He doesn’t remove his hand for a moment, but he inevitably comes to his senses and pulls away. “Boris price gouged Ezra and Yri out of three hundred bucks for a door during capture the flag a while back.” He stands back up, beaming down at his creation with pride.
It hurts my chest, but I still try to be happy for him. “I’m sure it will be beautiful revenge. Let me know how it goes.”
Something flashes across his face, but it’s gone before I can decipher it. “We’re just worried about you. The town is full of good people who’ve kept our sister a secret her entire life. But, well,” he trails off guiltily.
“But she’s a rare, female dragon, and they wouldn’t have the same loyalties to a human. I get it, don’t worry. Trust me, I am far happier being confined to this house than I’ve been in years. I didn’t mean to make you think I was complaining or ungrateful.”
He sighs, heading out of the bedroom towards the hallway. “I’ll take a video so you can see his face?” he offers, his features strained.
I smile in a bid to ease the guilt he has no reason to feel. “I’d like that.”
It’s not even a lie. People mock a gilded cage, but after the conditions I was kept in? Fuck, give me the comfortable prison over rapist guards and genetic experimentation any day. I can even see sunlight streaming in through the crack between the curtains, trying to convince me the world isn’t as dark of a place as I’ve been led to believe. I have a pretty low bar these days, and not having to sleep with one eye open in a filthy pit like livestock while also getting regular meals?
Sign me the fuck up.
The cast on my leg makes it difficult, but I manage to hobble my way towards the kitchen after he’s gone, trying to put myself to at least some use. As relieved as I’ll be when it comes off, I’m dreading it just the same. It will be the mark that I’m well enough for them to send me on my un-merry way and all of this will become a distant memory that mocks me while I’m sleeping alone in the woods, cold and hungry again.
“The hell do you think you’re doing?” Kaiden growls and slams the door behind him, tossing his keys on the end table as he storms into the house.
Instantly, I freeze. Long gone are the days that I ever flinched, that I let someone see my fear. Instead, I try to become invisible. Predators love the chase and pounce on weakness; I’m better off not triggering any of those instincts.
“Figured I’d start dinner since you guys said you’d be home late.”
I only move to shut off the stove so it won’t burn, but I keep my movements slow and easy to predict. Despite everything, I’m not scared of Kaiden, even if he comes across as harsh. The eyes are the windows to the soul, after all, and I’ve spent long enough looking onto cruel or dead gazes to trust my read on people. You can try and hide it as much as you like, can keep your emotions in check to not give anything away, but a sliver always manages to shine through.
The triplets? Good men. I may not know them well, might not know what makes them tick, but I know they aren’t going to hurt me even if they break into fights or shout. So Kaiden getting growly and accusatory doesn’t cause me to break out into a cold sweat or panic. The worst he’d do is throw me out, and I already know that’s happening any day now as it is.
My stomach somersaults as he huffs, sliding one arm around my back and the other under my knees as he picks me up. My arm instantly wants to wrap around his shoulders to try and help support my weight, but I swiftly catch myself and grip the hem of my shirt instead, wringing it to keep my hands busy.
He carries me down the hall back towards my temporary room, and I stuff down the ugly memories that try to convince me to panic at the prospect, refusing to let them ruin my last few days of happiness here. Lord knows I’m going to need to cling to the memories of these last six weeks to get me through the coming months.
It takes some careful maneuvering to get through the doorway like this with my cast making things difficult, but he manages. Setting me back on the bed, he steps back immediately, leaning against the wall beside me with crossed arms and a scowl.
“All the curtains were shut,” I defend, reaching for the water bottle on the nightstand to ease my throat. With as long as it’s been, I’ve forgotten how thirsty talking makes me and nearly always have a bottle nearby now.
“I’m not worried about someone seeing you, damn it, and you know it.” He narrows his eyes in my direction and it sends an excited thrill through me that never ceases to surprise me.
I’ve forced myself to have sex with people I despised just to survive. It’s exactly what I had to do so that Ezra wouldn’t be violated in that way, so that Soren, Vyrian, and Caius could escape and take her with them. It’s a familiar pain that kills a little more of my soul every time it happens, but it’s a pain I know how to mentally cope with at this point. Their sister though? She wouldn’t have, and it would have destroyed her and her men. I owed Caius a debt for helping me escape as a teenager when the war began and his unit was slaughtering my town, but I still would have intervened even if I hadn’t. I don’t have much power in this world, but that choice? To help spare someone that fate?
That’s one bit of control that they weren’t able to strip away from me, no matter how hard they tried. I’m a tiny blip in the grand scheme of things, but I’m still able to change the entire course of someone’s life. The effects of that sacrifice will live on long after my death, be my little mark left on the world when I’m gone. I’ll spend my life being invisible, but I’m not as insignificant as those men wanted me to believe.
Yet Kahl, Kinsley, and Kaiden? Fuck, I want to climb them like trees for no reason other than selfishly wanting them. No power plays, no ulterior motives; just unreciprocated longing that I know better than to delude myself with. It’s a foreign feeling, but not unpleasant. My entire experience with sex has been tainted by pain and loss, but there’s a primal part of my brain that sees these men as promising so much more, able to chase the nightmares away and replace them with something so much better.
“The cast is set to come off any day now,” I remind him, a pang of despair lancing through my chest that I try to smother. “Pretty sure it’s as healed as it’s going to get at this point. It’s just stiff and awkward.”
“That’s what she said,” his younger brother Elias deadpans, walking past the open doorway towards the kitchen, and I genuinely smile.
Kaiden’s lip twitches in amusement, drawing my attention back to him. “You shouldn’t push yourself. What if you trip and break your other leg?”
Not the worst idea, might buy me some more time.
“Then I deserve it for being careless?”
He huffs. “You don’t deserve to be hurt. You’re all tiny and fragile already; don’t need to cripple yourself too.”
I lean back against the pillows, knowing I should soak up my last few days of comfort while I still can. “Fine, I’ll stay put.”
He loses some of the tension in his shoulders at my declaration. “Where’s Kins?”
