30. Deargán
DEARGáN
Moonlight bled in through the tall arched window and painted the edge of her bed in a pale strip.
I stayed where the light couldn’t reach, pressed back near the wall, the air colder there, the room smelling faintly of soap, old plaster, and the sharp medicinal scent that lingered on every floor in this place.
Liath lay on her side, dress twisted slightly at her hips as if she’d fought the sheets before sleep claimed her.
I was just here for observation. Nothing more.
I stepped closer.
She jerked in her sleep, her brows furrowed, her breathing heavy as she’d been running. Her eyelids fluttered and her fingers worked, curling and uncurling as if she were trying to climb out of her dreams with bare hands. A sharp exhale slipped from her, almost a whimper.
She didn’t look peaceful.
The nightly dose was meant to calm her, not leave her struggling like this.
I studied what I could without touching her. I counted the pulse hammered out against her neck. Her breathing rate. The faint tremor in her jaw.
Someone had increased her nightly dose.
My gaze sharpened.
No one altered her file without my knowledge.
No one touched what was mine to manage.
A floorboard creaked in the corridor.
My head snapped toward the door.
The handle shifted.
I slipped back into the shadows, my breathing slowed, controlled.
The door opened slowly.
Someone slipped inside and eased the door shut, moving quietly, as if he’d done this before. Sweat and cheap cologne drifted in with him, sour and clinging. It contaminated the room.
O’Shea.
He stood at the side of the bed and stared down at her.
This wasn’t authorized.
No one entered her room without clearance.
O’Shea reached down and touched her knee, sliding his fingers under her hem.
Liath made a drugged sound and turned her head weakly on the pillow.
O’Shea grinned. “Hello, my sleeping beauty.”
The nickname was wrong. As if he orchestrated this. As if he believed he had a claim.
He pushed her dress up her thighs and higher, bunching it around her waist.
My fingers curled into my palm.
No one touched her without my permission.
O’Shea fumbled with his belt, his trousers sliding down to his knees. He leaned over her and pressed a hand over her mouth.
“Shh,” he whispered. “No one’s coming.”
Her body arched weakly beneath him, an instinctive recoil. She was trying to fight him off. Even drugged, she was fighting.
Something split open behind my ribs. The room narrowed to the shape of his hand reaching down between her legs.
I strode out of the shadows. “Get away from her.”
O’Shea turned.
I hit him, a clean strike to the jaw.
His head snapped sideways and he stumbled back, crashing into the bedside table. The water glass rattled.
Liath whimpered again, her body flinching.
I grabbed O’Shea by the collar. The fabric bunched in my fist as I slammed him against the wall.
For half a second, confusion flickered across his features.
“Doctor,” he started, “I was just—”
I hit him again.
His body went slack and he slid down the wall to the floor.
I dragged him out into the corridor by the back of his shirt.
I did not look back at her.
If I looked back, I would see the way her dress was twisted at her waist.
If I looked back, I would not be controlled.
I hauled O’Shea down the hall to a disused padded room at the end of the ward.
It had no cameras, no windows, thick walls that swallowed sound.
It was designed to contain the more troublesome patients, but had fallen out of use when protocols changed, when those kinds of treatments were made illegal. Deemed… inhuman.
The air inside was dead and stale, smelling faintly of rusted metal and cracked rubber. I threw him onto the metal therapy bed bolted down in the center of the room.
He groaned, disoriented, trying to sit up.
I shoved him back down.
I strapped his wrists tight enough that the leather bit. Then I strapped his ankles.
He struggled and the ancient metal bed creaked under him. “What are you doing?”
“Correcting a behavioral issue,” I said evenly as I crossed to the medical cabinet.
Metal glinted under the overhead light as I slid out the tray and gathered my equipment. They were old and rusty, but they would do.
On the side table, I laid the instruments out with methodical precision.
Scalpel.
Forceps.
Sutures.
Sterile gauze.
O’Shea saw them and his eyes widened, revealing his whites. “You’re mad,” he screamed. “You’re fucking mad. Help!”
I pulled on gloves with a soft snap.
“On the contrary,” I replied calmly. “This is a measured intervention.”
I drew up anesthetic and stepped to his side.
He jerked the moment the needle went in. “What the fuck?”
“Anesthetic,” I said. “You won’t feel the incision. Pressure, perhaps.”
