The monster
The breaking period: Day 2, hour 8
“What the fuck is wrong with Egan?” Malum gripped my shoulders painfully and shook me back and forth.
He was a fire fae who hated me. He was just like Mother.
“I’ll slit your throat,” I promised as I snapped my teeth at him, desperate to sever his artery and bask in his blood.
It would feel so fucking good to kill another cruel fire fae.
They didn’t deserve to live.
In my bones, I recognized the history between our species. The feud that lived within us.
I reached back for an ice dagger, but nothing materialized in my hand. Stomach growling. Head fuzzy. It was embarrassing how weak I was.
I screamed in frustration.
He was so close, but I only had my teeth to bring him down. I’d worked with less before.
A flaming hand wrapped around my throat. Malum held me off the ground with one hand, and for a second, it felt like he was slowly dragging his callused thumb across my enchanted Adam’s apple.
It seemed sexual.
Before I could comprehend how I felt about it, Scorpius tangled his fingers in my hair and wrenched my head back at an impossible angle.
My teeth gnashed at the empty air.
They immobilized me.
I fucking hated being helpless. Never again.
Kicking and shrieking with frustration, I slammed my fists into Malum’s kidneys. Pain streaked up my arm as he grunted at the contact.
I smiled.
I hurt him, and that was all that mattered.
Bands of steel bound my arms to my chest and immobilized me. It took me a second to realize Orion had his biceps wrapped around me.
Warm brown eyes as dark as chocolate were framed with long, sooty lashes. He blinked inches away from me.
He didn’t speak, but he didn’t need to. He was speaking with his eyes and telling me to calm down. Relaxing energy radiated off him.
For a second, I felt chastised.
Orion leaned back, and Malum replaced him. “Thanks, Orion,” he said as flames shot across his head.
Oh yeah, that’s why I was fighting.
He wouldn’t break me.
I slammed my leg into his knee as hard as I could and grinned with success as I heard something crack.
Deathly cold fingers wrapped around my ankles and halted my kicks. I screamed and flailed, but the hand tightened painfully.
“Aran, how could you kick at me? Is that how you treat all your friends? I’m hurt.” John laughed, then flashed a dimpled grin as he easily restrained me.
I shrieked.
He laughed.
Lothaire stood to the side, watching the men hold me in place like he was bored. Mother’s fucking consort.
He’d slept with a monster.
I turned and spat as hard as I could, mollified when it hit his face.
Once I severed his head, I’d mount it as a trophy on my wall. With him dead, I’d fully conquer the demons of my past.
Lothaire wiped spit off his cheek and just smirked like he’d won something. “Ah, now this is what I’ve been looking for. There’s so much darkness in his blood I knew he had to be more than a water fae.” He laughed. “Such delightful rage; it reminds me of myself when I was a youth.”
Sun god, I wanted to rip out his teeth slowly. The bastard didn’t know anything about who I was, and he never fucking would.
“Sir, do you know what he is?” Malum asked. “Why are his eyes black? Why is he acting like this?”
His fingers were once again wrapped around my neck, and a callused thumb was trailing small circles down my throat in big, sweeping motions.
Lothaire sounded happy when he said, “I have no idea, but I can’t wait to find out.”
“How did this happen?” John asked.
Lothaire answered, “I broke his arm and threatened to kill him if he didn’t match pace. He stumbled and looked pathetic. But then his eyes changed, and his posture shifted. Before I knew it, he was sprinting at a three-minute pace and overtook the rest of you.”
“Shit, I didn’t know his arm was broken.” Scorpius’s voice didn’t have its usual sneer, and the arms around my chest loosened.
He thought I was weak and pitied me. They all thought I was weak.
Malum’s hard face leaned closer to mine as he narrowed his eyes. “Pretty boy didn’t punch like his arm was broken. Are you sure?”
“I’m going to rip your flesh off your bones and eat it,” I promised him.
Lothaire chuckled darkly. “Oh yeah, I heard it crack.”
I hated being talked about like I wasn’t present, and I promised them, “I’m going to kill you all.”
“How original,” Scorpius said dryly.
“Just what the fuck are you, Egan?” Malum shouted and tightened his grip on my neck until I was gasping for air.
My lower stomach pinched, and my back burned.
“Fuck, look at him,” Scorpius whispered to Orion and Malum, who were still crowding my personal space.
I gnashed at them with my teeth.
Malum’s fingernails dug into the sensitive skin on my neck, and shivers trailed down my spine.
“Shit,” Malum swore softly. “His pupils are dilated and his breaths shallow.”
Suddenly Scorpius’s sneering voice was whispering against my ear. His tongue snaked gently against my outer lobe, and I almost cried out at the contact. “Pretty boy is turned on.”
Malum’s silver eyes were molten steel. “You might be pretty. But the only man we’re into is Orion.”
The black haze receded from my vision as I processed his words.
I couldn’t stop myself from glancing over at the quiet warrior who was watching me with a strange light in his eye. What an interesting dynamic the three of them had.
But what Malum didn’t understand was that I agreed with him. So far, if I had to choose a guy to fuck, I’d take Orion hands down.
