“If we’re ever going to move past this, I need to hear it,” he says.
“Canwe move past it?”
Temporary insanity forces me to ask the question before I can consider its consequences, and I don’t dare to even breathe as I wait for his answer.
He stares at me, and I can see the assessment in his eyes as he considers it. Risk and cost on one side, potential reward on the other, and each passing second another shift in the balance.
The longer he takes, the further my heart falls.
“I don’t know,” he finally says, and the honesty lands like a blow. “But this is how we try, Xen. This is what I need to figure that out. What sort of deal did you make?”
“Aeliphis agreed to report that you died,” I say, the words tasting like ash. “That way, no one would look for you. Only a few people knew about us—the ones she trusted. They filed a report saying we were mated, but that you were killed in an accident right after. And they…” I trail off with a shaky exhale.
He strokes his thumb over my hip again. “Theywhat, princess?”
Deep, desperate longing overtakes my body at the pet name, and I tighten my hand over his.
“They said you had to disappear,” I whisper as a single tear slips free from my eye. “You had to disappear and I couldn’t know where you were, because no one would believe it if the pain wasn’t real. They knew I’d come after you if I had any idea where they’d taken you, and…”
My quiet sob fills the empty space, and Bash releases a pained whine as he climbs my body and wraps his arms around my back. He hugs me so tightly I can barely breathe, and I revel in the loss of air as I squeeze him back.
“I had to do it,” I whisper. “I swore I’d protect you, and I had to keep you safe.”
“You said you’d kept tabs on me, though.”
“It took me almost two years to find you and when I learned you were here…” I trail off, but Bash’s mind is already two steps ahead.
“What about the other side of this deal?” he demands as he pulls back to look at me. “What did they get from doing this?”
“She wanted to… study me,” I whisper as his heartbreak turns to fury. “She… she wanted to see what would happen when we were separated. Learn how the bond would react when we were forced to be so far apart. She wanted to see how it affected me and my health, and what it would do to my mind. Every night after work, they’d pull me into a lab, and they’d…”
I trail off, but after years of seeing the horrors performed in that place, I don’t need to go into details. Anything he imagines is equally as horrific as the reality, and it doesn’t need to be spoken out loud.
“What else?” he rasps.
My lip quivers as I fight to steady my breathing. “They tried to… sever the bond—”
“Xen,” he whispers, horrified.
I shake my head, needing to get it out now while I have the courage. “They tried, over and over again, but they couldn’t do it. It…”
Another quiet sob leaves me as he watches, shock slacking his face.
“It fought back. It wouldn’t… wouldn’tletthem. It almost killed me, Bash, and they backed off. Went back to studying me and…”
“How long did this go on?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I try to look away, but he grips my chin and holds me there, eye to eye.
“How long?” he whispers.
My lip trembles at the memory of being strapped into those chairs and onto those tables. The bindings weren’t to stop me from running. My need to protect Bash guaranteed I'd stay.
It was to prevent the agony from sending my body onto the floor.
To hold my flailing limbs still so their studies wouldn’t be interrupted.
To keep my arching spine from launching me across the room because the pain demanded it.
