"All done," Daddy said, quicker than usual bath time. He wrapped me in a towel before I could complain about leaving the warm water, bundled me up tight so my arms were trapped and I couldn't reach for him again.
"Why can't I hug Daddy?" I asked, frustrated and confused and still feeling funny in my tummy and lower places.
"Because Daddy needs you to be safe," he said, and something in his voice made me stop arguing. He sounded scared. Not of me but of something else, something Big that Little Me couldn't see properly.
He dressed me quickly in my softest pajamas—the ones with clouds on them—and carried me to bed even though it wasn't bedtime yet. But maybe it was bedtime? Time felt weird and slippery when I was Little.
"Story?" I asked hopefully.
"Short one," he agreed, but he sat in the chair by the bed instead of holding me, and read about the sleepy bunny who couldn't find his bedroom until he realized he'd been in it all along.
The squirmy feeling faded as he read, whatever the mark had been doing giving up and going back to confused cold. By the time the bunny found his bed, I was yawning, Stormy tucked safe under my chin.
"Sweet dreams, little one," Daddy said, pulling my blankets up to my chin.
"Daddy?" I said as he headed for the door.
"Yes?"
"Tomorrow will the funny feelings stop?"
He paused in the doorway, backlit by the nightlight's soft glow. "Yes. Daddy will make sure they stop."
I believed him because Daddy fixed everything. That was his job. And my job was just to be Little and safe inside the fence of rules he'd built around me.
"Okay," I said, already drifting. "Night night, Daddy. Night night, Stormy."
But through the feelings-connection, even mostly asleep, I felt him standing guard outside my door, fighting something I was too small to understand.
Thedreamstartednice—Stormyand me flying through cotton candy clouds—but then the clouds turned black and started eating the light. Stormy's button eyes fell out and became holes that went down forever, and when I looked closer, Penny was at the bottom of one, reaching up with hands that were turning into smoke.
"You let me die," she said, except her voice came from everywhere like the walls were talking. "You ate my food and let me die."
"No, no, I tried—" But my words were too small, Little Me words that couldn't explain Big Me thoughts about sacrifice and survival and impossible choices.
The dream shifted, and I was in the bad place again, but this time I was watching from outside myself. My body moved without me in it, hands that were mine but not mine drawing symbols on the wall in something dark and wet. When dream-me turned, her eyes were holes like Stormy's had become, and something else was looking out through them.
"Seven days," the Unnamed's voice came from my own mouth. "Then you're mine forever, and I'll use you to rot him from the inside. You'll watch from behind your own eyes while I make you hurt him. While I make you break him. While I make you—"
I woke up screaming.
Not Little screams—those were smaller, simpler, about immediate hurts. These were Big screams, full of knowing too much, understanding the weight of what was coming. My throat felt scraped raw, and the mark between my shoulders burned cold enough to make me sob.
But my thoughts were all tangled wrong. Part of me was Little Wren clutching Stormy, confused and scared and wanting Daddy. Part of me was adult Wren, remembering my work at the Bronze Cat and the cult and the jars and Penny's warm name on cold glass. The two parts crashed together in my head, making everything sideways and wrong, like trying to see through broken glass.
I stumbled out of bed, Stormy falling forgotten to the floor. My feet knew the way to the sitting area where Daddy kept watch—Little feet following safe patterns. But my adult mind was screaming about corruption and bonds and how we were running out of time.
He was standing by the window, shoulders rigid with the effort of staying awake, staying vigilant. When he heard me, he turned, and his face went from concerned to alarmed in a heartbeat.
"Please," and my voice came out wrong—too old, too desperate, nothing like Little Me's simple wants. "I need—the mark is pushing and I can't—I'm stuck between and everything hurts—"
I moved before he could, crossing the space with desperate need that belonged to Big Me but happened with Little Me's instinctive trust. I climbed into his lap, pressed against his chest, felt his heartbeat hammer against my palms.
"Wren—" He started, hands hovering, not sure whether to hold or push away.
"It's trying to pull me out," I said into his shirt, words tumbling over each other, adult understanding mixing with little-space confusion. "Making me remember Penny and the bottles and becoming empty and I can't—I need—please—"
For three heartbeats, we were frozen there. Me in his lap, clinging. Him rigid with the effort of not responding to his mate's desperate need. The bond between us screaming for completion, for the joining that would make us whole but would also let the mark pour through me into him.
