Not from his mouth, not from his hand—but from myself. I bit through my lip in the night, trying to keep the word from slipping out. The word that’s poisoned my blood, burning me hollow from the inside.
Love.
The sheets are stiff with dried sweat and blood, sticking to my skin like another layer of chains. The air stinks of ruin. My body aches from every place he touched, from every scar he carved, from every thrust he forced until I couldn’t tell where hate ended and hunger began.
I don’t cry. Not this time.
I smile.
It’s cracked, bloody, sharp, but it’s mine.
If he wants me branded, then I’ll wear the scars like armour. If he wants me caged, then I’ll sharpen the bars until they cut him every time he touches me. If he wants me to confess love, then I’ll twist the word into something he can’t control—something that bleeds him when he drinks it.
I drag myself to the mirror, bare feet crunching over glass. My reflection stares back: a girl stripped of softness, body amap of wounds and worship, skin painted in blood and spit and bruises. A girl remade in his image.
No—
not remade.
Reborn.
He thinks he’s winning but resurrection always looks like ruin first.
I press my palm flat to the mirror, smearing blood across my reflection, and whisper to the glass, to the camera, to him wherever he’s watching:
“You wanted a monster, Hook? You built one.”
The red light blinks steady. Watching. Always watching.
For the first time, I hope he’s listening because I’m done breaking.
Now it’s his turn.
The mirror doesn’t lie.
It shows me everything he’s done. Every cut. Every bruise. Every line carved by steel and sealed by his mouth.
for the first time, I don’t look away.
For the first time, I don’t see a victim.
I see something worse.
Something stronger.
Something he can’t unmake.
My body trembles, but it’s not fear anymore. It’s voltage. Rage fused with desire, pain welded to hunger, hate braided so tightly with love that I can’t tell them apart. And maybe that’s the truth—maybe they were never separate to begin with.
The word he wants is carved into me already. I feel it pulsing under my scars, dripping from my thighs, humming in my blood. I will never speak it. He can starve on my silence for eternity.
I will twist it sharp enough to cut him.
I trail my fingers down my chest, over the lines he branded, shivering as fresh pain wakes beneath the touch. I smear the blood into patterns, crude and crooked, until my skin is a canvas of red.
Not his mark anymore. Mine.
The camera blinks. Watching. Recording. Waiting for me to collapse, to beg, to finally choke out the word.
