Page 63 of His Found Lycan Luna

“Yes. We made it when we were fifteen.”

“What happened when you were fifteen?”

“Abbie went missing.,” Ivy says, glancing down at her fingers.

“One day, she didn’t come up from the cellar,” she whispers so softly I almost miss it. But I can hear the anguish in her voice making me wonder what was so bad in the cellar. What depravitydid Mrs. Daley inflict on them to get this response from the bond?

“What’s in the cellar, Ivy,” I ask, not sure I truly want to know. The feeling through the bond alone is making me queasy.

“She was supposed to be cleaning the mop buckets, so I looked for her.” Ivy’s lips quiver, and she picks at the blanket wrapped around her.

“I found her in the cellar, her tunic torn, her thighs covered in blood. Abbie was standing on a chair with a rope around her neck. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I knew. I should have known when he went missing, too.” Ivy wipes a tear that slides down her cheek. “He hurt her, there… There was so much blood.”

I swallow thickly, a lump forming in my throat, terrified at the thought of two fifteen-year-old girls going through this.

“She was taking too long. Abbie told me to leave, but I grabbed the other chair and climbed up beside her and loosened the noose, wrapping it around my neck, too,” Ivy answers, her eyes getting a faraway expression like she’s trapped in some memory. The fear through the bond makes me clench my jaw. That pack still has so much to answer for.

“I told her ‘more than my life.’ Mine wasn’t worth living either if she wasn’t in it, that we would go together because her life was worth more than mine.”

“And she got down?” I ask, the calling slipping out at her distress, and she lifts her eyes to mine as it washes over her. “Helping?” I ask her, and she sighs but nods. “So obviously, she didn’t kill herself,” I continue, wanting to know what happened as much as it sickens me. It helps distract her from the fact she would be shifting any time now.

“No.”

She moves her hair behind her shoulder showing me the back of her neck and behind her ear. A white scar travels across her neck and behind her ear. I had seen it before but never really paid much attention to it. I know she isself-conscious about the scars that lace her skin, and I just figured it was another inflicted by the whip.

“We both jumped, but the rope didn’t hold our weight,” Ivy says, and my stomach drops before Ivy fixes her hair, covering the scars back up.

“Abbie has a scar behind her left ear where the rope cut into her. Instead of death, we both got a headache when our heads collided,” Ivy chuckles.

How could she laugh at something so horrific, like it is nothing. The fact she can laugh speaks enough for what those two girls endured.

“And that’s how it started?” I ask. Ivy shrugs.

“Afterward, Mrs. Daley started calling for us to cook dinner. Abbie didn’t want to go up, so I helped clean her up. I swapped her tunic for mine, and we went to cook dinner,” Ivy says, pulling her face from the blanket so I can see her a little better.

“I got twelve lashes for that ruined tunic, but what it cost Abbie was worse. Mrs. Daley didn’t just give her scars that day, she broke her soul. So for Abbie, I wore it. Then we cooked dinner. Later that day, I saw Mrs. Daley get paid by the butcher who hurt Abbie.”

“The butcher?”

“He delivered meat to the orphanage,” says Ivy, shuddering and wiping a stray tear from her eye “After that, where Abbie went, I went, where I went, she went, more than my life. If she were to endure it, I would, too,” Ivy says.

I need to get Abbie away from Alpha Kade. The poor girl has endured enough. I now worry once she realizes he is married, it will truly destroy her. I now understand why the pair of them are so close. They are dependent on each other. I chew my lip; Mrs. Daley is lucky to be alive. She will never walk again after the lashes she received, yet that is even too kind. She won’t be left breathing when I send Gannon back for her and God help the butcher when Gannon learns his name.

Silence eventually falls over both of us. She doesn’teven fight against me using the calling. But as the night drags on and her pain gets worse, she moves closer before letting me under the blanket with her. Her legs kick as her pain intensifies, and I wonder why it was taking forever. It isn’t until the early morning hours that I struggle to handle seeing her like that as she rolls and turns over, trying to get comfortable.

“Ivy?” I call to her as she rolls over, moving closer to the fire. Her eyes blaze brightly like jewels, her pupils fully dilated with a silver hue through them. She groans, kicking off the blankets, her skin heating. I can tell she’s nearly started shifting, recalling my own burning sensation I experienced during my shift.

Chapter Forty-Seven

“Make it stop, make it stop,” she cries as her cries turn into screams. I hear her back cracking. Gripping her arms, I yank her on top of me. Her skin is so hot that it’s burning me. Her feet scratch down my legs.

“Ivy, let me help,” I tell her. She screams in pain, her spine breaking and realigning beneath my palms. I tug off the shirt that’s restricting her movement. Ivy pants, her nails digging into my chest, and I feel her feet changing, her toenails turning to claws as they rake down my flesh, tearing me to pieces and making me hiss. Yet I don’t let her go, my pain is nothing compared to what she feels.

“Ivy, let me help!” I repeat. She writhes but nods desperately.

“Please, please Kyson, make it stop,” she begs, her hands clutching my chest and abs. Desperate to relieve her pain, I flood her with the calling just as her fingers break, her claws sinking deeply into my chest like hooks. My blood runs down my side. At this rate, she will bleed me out if I remain in this flimsy skinsuit. The sound of her femur breaking, and her scream will always haunt me. I unleash the full weight of my calling on her, my handsbrushing her hair while her claws tear chunks off me. “I’m right here, you’re okay. You’ll be okay,” I whisper, soothing her the best I can.

Ivy pants, whimpering in pain. I turn her head so her ear is flat against my chest so she can listen to my heartbeat and feel the vibration of the calling. She calms some but is still in agony when her claws dig in deeper, and I can feel them grating across bone. They are that deep. Gritting my teeth I remind myself she’s not doing it on purpose and pull her hands off my chest.

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