TORTURER’S BREATH
Fike (verb): to move restlessly.
DAY 30, HOUR 23
When I’d overheard Arabella tell Sadie that the wound on her back caused pain when she was aroused, I’d blacked out with unadulterated rage.
The world had gone silent.
The emotions that had ripped through my sternum had made me want to tear ungodly apart with my bare hands. All I’d been able to hear was Arabella’s voice on repeat in my brain—the resignation in her tone as she’d whispered about how her mother had mutilated her.
I’d wanted vengeance.
Craved violence.
The urge to hurt someone, myself, anyone, had hit me like a tsunami. Voicing what I’d heard aloud to my mates and twins was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, second only to watching Arabella suffer in the Legionnaire Games.
It was a dagger through the heart.
How much more could one woman go through? How was she surviving?
Her male disguise had been a shock, her secret heritage had been a surprise, the slur carved into her back had been unacceptable, but this was too far.
When I’d told the other men, their breathing patterns had changed. Their feet stumbled, joints popping as they’d struggled to stay upright.
Corvus had carried Arabella through the blizzard, back to the room, and deposited her in the shower. When asked why she’d kept such a horrible secret, Orion had said she’d shrugged.
Shrug: a gesture that conveyed indifference.
We’d spiraled.
We’d failed our Revered worse than any Protectors in history. We were abominations to devil kind, and we didn’t deserve her as our mate. We’d touched her, kissed her—tortured her.
Now I was locked in a new type of hell.
I was in her memories.
Her nightmare.
I drowned in her pain, and I didn’t know how much more I could take. I didn’t know how she was still functioning.
She was the strongest person I’d ever met.
Arabella screamed as five guards held her down and her mother carved “WHORE” into her flesh. I knew it was five because there were five different male breathing patterns surrounding my Revered.
She was being tortured, whimpering and screaming in pain.
I could do nothing but experience it.
The blade sliced deeply through her skin. It scraped against bone, and Arabella screamed.
Her mother chuckled.
I wanted to die.
Locked in sleep paralysis, I could do nothing but experience the atrocity that was committed against my Revered.
At first, I screamed and fought to wake up, unable to stomach what I was experiencing. Then I went quiet. The five breathing patterns were unfamiliar from any of the others I’d heard in her nightmares.
I focused on memorizing every doomed breath they took.
For hours, Arabella begged, and I listened so if I encountered the men in real life, I would immediately recognize them.
They would pay.
