64
SCOTTY
“No! Let me go! I do not like it!”
“That is not the tone you use with me, Daughter. Be good. This is just like your training.”
“But I did not do anything wrong!” the girl cries, fat tears streaming down her cheeks as an older man holds her down on top of him, sitting in an expensive chair at a long dining table.
Ezla and her father.
I know this, and yet I can’t process anything—where I am, what the fuck is going on . . . only the nausea that swirls through my stomach as I absorb the sight before me.
And the fact that the young girl doesn’t have a blackish-crimson scar splitting her face.
“This is not a punishment; it is a reward. It will feel good, my dearest. For both of us.” The Game Master’s hand is moving under her silk nightie . . . a lacy nightdress that hardly covers her backside. One a girl who looks no older than twelve has no business wearing.
“But it does not!” Ezla screams, a familiar look of fury replacing the fear for a moment.
Crack!
The force of her father’s blow launches her off his lap and to the unforgiving taalk floor.
My chest clenches and burns worse than hellfire, agony ripping me apart at the seams. At the same time, wrath like no other surges up within me—wherever within me is, because I currently can’t feel my body, and I don’t have one in this place, I note with some confusion.
Before my groggy mind finally pieces together what’s happening:
This is a dream. A nightmare.
I’m inside my Bonded’s head. Her memories, I think.
Fuck, this is such an invasion of privacy. Yet I can’t look away from the horror show playing out right in front of me:
“I hate you! I hate you! I will kill you! I will do it—”
Ezla’s own agonised scream cuts her off as her fucking father, the man who’s supposed to love her, cherish her, nourish her, grabs his dinner knife and lunges onto her, slashing the blade savagely across her face.
Ezla’s sobs completely obliterate my heart. And there’s so much red . . . so much blood all around me . . . so much fury that it visibly taints the nightmare surrounding me a crimson hue as my emotions seep into the images.
Ezla’s violently shaking hands grasp at her face, and her eye when they move away, dripping blood . . .
It’s split in half.
I feel bile rise in the throat I become more and more aware of along with the rest of my body as consciousness begins to drag me away then. But it’s not quick enough to shield me from what happens next:
Tearing her nightie up her body while Ezla screams and cries and slams her palms to the taalk beneath her to try and get away, dragging them across the floor uselessly, the Game Master uses his larger limbs to keep his daughter pinned down.
He tugs open his trousers, freeing his disgusting fucking dick at the same time he yanks her skimpy underwear to the side. Then he slams into h—
Voice hoarse, I cry out as I shoot upright in bed, the devastating sound of my Bonded’s unbearable pain ringing in my ears.
Through the haze lingering over me as I struggle to get any air in, chest rising and falling in time with my frantically pounding heart, I can vaguely make out other heaving breaths around me and a small sob that’s either Alby’s or Tiger’s.
No, no, no, no, no . . .
Fuck!
My hand trembles madly as I shove it through my messed-up hair, damp with sweat from the fucking temperature of my body from seeing—
“Fuck! Fuck— Love—!” My head whips to the right as I finally catch up with reality.
Only to see all the other men in my Bonded group in a complete panic as they hover over a writhing Ezla while she sobs and pleads, still stuck in her head, fists strangling the silken black bedsheets, her figure illuminated by the Avri lights someone’s turned back up.
“What’s happening?!”Alby sobs, his hand a vice around hers, and if there were ever any doubts, there’s none now about whether Ezla accidentally dragged them into her head while she slept as well. Never have I seen a single one of them so unhinged, so out of their minds, so utterly hysterical.
“Scotty, help!” Tiger’s voice cracks, and his usual spark is nowhere to be found under the force of the sheer terror drenching him. “Help her!”
Tate has completely lost it beside him, muttering nonsensically under his breath and yanking at his hair, his crazed eyes concerningly manic as they bore into Ezla, but I can’t focus on that right now as I scramble over to our convulsing Bonded.
Scooping her up in my arms, I settle her thrashing body between my legs, my back to the headboard and hers pressing to my chest. Her sweaty skin slides against mine, her body just as heated as mine too, worse even.
“Shh, shh, shh . . .” Dipping my head, I press my sticky cheek to hers, gasping for breath in time with her.
“It’s okay, baby . . . It’s okay, Ezla, Love.
Wake up,” I rasp, and I don’t fucking know what to do when she doesn’t.
