Page 96 of Bought By Sin

I was carried.

Lev. His strong arms were around me, bringing me to safety.

Survive.

You can do this.

Survive.

I coughed, and pain coursed through me. Starting at my neck and spreading over my chest and down my arms, I felt the electric brand of my flesh, so hot and inflamed, the molten spillage of my blood as it seeped from me.

Survive. I need… to survive.

My throat burned, every molecule of air so hot and raw.

My heart raced, each pulse and push of my blood weakening me further.

No. I can’t…

I need to survive.

The mantra looped in my mind, but in the intermittent flashes of lucid moments, I heard Lev saying the same thing.

“I can’t lose you, Mila. I can’t. Stay with me.”

I will. You won’t lose me. I’ll never leave you, Lev. Never.

I wanted to sob it. Scream it. Promise it in any variation of those words.

My mouth couldn’t form anything. My words—that one and only power I thought I had—failed me. I was just too weak.

“I can’t lose you forever. Please, Mila. Please. Stay with me.”

Hearing him beg me to live and stay with him sliced at my soul. As I bled out, my heart cracked and ached at the utter desperation in his tone.

“Please, Mila.”

I want to.

I will, Lev.

I’m trying. I’m fighting.

Falling in and out of consciousness, I was locked in a cycle of hopelessness.

This was what it felt like to be truly powerless.

The darkness never faded, tripping me on a weightless and numbing sensation of the most basic functions of living.

Breathing. Heart beating. Sleeping… as I bled out.

In between the darkness and the almost-awake stretches of time—periods I couldn’t begin to quantify—I was taken back to when I’d first met him.

At that standoff in the desert, I never could’ve known that he would change my life. That he wouldn’t end up being just one more owner among so many others.

He’d asked me if I wanted to be free. It had seemed like such a cruel mockery at the time, but he’d meant it. At that moment, he’d posed the question to signify how I could wish to be free.

Dead.