He broke me. He marked me. He loves me.
And as I lie there, trapped in the arms of my tormentor, the source of my pain and my only comfort, I feel the last vestiges of the old Wynter crumble into dust. A terrifying, silent void opens up inside me. And in the darkness of that void, a single, horrifying thought takes root:
What if he is right?
Thirty Eight
Kaden
Shesleeps.
Her body is a dead weight in my arms, finally surrendered to the depths of exhaustion and pain. Her breathing is stillshallow, punctuated by the occasional hitching sob that trembles through her even in sleep. I hold her closer, my arm a solid band around her waist, my body a fortress at her back. The scent of her—a mix of snow, fear, and her own unique, clean fragrance—fills my senses. It is the scent of victory.
My gaze is fixed on the white square of the bandage on her hip. Beneath it lies my mark. My name. My vow. A perfect, elegant ‘K’ carved into the pale, soft skin of her hip. The memory of the blade slicing through her flesh, the sight of her blood welling up to trace the line I had drawn, sends a wave of profound, possessive satisfaction through me. It was a sacrament. A brutal, bloody baptism that washed away the last of her resistance and consecrated her as mine.
She thinks it was an act of rage. She thinks it was punishment for her defiance. She does not yet understand. It was the truest act of love I am capable of.
Love, in my world, is not a negotiation. It is a conquest. It is seeing something so perfect, so pure, so essential to your own being that you must claim it, possess it, and protect it with a ferocity that borders on madness. When I saw her in the snow, choosing the certainty of a frozen death over the life I was offering her, I felt a terror so profound it nearly choked me. It was the terror of losing the only thing that has ever mattered.
My methods were failing. The comfort, the gifts, the space, they were the tools of a lesser man, a suitor. But I am not a suitor. I am a king. And a king does not woo. He claims.
I had to make her understand. I had to burn the truth of her belonging into her very flesh, a permanent testament that would scream my ownership to her, to the world, and to any man who might ever foolishly believe she could belong to another. The pain was necessary. It was a fire to burn away the fantasy of escape, leaving only the hard, undeniable reality of us.
My thumb strokes the soft skin of her stomach, and I feel a tremor run through her. Even in sleep, her body responds to mine. She is a part of me now, as surely as my own heart. The rage I felt in the blizzard has cooled, leaving behind a fierce, unwavering devotion. I have her. She is here, in my bed, marked and broken and utterly, irrevocably mine. The war is over. Now, the reign begins.
I will not be the monster she thinks I am. Not anymore. The cruelty was a tool, a means to an end. The end has been achieved. Now, she will see the other side of my possession. She will know my protection. She will feel my devotion. I will be her physician, her provider, her confidant, her lover. I will tend to the wound I inflicted until it is a pale, silvery scar—a beautiful, elegant reminder of the day she truly became mine. I will fill her days with the art she craves, the books she loves, the beauty she deserves. I will give her power, a voice in my world that will be second only to my own.
I will teach her to love me. Not with fear, but with the same all-consuming passion she poured into her hatred. I will show her that the darkness she sees in me is not a void, but a sanctuary, a kingdom where her own fire can burn without fear of being extinguished.
She stirs, a soft moan escaping her lips. Her body tenses as consciousness returns, as the memory of pain and violation floods her mind. I feel the shift instantly.
"Shhh,cara," I murmur, my voice a low rumble against her back. "You're safe. I'm here."
She goes rigid, her breath catching. This is the first test of our new reality.Will she fight? Will she scream?
I wait, my body a calm, unyielding presence. After a long moment, a shudder wracks her frame, a single, defeated sob. She doesn't pull away. She doesn't fight. She simply lies there, broken in my arms.
It is a beginning.
I will heal her body. I will soothe her mind. I will earn her trust, not by pretending to be a good man, but by being the most devoted monster she has ever known. I will make her see that the man who carved his name into her skin is the only one in the world who will ever truly cherish the masterpiece he has claimed.
Thirty Nine
Wynter
Iwaketotwoinescapablerealities: the searing, rhythmic throb of pain in my hip, and the heavy, unyielding weight of Kaden’s arm across my waist.
For a blissful, ignorant microsecond, my mind is a blank slate. Then memory crashes down, not like an avalanche, but like a slow, suffocating tide of black water. The blizzard. The desperate run. The roar of the snowmobile. The cold, merciless fury in his eyes. The blade.
A strangled sob catches in my throat. It’s real. It all happened. I am still here. I am in his bed, held captive by his body, and a part of my own flesh now belongs to him, carved and claimed.
My body is a warzone of contradictions. The agony from the wound is a constant, sharp scream, a violation that feels raw and new with every pulse of my blood. Yet, the rest of me is cocooned in a strange, traitorous comfort. His body is a furnace at my back, chasing away the bone-deep chill that has lived in me for years. The steady rise and fall of his chest is a solid, grounding rhythm in the chaos of my own pain. His hand, resting on my stomach, is a bastion of warmth.
I am a prisoner of war being comforted by the general who conquered me. The cognitive dissonance is so profound it makes me feel like I’m losing my mind.
I lie perfectly still, feigning sleep, my mind racing. The old Wynter would have recoiled. She would have tried to slide away, to put space between her and the monster. But the old Wynter is dead. She died in the snow, her hope freezing and shattering into a million irreparable pieces. I don’t know who I am now, but I know that I don’t have the strength to fight. The fire is gone. All that remains are cold, grey embers and the hollow ache of defeat.
Kaden stirs behind me, his arm tightening instinctively. He is awake. I feel the shift in his breathing, the subtle tension of his muscles. I hold my breath, waiting for the anger, the gloating, the next wave of cruelty.