His breathing turned frantic, his limbs thrashing uncontrollably against his restraints. These surgical tools might be past their prime, but those restraints were made well. Thick leather, unbreakable stitching, stainless steel buckles.
“You can’t do this! Help! Someone!” His eyes darted around, searching for an exit that didn’t exist. Screaming for help that would never arrive. “I’ll report you.”
I met his eyes. “And explain why I caught you in her room?”
His screaming panic faltered and folded in on itself. The noise thinned into small, broken whimpers.
I waited until the anesthetic took hold.
Then I picked up the scalpel.
“You abused sedation protocols for sexual access,” I said. “That will never happen again.”
Then I began to cut.
O’Shea screamed, the sound of his terror, raw and strangled, absorbing into the padded walls.
“If you don’t hold still,” I said, “I might accidentally sever the whole thing.”
His screaming collapsed into incoherent sobbing.
I worked with steady hands, blocking out his hysteria. I clamped down the blood vessels. Then removed the offending organ.
I dropped the severed testicle into the stainless-steel basin, the wet slap of it echoing loudly in the soundproofed room.
“You will retain urinary function,” I said. “You will lose reproductive capacity.”
I repeated the procedure on the other side with the same level of efficiency.
The second testicle landed on the tray with a dull, final sound.
O’Shea’s head rolled to the side.
He’d passed out.
I finished suturing carefully. Cleaned the wound. Applied dressing. Then disposed of what needed disposing in the medical waste.
I removed my gloves and watched his unconscious face, slack with shock.
Order had been restored. The threat had been permanently neutralized.
A dark part of me considered finishing it. Ending the threat permanently. All it would take is a precise cut along the major artery of his femur. He’d bleed out in two minutes. One if I cut both.
It was very tempting.
But then disposing of his body would mean taking unnecessary risks. Blood cleanup was annoyingly tricky. Not to mention all that paperwork.
I decided his survival was the greater punishment. Living without the masculine power he didn’t deserve.
I undid his restraints and left him there, alive but mutilated.
Behind the closed door of Liath’s room, I stood there listening. The quiet settled in. There was only the faint rasp of her breathing.
I moved to her bedside, only to check her pulse at her wrist, counting under my breath.
“Seventy-eight,” I murmured. “Elevated, but stable.”
I gently lifted one eyelid and assessed her pupils. They were responsive to light.
I placed my palm just above her sternum, ignoring the swell of her breasts, feeling the rhythm of her breathing. There was no respiratory suppression.
O’Shea has given her an unknown dosage.
But it was not lethal.
Relief loosened something in my chest.
She struggled faintly without waking, her shoulders tightening as if her body remembered the threat even when her mind couldn’t. I took my hand off her so as not to disturb her further.
“Relax,” I said softly. “You’re safe, Liath.”
Her name left my mouth before I could stop it.
I went still.
That was against protocol.
I was not meant to even think of her as Liath, let alone call her that out loud.
But I let it slide.
Just this once.
Her breathing began to even out. The tension in her jaw softened. Her fingers unclenched against the sheet and the furrow between her brows smoothed.
The knot in my stomach loosened in response and a measured exhale left me.
I lowered myself onto the edge of her bed, the same place I’d sat before, not daring to think of it as my spot. The mattress dipped under my weight.
Pie would dissect this lapse for hours. I could already hear her voice in my head.
Countertransference.
Boundary erosion.
Affection.
I dismissed it. Some variables were worth the deviation.
Liath’s body shifted toward me, seeking warmth even through sedation.
A hard tension gathered in my lower stomach.
It was just a reflex. Nothing more. I refused to examine the tiny ache in my chest.
I scanned the door.
The idea of someone else stepping through it rose fast and ugly, images of rough hands on her skin. My fingers flexed unconsciously and my breathing sharpened.
I would remain until dawn.
Just to make sure there were no further breaches. No secondary intrusion.
Although, deep down, I knew that wasn’t the full truth.
I looked back at her face, calmer now, her long lashes resting on the top of her cheeks, her breathing steady and slow.
My hand lifted instinctively to brush a strand of hair from her face. It stopped midair as moonlight caught something dark along my knuckles.
Blood, dried into the creases of my skin.
My jaw tightened.
I withdrew my hand and folded them together instead, fingers interlaced tight, the blood hidden between my palms.
My hands were not clean.
They never were.
Not since the first time I vowed revenge at all costs.
Not since I decided she was a means to an end.
My hands would never be clean.
And for some damn reason, that thought didn’t sit right with me.