Orion was at least six and a half feet tall, and his white-blond hair hung to his shoulders in glistening strands. His exquisite lips and high cheekbones were pretty.
However, it was the warm brown eyes that made you want to eat him up.
Too bad he was apparently in a relationship with two of the most toxic men I’d ever met. If only I could spend some alone time with him.
No. What the fuck are you thinking?
They were restraining me.
Literally choking me out and threatening me.
They were stuck-up men who thought they had a reason to rage. But they’d never know what it was like to be viewed as less than a person. A sexual commodity or a trophy for an arm.
My rage bubbled through me until all I felt was the fucking endless parade of indignities and shame that had brought me to this point.
Black overtook my vision.
I laughed like a lunatic and snarled at Malum, “I’d rather die than touch you in that way. You are nothing but dead to me. And I will kill you.”
He was just like my mother, and killing him would be the greatest thing I ever did.
Malum’s voice was a low rumble. “Are you threatening me?”
“Whoa, whoa. Let’s all relax here.” John maneuvered his body so he was holding my legs in one hand while he clapped Malum on the back with the other. “Aran’s just got a little anger inside him. Look at how weak the guy is. Who could blame him?”
“Don’t fucking touch me,” Malum snarled, and John immediately dropped his hand.
“I’ll fucking show all of you how weak I am, you pathetic human,” I shrieked and bucked.
“See?” John smiled and laughed like he found my merciless urge to destroy them all funny. “It’s nothing personal. Aran’s just not in his right mind.”
Malum nodded slowly, but he didn’t release my throat.
“Maybe he’s a demon,” Vegar said with excitement, and Zenith glowered beside him. “Our eyes also turn black.”
“He’s not a demon. He doesn’t have the veins,” Zenith immediately countered like the idea of me being of demon blood was the biggest insult.
They should be bowing before me and wishing I were one of them.
“Let’s check his blood.” Vegar eagerly gouged his fingernail into the exposed skin of my collarbone before anyone could say anything.
I growled like an animal, but it ended with a whimper. There was nothing worse than people touching me without my permission. I fucking hated it.
John must have noticed because he said, “Don’t touch him. He doesn’t like it.”
No one listened because they all peered closer to stare at my blood.
“Nope, it’s red. Not black.” Vegar frowned, and Zenith visibly exhaled with relief.
Most species had red blood except for demons and the handful of people who were the children of gods.
“He seems to be calming down, but his eyes are still black. What are we supposed to do with him?” Malum asked as he choked me harder. “Want me to kill him?”
I blacked out from the boiling fury that rushed through me. How Fucking. Dare. He.
There was a long pause like Lothaire was considering it, but then the vampyre said, “No. He completed the run, and it might be more wasteful than I first thought if we were to lose him. He might be more than the weakling he seems to be at first glance.”
Scorpius scoffed, “That’s highly doubtful. He’s built more like a boy than a man.”
I’d show him I was built like a woman when I suffocated him with my thighs wrapped around his thick skull.
Lothaire ignored him and said, “He owes me a night in the tank anyway. We’ll throw him in right now. Something tells me that when he emerges, he’ll be back to his old self.”
I started to scream but stopped myself. I needed to remain composed if I was going to somehow kill all of them in the next few minutes.
Before I could come up with a plan, I was manhandled into a small metal shelter, which was hidden behind our barracks, and pushed into an empty metal sphere that was barely large enough to lie in.
A lid started to close, but Lothaire popped his head in and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way. I look forward to working with you in the future.”
Lunging at his throat, I missed because the lid slammed down and trapped me.
I was plunged into darkness.
No noise.
No sight.
Dragging my fingers around the inside, I started to panic when I felt no sensations. Was I paralyzed?
No. The throbbing in my arm every time I moved it let me know I still had mobility.
It must be the tank.
I screamed as loud as I could, but the sound disappeared like I’d never made it. Mouth opened, I bellowed until my throat was sore from the strain.
There was no sound.
The lack of all sensation was horrifying and dizzying.
Sorting through the endless library that was inside my mind, I pulled out a book on advanced technologies. I’d read it when I was a teenager back in the fae realm.
Mentally flipping through the pages, I snarled with annoyance when I came to the chapter on torture devices.
I was in a sensory deprivation tank.
They were enchanted so the user lost all use of their senses and were used to drive prisoners insane.
I was trapped with nothing but a throbbing arm and loud thoughts.
Lying down, eyes open and unseeing, I fantasized about dismembering Lothaire into a thousand small pieces.
After an eternity of mentally eviscerating the vampyre, I switched my attention to Malum’s flesh. Then Scorpius’s. Finally, I destroyed Orion’s beautiful face.
After endless hours of fantasizing, I could feel their blood sticky and wet across my hands.
It caked my chest and chin, and there was disgusting copper on my tongue.
I swallowed, and chunks of gore lodged in my dry throat.
It was my mother’s beating heart.
No.
I didn’t want this.
Never wanted it to end this way.
I screamed, but no one heard me.
No one saved me.
From myself.
And in the silence…
I broke.
