“And you believed them?” Hope fluttered in my chest like a bird testing damaged wings, perching on my soul with insidious claws that dug deep. “You believeme?”
“Of course I do.” He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, as simple as stating water was wet or fire burned.
The certainty in his voice sent a jolt through me, relief coursing through my veins like cool water after burning. He believed. He didn’tpush or pry into the impossible mechanics of rebirth, didn’t demand explanations I couldn’t provide, didn’t look at me like I needed psychiatric intervention.
He simply waited for me to continue. Let me exist in my truth without requiring me to defend it.
I couldn’t help how instinctively I yearned for him in that moment—this man who accepted the impossible because he’d apparently witnessed his own impossibilities.
Rowan continued, unaware of my internal struggle. “Not all things in life have to make sense, Violet.” He flexed his jaw, the muscle jumping beneath his skin. “This life, this world. . . it is not as simple or safe as most people believe. There are monsters and events beyond mortal understanding.”
Yeah, no shit. Me, daddy, and Charlie being prime examples of that.
His low voice had turned sober, weighted with knowledge that sat heavy on his shoulders. He forced a flat smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Some monsters are mortal, like the man you are hunting. Others are not.”
“Monsters. . .” I breathed, my mind racing. “Mortals and. . . what?”
Since waking up in this fucked-up charade of a second life, I had tried desperately not to dwell on the cosmic mechanisms behind my rebirth. Tried to focus on the practical—finding Edward, making him pay, protecting others from his particular brand of evil. But someone close to me this entire time apparently held answers to questions I’d been too afraid to ask.
“I want to understand,” I said, surprised by how much I meant it.
He snorted, a sound caught between humor and resignation. “I do not fully understand it myself, but. . .”
We sat side by side, staring at our reflections on the television’s dark screen. His thumb began to caress my wrist slowly, the repetitive motion sending delicious pulses of residual pleasure through my core. The touch was absent-minded, almost unconscious, as if his body sought connection while his mind worked through how to explain the inexplicable.
“There are beings out there who like to play with the lives of mortals, Violet.” His voice dropped lower, intimate despite the heavy subject. “Some are the typical stories meant to scare children—vampyres,shifters, demons. But those stories hide truth beneath layers of lies and exaggeration.”
“You mean like the ones you used to tell us?” I thought back to family camping trips, Rowan spinning tales around crackling fires while Charlie and Levi listened with indulgent smiles. Stories of shifters and ancient vampyres, of folklore so obscure I’d tried looking them up in libraries later and found nothing. I’d always assumed it was Rowan and Charlie bonding over shared interests, invented mythology they’d created together.
“They are real,” he said quietly. “Just like the gods mortals once worshiped. And they arebored, Violet.”
“Bored?” My heart hammered in my chest, the word seeming too small, too mundane for what he was describing. How could gods bebored? How could boredom justify ruining lives, stealing futures, playing with human souls like chess pieces?
But Rowan was not the type to joke, especially not when I’d barely confessed my own existential crisis iceberg.
“Your rebirth, your previous life. . .” He looked at me then, his eyes creased with a pain I wasn’t comfortable witnessing. Too raw. Too honest. “It was probably because of a god’s decision. Or their mistake.” He reached out, cupping my cheek with his free hand, his thumb stroking slowly across my cheekbone. “And the wrath that has led you down this path of hunting your abuser. . . I am sorry, Violet.”
My breath snagged in my throat. The air felt suddenly too thick to pull into my lungs. “You’re sorry?”
His thumb continued its gentle path across my skin, the touch grounding even as his words threatened to unravel me. “Your pain. Your loss. Your tragedy—you surviving twenty-four years of abuse you should never have endured. . .” He broke off and leaned forward, pressing a kiss to my forehead. The tenderness of it, the softness, made my eyes sting. “You did not deserve it, Violet. It was never your fault.”
The thing about emotions you’ve pushed down for so long, buried beneath survival instincts and the brutal arithmetic of staying alive another day—eventually they resurface, rearing their ugly heads in places you least expect.
Guilt and remorse for the life I’d lived, for the girl I’d been, crashed into me like a tsunami. The thoughts I’d carried for years in my previous life, thoughts that had become mantras I’d whispered to myself in dark rooms while strange hands violated my body:It’s your fault. You didn’t listen. You trusted the wrong person. You deserve this.
“No, I didn’t listen to Daddy’s warnings. . .” The words tumbled out, frantic and broken. “I met someone I shouldn’t have trusted, I met him at the warehouse, I was so stupid—”
Rowan stopped me, his hand tightening on my cheek. “In your previous life, you were a child who trusted someone who did not deserve it. It was not your fault what happened then. It is still not your fault now.”
And just like that, the endless dam of emotions I’d been holding back broke.
Tears flooded down my cheeks, hot and unstoppable. Words escaped me entirely, stolen by sobs that tore from my chest like they’d been living there all along, waiting for permission to emerge.
I was pain given form. I was loss wearing skin. I was the nine-year-old girl crying in a warehouse, begging and screaming for her mommy and daddy until her voice gave out. I was the teenager learning that her body was currency, that men would pay for access to her flesh, that screaming only made them enjoy it more. I was the twenty-year-old who’d stopped crying, stopped begging, stopped hoping for rescue because hope was a luxury she couldn’t afford.
I was the forgotten wails echoing beneath a hidden moon as I was sold to the man who would methodically destroy every piece of who I’d been before ending my life with the same casual indifference he’d shown throughout.
I was Edward’s pet. His property. His favorite broken toy.