I’m supposed to always fucking know what to do!
“Wake her up, Scotty,” Cooper grits out, trembling fists crushed into tights balls at his sides as he kneels directly across from us. He’s struggling to keep his cool, eyes darker than I’ve ever seen anyone’s. “Wake her up now.”
I’m trying! I want to shout at him. But I have to be the one to keep my head here, like always. So I bite back my bellows of frustration, stress, panic, terror, anger . . . I shove it all into a tidy little box to deal with on my own later.
“Come on, Love. Come back to us—come back to your men. We have you now. Not him. You don’t ever have to go back to him.
” I rock Ezla gently as my eyes squeeze shut, and I throw my head around a bit, trying to dislodge those horrific images from my mind.
Yet at the same time, I don’t want to forget—not when it means sharing the burden with the woman I love.
It’s what I’ve been desperate to do, in fact.
And I’d suspected, we all had, I know, but we couldn’t be sure.
And seeing it . . . I’d hoped it wasn’t true, that it was simply the worst-case scenario my mind could conjure.
And it was.
But it’s also the reality.
“Ezla . . .” I say soothingly, running a hand over her tangled hair, but both my voice and actions are unsteady.
“It’s just a nightmare.” It’s just a nightmare, I repeat in my mind, attempting to push the words to her through the bond, wondering if maybe that’s the way to reach her since she’s stuck in her head.
It’s just a nightmare, Love. You’re in our Bonded chambers—with your Bonds: Tate, Tiger, Alby, Cooper, me—Scotty.
My heart leaps as she jolts awake without warning.
And she doesn’t do it quietly.
“GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” She’s not her cool, composed self at all as she rages about in my arms, no technique whatsoever. When she’s in a state like this, I’ve noticed she seems to forget she’s perfectly capable of defending herself against anything.
Anything except her father.
Fuck. He’s still consuming her thoughts. She’s still stuck feeling powerless.
“Love, we’re not in your head—not anymore. None of us meant to—”
“GET OUT! GET OUT!”
“Ezla, please! Stop! Your— You might hurt yourself!” Alby sobs.
Ezla freezes. But it’s not because of a care for her own well-being.
Only the fact she’s been crushing Alby’s hand so hard her nails have drawn blood.
Right now, she doesn’t even have the ability to mask her emotions, and horror flashes across her face before she yanks her hand away.
Or tries to.
Because shy, timid Alby does not let go.
Trembling just as much as her, tears streaming down his pale face, both his hands grip on to hers like a lifeline. “D-don’t hurt yourself! I don’t like it!” He sniffles, horror and agony twisting his features. “And I saw . . .”
With a whimper, he throws himself at her, arms wrapping around our Bonded’s waist. I shift us to give him more room, heart fucking slamming against my ribcage. I don’t blame him for being unable to recount those horrors aloud.
Stunned, Ezla sits here motionless. I can’t read her anymore, her walls slammed back up. But everyone saw her face wet with tears when she was held captive in the chaos of her mind. She’s never let tears fall before this. Not ever.
Eyes still leaking and nose and cheeks a splotchy red, Tiger latches onto her ankle, and he sounds like he’s struggling to breathe, just like the rest of us are, Ezla included.
SLAP!
My head snaps to the side to find the source of the brutal crack of skin on skin.
“Snap out of it! Your Bonded needs you!”
Tate’s frenzied muttering abruptly stops.
Yanked back to reality, he’s in motion a second later.
He doesn’t even glance at Cooper, who slapped him so hard his head had whipped to the side, only shoves up next to me in a flash.
The air is stuffy with all the body heat and horror in here as his large hand wraps tightly around Ezla’s bicep, and he presses his forehead to her shoulder as though he needs to be touching her to make sure she’s really here, unharmed.
“Sorry, Havoc, baby. What do you need?! Tell me what you need!” He still sounds frantic, but I can tell he’s really trying hard to tamp that down for Ezla, to be there for her even if he doesn’t understand how to comfort anyone very well.
“What was that, Vengeance?” Cooper asks lowly then. But we all know exactly what we saw in our Bonded’s head. Like usual, he’s digging for more than she can give.
My brows bunch together, and I start with a clear warning in my tone, “Not now, Cooper—”
“That was the first time.”
The world stops. My lungs freeze up.
Ezla goes limp, almost defeated, her head dropping back to rest on my shoulder. Her gaze is worryingly distant.