Page 156 of Rescuing Ally: Part 1

The words barely register before my body initiates its own response, muscles contracting into tight coils, preparing for the pain that memory insists is only moments away. The room begins to spin, time folding in on itself, past and present merging into a single, concentrated point of pure animal terror.

Hank and Gabe can protect me from Malfor. They can protect me from assassins, from threats both seen and unseen. They can even protect me from the demons that stalk the waking world.

But theycannotprotect me from this—this nightmare that lives inside my mind, coiled at the base of my brain stem, waiting for the vulnerability of sleep to strike.

Hank and Gabe can’t protect me from this.

Not when my nightmares have texture?—

The bite of restraints against bone, the precise sting of calculated cruelty, the suffocating press of helplessness as hands that don’t care what breaks inside of me take what they want.

The scream, when it comes, erupts from somewhere primal, somewhere beyond conscious thought. It tears through my vocal cords, raw and jagged, shredding the fragile veil between nightmare and reality.

My body convulses, back arching off the mattress as if electricity—or something worse—courses through me. I fight restraints that no longer exist and flee from hands that can no longer reach me.

Strong fingers close around my shoulders, my arms—firm, insistent. In the haze between worlds, these hands aren’t salvation but new threats. I lash out, nails seeking soft tissue, legs kicking wildly against phantom attackers.

“Ally.”

My name penetrates the fog, a lifeline thrown across churning waters. Not just my name—the way it’s spoken. Sharp, authoritative, yet underlaid with something my captors never possessed: concern.

“You’re having a nightmare.”

Chapter 43

Hank’s voiceslices through the last tendrils of the dream. His soft speech—so different from the harsh consonants of my nightmare—pulls me toward the surface.

My lungs remember how to expand, how to draw breath that isn’t tainted with fear and mildew. Reality reasserts itself, pixel by pixel, against the corrupted data of memory.

“Breathe with me, luv.” His voice lowers, steady, calm—commanding. A lifeline in the chaos.

I latch onto the sound, the feel of his calloused hands, the scent of him—salt, skin, and something solid. The steady pressure of his touch tethers me, pulling me back inch by inch.

I inhale shakily, lungs burning, trying to mirror the slow, deliberate rhythm of his breaths as he demonstrates what my panicked body has forgotten.

Gabe’s hand finds mine, lacing our fingers together, warm and reassuring. His presence is a weight, holding me here.

My vision clears in fits and starts—Hank’s face inches from mine, eyes fierce with concern, Gabe’s silhouette steady at my side. The nightmare recedes, but not far enough.

It never goes far.

When I finally find my voice, it’s raw, cracked. “Why won’t it stop?”

A truth that tastes like defeat.

“You’re here. You’re safe. You’re with us.” Gabe’s voice is low and sure, his fingers tracing calming patterns on my shoulder.

I nod faintly, leaning into his touch even as my chest tightens with the weight of the past.

Safe.I’m safe. I’m safe. I. AM. SAFE!

I repeat the word silently, trying to make it feel real, but the shadows of what I’ve survived don’t loosen their grip.

It’s not that easy.

Memories claw at me, refusing to stay buried. Each time I silence one, another rises—different walls, different captors, but the same sense of helplessness, the same raw terror. Images flash like strobe lights behind my eyelids, fragments of nightmares made real.

“You’re tougher than this thing banging around in your head.” Hank’s grounding rumble is uncharacteristically tender. “But you don’t have to fight it alone.”

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