In orgasms given and received until I can't remember which is which anymore.
In the slow, steady erosion of who I used to be, piece by careful piece.
Morning training at ten a.m. sharp.
Afternoon practice at three.
Evening "rewards" that feel less like rewards and more like the systematic dismantling of my resistance, my sense of self, everything that made me Eden Finch instead of just another acquisition.
Every day the same routine.
Every day something different shifts inside me.
Every day I lose a little more of myself and find something else in its place.
Something that scares me more than the loss itself.
I wake up in Vaughn's bed—inourbed, though I hate that my mind has started using that possessive, has started thinking of this space as ours instead of his—and for a moment, just a brief, disorienting moment, I don't remember where I am.
Who I am.
What I've become.
The confusion is almost peaceful.
Then I remembereverything.
The auction where he bought me for two million dollars.
The escape attempt that lasted barely three and a half hours.
The hunt through the freezing woods.
The way he found me and dragged me back and showed me exactly what happens when you run from Vaughn Sutherland.
The training.
God, the endless training.
The way my body has learned to respond to him with Pavlovian precision, like a bell that rings and I salivate, a command given and I obey before my brain catches up to what I'm doing.
The way I crave his approval like oxygen, like water, like something essential to survival.
The way I've started to forget why I wanted to run in the first place.
That's the most terrifying part.
Not the training itself, not the commands or the performances or the way he's systematically breaking down every wall I ever built.
But the forgetting.
The way the Sanctuary feels more and more distant, more like a bad dream than a reality I lived for twenty-three years.
The way freedom feels less appealing than it used to, less urgent, less necessary.
The way staying feels easier than the thought of leaving.
Today is—I don't even know what day it is.
