My heart tore apart just looking at him. Oberi might as well be dead to me, but he was still walking around and moving, still able to speak to Charlie… but not to me. His emotions, thoughts, and essence were separate from my own now. He was a complete stranger. It made him appear to be a living corpse in my eyes, a ghost I could witness, but not converse with nor experience.
I deserved this. I’d killed a piece of Oberi’s soul while I was on that beach earlier, and proven to myself I was willing to destroy my Familiar if it meant I got the chance to do as I pleased.
Looks like the universe granted my wish.
Something glimmered in the low lamplight. Panic wrapped around my neck tightly, constricting off air when I saw that Oberi was wearing a collar.
“What’s around Oberi’s neck? Who put it there?” I wanted to murder, to kill. Whoever had put that collar on Oberi would regret it, because I’d take a knife and saw their head from their neck bit by bit, slowly, just so they knew how it felt to be so restrained.
“Cameron. It’s a punishment for what I did. Don’t bother trying to remove the collar. He’s promised to execute anyone who tries.”
The voices were so loud now, bellowing in belligerent wrath that I couldn’t hear myself speak. “Oberi had nothing to do with it! He was helping me.”
“You think I didn’t tell him that? He didn’t want to listen.”
What a moronic fool. Daydreams played behind my eyes, ways I could torture Cameron for going through with this punishment, methods I could use to inflict misery upon him for merely having the idea to collar Oberi in the first place…
I needed to redirect myself. Cameron wasn’t the issue right now. I’d deal with him later, and ancestors, I’d make him pay for chaining up my Familiar?—
The reality crushed me, taking away all hope. Oberi wasn’t my Familiar anymore. He wasn’t anything to me. He belonged only to Charlie, and anything we shared before was gone.
But you know what? Fuck it. Whether I had a connection to Oberi or not, I still loved him. He’d taken my side when Charlie had been off committing the insane fuckery that had put us all here. He didn’t deserve to wear that collar, and if I had anything to say about it, which I would, he wouldn’t be wearing it for long.
I folded my hands in my lap. “Looks like everyone’s suffering for what you did. I don’t even know if you feel sorry for it, or if you’re just upset your plans didn’t work.”
“Of course I feel remorse. I know I fucked up. In every way I possibly could, I destroyed everything that matters. But please, give me the chance to fix it.”
“There’s no fixing this! It’s irreparable!”
In a whisper, Charlie added, “This isn’t just about me, Ava.”
The world stopped revolving when he said that, bringing everything to a brittle stop. The harsh truth threatened to slap me in the face.
I couldn’t face it. Instead, I emitted a low, heartless chuckle. “You are not blaming me for this. This is absolutely on you.”
“You made a promise to me that you broke. I thought I was doing the right thing, because you asked me to make these decisions when you couldn’t.”
“I asked you to reel me in, but I trusted you to be mature enough to know when things went too far, and to respect my right to back out if I said no!”
“How? How am I supposed to know where your line is, Ava?” he demanded. “You asked me to make decisions when you couldn't, and that arrangement has always worked for us before. You hate Cameron as much as I do, so I thought for certain you'd be on my side. When you weren’t, I assumed you weren’t in the right place to make this decision with me, so I made the decision for us, like I always have. I’m your dominant, but you backed out of that agreement when you failed to listen or even talk to me about what you were going to do! If you had listened to me and stuck to your promise, none of this would be happening!”
Charlie had been miserable, but now he was starting to get angry, which I could handle. He wanted to play this game of who was worse than who? Fine. I could play, and I was better at it. Let’s fucking go.
“There’s a difference between being a full-time submissive and letting you control me. You don’t get to make these big, overarching decisions over my life just because you’re the dom. I gave you that control. I could take it back any time I wanted if you fucked up, so I did.”
Charlie said nothing in response, and I gave a cold laugh. “You want to talk about our rules, Charlie? You violated our agreement yourself, because you promised that you would never conceal things from me, and that you would never lie to me. Instead, here I find out you’ve been lying for months! Do you realize what you’ve done to me? You could’ve cheated on me and it wouldn’t have hurt as badly as this! Ancestors, I wished you had an affair instead. At least you wouldn’t have taken my life away!”
He was still wordless, and it was really pissing me off. He couldn’t even fight back to defend himself. I wanted him to, because it was the only justification I had left. If I couldn’t cast magic anymore, I at least needed to get some sort of high off of starting shit. It would be entertaining, and make me feel something besides all this agonizing vacancy.
I crossed my arms. “I’m surprised you didn’t lock me in the Sanctuary. Only you can get in or out. I wouldn’t have been able to leave by myself, and nobody but you could’ve set me loose.”
“I thought about it,” Charlie said quietly.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“It seemed like a step too far. Like I was violating something sacred we’d both promised was off limits.”
I could not believe the audacity of this man. “I see. So putting me in a cage and taking away my free will was fine, but using our sex dungeon as a prison was a step too far. Bravo, Charlie. I’m really applauding the effort you put into making that decision.” I clapped my hands together, emphasizing for show. “Did you even think about breaking our bond before you did it?”
