be true.
“She shouldn’t have to be,” Myles whispers.
Looking down at her, my chest aches.
Ivy.
The girl who stitched us back together in a dozen little ways. The girl who gave me something to protect again.
Someone to protect.
She made me feel like maybe I wasn’t completely dead inside.
I never even got to tell her how much she meant to me. Never actually said the words. And when she was gone, it was all I could think about.
That maybe she didn’t know that all our silly deals were rendered void once she held the entirety of my being. My heart. My soul. My future. My child growing inside her.
And now she’s lying here, beaten and raped. And all I want is to go back and kill Bennett again.
He’d handed her to one of his followers as if he didn’t even want her back. Like he was just making the point that we couldn’t have her.
He should’ve died slower. Both of them.
But I didn’t realise which one was Bennett until I saw the red sigil stitched over the dirty sheet he wore. And he was already laying dead in the straw.
As I reach for more gauze, fantasies of what I wish I’d done flood my mind. If we hadn’t found her in such a bad way, we could’ve made them beg for mercy.
I wanted them to understand what they took, the gravity of their actions. Force them to swallow the full brunt of the consequences.
In my head Bennett’s screaming, but on the table, Ivy mewls as I shift her body. Rage and tenderness twist until I can’t hold both of them.
The fury collapses under its own weight, crumbling into something raw and protective.
I drop my head over her like I’m shielding a flame. Each wrap of bandage a prayer—stay with me.
After dressing the wounds on her back and wrists, I carry Ivy to my bedroom and lay her gently on my bed. Myles doesn’t let go of her hand once. Zane doesn’t speak again.
Leaning over her, my lips brush her temple.
“I love you,” I whisper, too low for the others to catch. If she hears, it’s hers. If not, then at least I’ve said it.
But I want Ivy to hear. To know. Without a doubt.
I’m not running anymore.
Not from her. Not when I almost lost her without telling her what she means to me.
And I swear to God, if Ivy gives me another chance… I’ll never let her down ever again.
I’ll tell her every single day. For the rest of my life.
That I love her.