This isn’t his room anymore. It’s mine.
When he missteps, I surge in. My elbow slams into his jaw with a crack, Lyra ripping his knife away while Kael drives deep into his shoulder. His body crashes to the ground as I rip Kael out, blood spilling hot and dark onto the white tile as his head hits it with a sickening thud. He goes still, chest heaving, eyes fluttering shut.
I raise my blades high, breath ragged, ready to deliver the final strike. One clean cut to end it. To finish what he started and never let him rise again.
But my arms lock up and that thirst for more pulls me back, the voice of the most broken pieces of my soul that want him to understand what it’s like to feel owned and humiliated. To make him feel like a pet that will heel to me.
My gaze snags on the trays he left behind, metal glinting beneath the sterile lights. A long steel bar rests against the edge and I quickly shove Lyra and Kael into their sheaths once more.
Their energy is wary as they wait to see what I do, but neither of them try to talk me out of my plan yet.
I snatch up the bar and deliver a swift kick to his ribs as he tries to roll to his side and get up. A spurt of blood flies from his mouth as he gasps. I plant my boots on either side of him, muscles straining as I bend the bar, the metal screeching in protest before yielding to my strength.
I shove it around his throat and push the ends of it backwards until they meet at the back of his neck. His eyes are dazed as he weakly tries to push me off, murmuring, “Release…the mist. Guards.”
As I stand to my full-height and stare down at him, I realize I’m not done yet. What’s a collar without a leash?
From the wall I tear down a length of heavy chain, the links clattering loudly in the silence. I fasten it to the twisted collar and then curl the other end around my fist. One hard tug and the chain jerks his body toward me at my feet, his head lolling with the sudden motion.
Did he pass out right when my fun is just beginning?
“Wake up,” I snarl, yanking the leash again until his eyes flutter open. Fury thrums in my veins, hotter than any blood. “Wake up and meet your new owner.”
The sound of rushed boots pounding on tile comes just as his eyes flutter open. Voices I recognize shout from the hallway before I hear metal shrieking as the door is shoved open more.
And then my fathers are there as I glance up, their frames filling the inside of the doorway like a wall of fury. Dante is right behind them, eyes wild as they drift over me and to his father. Elias’s lips and cheek are bleeding as he breathes heavily, but his eyes radiate a quiet confidence as he nods at me. Callum lookslike anger incarnate as his fists curl at his side and he takes a step toward Terrance. Elias’s hand darts out to hold him back.
For a second the room is full of everyone I’ve fought to keep together.
My mother stirs faintly as my fathers dart to her. Dante goes to a control panel next to the table, his fingers and eyes flying over the buttons as he releases the restraints on her. She groans as her body falls forward, but my fathers are there to catch her and whisper sweet words of encouragement.
Her eyes flutter open and find mine, and the whole world narrows to the way she looks at me– half-terrified, half-hopeful. My throat seizes so hard I can barely form words.
Terrance lets out his own groan of pain as he rolls to his hands and knees. He scrabbles to try to flee and I yank his collar until he falls uselessly back to the floor, sick satisfaction rolling through me as his chin clips the tile and the knowledge that others are here to enjoy the show fills me. This is what I needed. I needed Terrance to feel the weight of eyes on him as he is reduced to the most useless version of himself he’s ever been.
He rolls to his side and his lips peel back in something that wants to be a sneer but ends up being a strange grimace.
“Move,” I command as I crouch next to him. “Like a dog. Walk on all fours and maybe I’ll make your death quick.”
He looks at me with all the fury he can muster and for a heartbeat he does nothing, and in that frozen second every memory I’d tried to bury flies to the surface. The scalpels, the cold table, the strips of flesh and my nails ripped from my body.
“What did I say?” I ask harshly.
I yank the chain and his body jerks forward on obedient knees in front of me, the motion grotesquely sweet in its humility.
Angry tears spill down my face, hot trails that fall from where they gather at the edge of my jaw to the floor. When his eyes lockonto mine, I point up at the cameras, my arm steady even as my hand shakes.
“Don’t worry,” I say, voice breaking around each word. “Just like the pictures you distributed of me, I have video proof now of you being my new pet.” I drag the chain so he jerks his head up and looks at every set of eyes in this room around me. I make him meet the faces of those he crushed. “I’ll make sure everyone sees this and knows exactly who came out on top.”
“You…bitch,” he breathes out.
He lets out a strangled cry and lunges, but my fist finds him before his hands can close around my throat. The punch lands heavily against his jaw and he falls back to his side. He scrabbles to rise, a reflex drilled into those who learned to fight and get back up, but I’m already over him and I press the bottom of my boot to his chest to pin him to the tile.
I bend down until my face is inches from his, the light catching the contempt in his gaze.
I whisper harshly, “You will never, ever hurt anyone again. I just needed to make you feel a fraction of what you did to me before I put you in the ground forever.”
My soul feels at peace now, at the thought of ending him.
