"I know," Caleb replied, his deep voice soft, his ice-blue eyes focused on his task. His massive fingers worked with impossible delicacy, removing each shard with surgical precision. "I love you anyway."
I sobbed. Ugly, broken sounds that tore from my chest against my will. I'd tried to hurt them, and I had, I could feelthe wounds I'd inflicted through the bond. I'd hurt myself more. The worst part, the absolute worst part, was that I wasn't crying because of my bleeding feet or the punishment to come. I was crying because some part of me wanted to take it all back.
Caleb finished bandaging my feet in silence, his massive hands impossibly gentle as they wrapped gauze around my torn soles. When he was done, he looked up at me, his scarred face soft with an emotion I didn't deserve. His ice-blue eyes held no accusation, no anger—only patient, steadfast love.
"I'll make you another bird," Caleb said quietly, his rough voice barely above a whisper. "When you're ready to accept it." Then he stood, his full height towering over me, and left me there, bleeding and broken and more terrified than I'd ever been in my life.
Not of them.
Of myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AVA
The basement stairs stretched downward into darkness, each step carrying me closer to something I didn't want to face. Caleb carried me despite my struggles, his massive arms unyielding, his chest warm against my side. I could feel his heartbeat, steady and slow, so different from the panicked racing of my own. Through the bond, I felt his reluctance, his pain at what was about to happen, but also his resolve. He wasn't going to stop this.
None of them were.
Ethan led the way, his footsteps measured and precise on the concrete steps, his posture straight and controlled. Mason and Leo followed behind us, their presence a wall at my back, cutting off any hope of escape.
We passed storage areas, a generator room, spaces I'd never known existed beneath the cabin. The air grew cooler, drier, stripped of the warmth and comfort of the rooms above. Finally, we stopped before a steel door at the end of a long hallway, reinforced and heavy, with a digital lock that glowed faintlygreen. Ethan pressed his thumb to the scanner. The lock beeped, and the door swung open.
"What is this?" I demanded, my voice sharp with fear I couldn't quite hide. My heart was hammering against my ribs, and I could feel panic clawing at the edges of my control.
"This is where you'll be staying for the next twelve hours," Ethan replied calmly, stepping inside and flicking on a light. A single bulb blazed to life overhead, harsh and white, illuminating the space beyond.
The room was small. So small. Concrete walls painted a flat, featureless gray pressed in from all sides. No windows. No furniture except for a thin mattress on the floor and a bucket in the corner. A drain in the center of the floor. Vents in the ceiling that hummed faintly with circulated air.
A cell. They'd built a cell beneath the cabin.
For me.
"No," I breathed, the word escaping before I could stop it. My eyes darted around the space, searching for something, anything—an escape, a weapon, a way out. There was nothing. Just gray walls and cold concrete and that single harsh light. "No, you can't put me in here, you can't?—"
"We can," Mason said, his voice flat and hard as he stepped into the room behind us. His honey-brown eyes swept the space with grim satisfaction, no trace of the gentle man who'd asked about my mother, who'd carried me to the bath. "And we will. You wanted consequences, Avalon. This is what consequences look like."
"Put me down!" I screamed, thrashing in Caleb's arms with renewed desperation. I clawed at his skin, my nails leaving red tracks on his forearms, but he didn't flinch. Didn't react. Just held me with that terrible, patient strength.
"Caleb," Ethan said, nodding toward the mattress. "Set her down." Caleb crossed to the thin mattress and lowered me ontoit as gently as if I were made of glass. The moment his arms released me, I scrambled backward, pressing myself against the cold concrete wall, my chest heaving with panicked breaths.
"You can't leave me here," I said, and I hated how my voice cracked, how my bravado crumbled like wet paper. "Please. I'll—I'll clean up the mess. I'll apologize. Just don't?—"
"You'll do all of those things," Ethan agreed, crouching down to my eye level, his green eyes studying me with clinical detachment behind his glasses. "After. This isn't about apologies, Ava. This is about teaching you that actions have consequences you cannot escape."
"This is torture," I spat, but my voice wavered, tears gathering in my eyes despite my best efforts to hold them back.
"This is correction," Ethan replied calmly, his voice as measured as if he were explaining a mathematical formula. "Torture would be causing you permanent harm. This room is designed to be uncomfortable, not damaging. You'll have air, water, a place to sleep, a place to relieve yourself. Your basic needs will be met."
"My basic needs?" I laughed, the sound high and hysterical, scraping against my throat. "What about human contact? What about light? What about?—"
"Those aren't basic needs," Ethan interrupted gently, holding my gaze with those cold green eyes. "They're comforts. Comforts you destroyed when you tore apart the cabin this morning. You rejected the soft approach, Ava. You made it very clear that kindness wasn't working. So now we try something else."
I heard Caleb's voice, rough and strained, saying something about twelve hours being a long time. Heard Ethan's clinical response about severity and consequences. But the words blurred together, lost beneath the roaring panic in my ears. They were going to leave me here. In this concrete box. Alone.
"Please," I whispered, and the word came out small, broken, nothing like the defiant woman who had stood in the wreckage of the kitchen and dared them to punish her. "Please don't leave me alone in the dark." Something flickered across Ethan's face, just for a moment, just a flash, but then it was gone, replaced by that calm, clinical mask.
"The light will stay on for the first hour," he said, straightening up, adjusting his glasses with precise fingers. "After that, it will turn off. The temperature will drop to fifty-five degrees. Not cold enough to cause hypothermia, but cold enough to be uncomfortable. You will have water." He gestured to a bottle by the door that I hadn't noticed before. "You will not have food. Twelve hours without eating won't harm you."
