Abby was dying. It was over.
Anstice remained quiet until I stopped ranting. Then she calmly gave me instructions on what to do. I had no choice. I wanted to get the fuck out of there, but leaving Abbs chained to the bedpost bleeding…Fuck, I couldn’t.
So, I did what I had to do and, eventually, the horror ended. But I knew what happened last night would never really end. It was engraved in me.
Abby finally lay dazed and confused, her eyes glassy, her skin pale. So fuckin’ pale. I had no idea if she knew what happened—that she’d lost the baby—because often the next morning she had no recollection of the night before.
Fuck, I couldn’t tell her. Don’t make me tell her.
I’d sat beside the bed and watched Abby for hours after that. Making certain the bleeding had stopped. Then while she slept I performed the grueling task of washing her body and changing the sheets.
Balen had just left. He’d driven here to take the baby.
I never wanted a child. But I never wanted her to lose it. And not like this. Never like this.
There was grief for the loss I never expected. Could we have had a chance?
No. The child never had a chance. We didn’t.
“Christ.” I squeezed my eyes shut, attempting to get rid of the images from last night, but they continually tormented me.
Abbs. Fuck.
She was slipping through my fingers.
Six goddamn months of this and my sanity was questionable. I was losing the battle. She was losing the battle. I knew it. My body knew it, and soon Abby would know it when I left her here to die.
Because I couldn’t do this anymore.
I couldn’t stop the emotional pain that wracked my body any longer. It was too much. Watching. Being the one who could end her suffering by offering my blood, but unable to let her become something I detested more than anything in this world.
“Fuck. I can’t any longer. I can’t, Abbs.”
I stood and kicked the collapsed coffee table across the twelve-by-ten room. “Jesus, let me fuckin’ breathe.” I turned and slammed my fist into the drywall, leaving a gaping hole into the pantry.
Suffocating. My chest so tight it felt as if my lungs were collapsing. By denying what she wanted, I was the one putting her through hell.
I paced back and forth across the worn-out hardwood floor, hand raking through my hair.
I watched her suffer night after night as she screamed and flailed against the chains, eyes blazing.
She wanted one drop of blood to ease her thirst—one drop. And time and again I denied her and was subjected to her hatred, which soon turned to begging then finally sobbing.
It repeated for hours like a broken record, over and over again until finally, near dawn every day, she collapsed into an exhausted sleep.
The Abby I’d known had disappeared behind glazed red eyes. I was afraid she was too far gone, that any hope of her surviving was pointless.
I’d never given in to anything in my life, but witnessing Abby’s torture any longer was beyond even my capability.
“God, Abbs, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I stared out the bay window onto the lake.
The serene morning calm of the water was laughing at my riptide of emotions. I’d rather be whipped until my back was raw or water boarded until I drown. Fuck, I’d switch places with her if I could. Anything but this. Because this was far worse. It was her pain, and I had no control over it. I couldn’t stop it.
I hated that I wasn’t strong enough to withstand this. Most of all, I hated that I cared enough to want to stop her pain.
Because I knew.
I knew one certainty in all this.
She had managed to touch a piece of my heart.
I had to do something.
I took out my cell. Pressed nine. Then closed my eyes and put it to my ear.
“Yes.” The cold, unemotional voice answered.
“Need your help.”
“Oh!” I stumbled back a step as I came face to face with the most handsome, yet scariest, man I’d ever laid eyes on. Eyes ice blue, sculpted cheeks and chin, shaved head, and a snake tattoo on his neck. And he was built, like seriously worked out built.
“Sorry. I thought this was the women’s….” I glanced over my shoulder at the sign. “Umm, I think you have the wrong—”
“You must be Rayne.” He offered his hand.
My eyes went from his captivating eyes down to the vivid tattoo then over his broad, muscular shoulders to his arm that was stretched out toward me.
Delara stepped out of the dressing room, holding her clothes in one arm and her dress up with the other. “This is Waleron.”
My eyes darted over his left shoulder where Delara looked uncomfortable and tense with tightly pursed lips as she moved to lean against the frame of the stall.