“You’re not going to give me back to Erik or Yusef?” I had to ask again.
“No.” He shook his head. “Never.”
“Am I going to be held for a husband or?—”
“No.”
“I won’t be bred like Raisa?”
He furrowed his brow. “No. Bred? No. Raisa married Ivan because she wanted to. Because…” He sighed. “I don’t want to overwhelm you. There is much for you and Raisa to talk about. To catch up with. But that’s between you and her. I am here to help you heal. And I promise that no one will ever hurt you again. Not while I’m breathing.”
Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked quickly to avoid showing that weakness.
Hearing him vow such safety—with no claims of expecting anything in return—felt like this story Misha was reading.
Fictional.
Fantasy.
A dream not intended to be true for someone like me.
“I know it won’t be easy to persuade you of that,” he admitted. “But I mean it. Every word of it.”
How can you?
Why would you?
Lowering my gaze, I grew too weak to look him in the eye. I couldn’t after what he’d just said.
Instead, as I stared at his son’s head on my lap while he blissfully slept away, I dared to wonder if I could take Alexsei’s word and believe him. If I could convince myself that I was worthy of this security.
Misha trusted him.
He told me that his father protected people. That I could rely on him to protect me.
From the bottom of my heart, I wished that I could.
15
ALEXSEI
Loud beeps sounded from my phone.
It lay face down on the table in the middle of us playing Scrabble after dinner.
I picked it up and glanced at the screen despite knowing it was another severe weather alert. They had a specific tone. I didn’t need to have any further heads up on that matter. Snow fell nonstop out the window. Flurries had turned to blizzard conditions, upping the county alerts to an official winter storm watch.
I didn’t need an app to tell me that. We weren’t going outside anytime soon, and I was glad that I’d watched the forecast to have the guards order more than enough food for us ahead of time.
However, I noticed that when I dismissed the beeps, Kalina was extra nervous.
Since that night she opened up to tell me about the conditioning Erik put her through, she seemed slightly less skittish aroundme. As though that first step was over with and she could breathe easier.
I bet hearing me flat-out tell her that Erik and Yousef wouldn’t get to her would appease her a bit too, but I felt like a jackass not to have told her that directly sooner. I was stupid to assume that she would follow the implication that she was safe now.
“Your turn, Kalina,” Misha told her. He yawned, tired from that big dinner we’d shared.
We hadn’t only shared it in eating it—something Kalina was getting better at—but we’d shared the task of making it. All three of us. It was just one more minor thing that Kalina was expanding to do within the last couple of weeks that had passed.
