Page 14 of Nothing is Free

Silence.

I lay here, chest heaving, exhausted and physically drained from calling out for so long. How long did I scream? Minutes? Hours? Days? There is no way to know for sure, but I’ve done more harm to myself than good. My mouth is dry, my throat is on fire and my head pounds from dehydration. Is this what he wants? To break me down, conditioning me, like a parent does a newborn baby? Letting me scream, cry, and thrash until I soothe myself. Staring up at the ceiling I let my thoughts wander. Maybe this is his plan, a part of his punishment, letting me lie here incapacitated with nothing but my thoughts as company. He knows my history, knows all about the trauma-filled bags I carry around and can’t get rid of. He wants me to stop fighting, to give in to him and accept what he has done. He wants me to accept him. Well, Damyn, pull up a chair, you’re going to be here for a while.

Silence.

I let my thoughts turn to Mercy, to Faith, to everything they endured; it wasn’t easy, and it left them with scars and memories that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. But they found the strength to keep going, even when it seemed there was no hope, when they felt there was no way out. If they can find their way out of the darkness, then so can I, right? What’s a Beta got to do to have some normality? Abductions, kidnapping, assaults. Damn, somebody call Netflix, I’ve got their next movie idea. I laugh out loud, it’s hoarse and dry, but fuck it, I need to find the humor in this situation, even when there is none. I’m sure Damyn will love this. Yes, I’m going nuts.Perfectly unhinged.

Silence.

I close my eyes and feel my mates there, our bond pulsing with an onslaught of various emotions, a quiet reassurance that I am not alone, that they are with me. Right now, there is no way out for me, and it feels like there’s no hope in this darkness I’m dwelling in. But I am not alone, and I will pull strength from that. Let Damyn see me as this broken thing. If I’m broken in his eyes, then he will see me as compliant. Maybe through my perceived weakness he will remove these restraints and I can play happy captive. If this is the game he wants to play, then, I will let him think he’s won.

Silence.

I made a promise to myself to never be weak again. To fight for my life no matter the cost. I should have known, even as the memory of the day I met Damyn and his pack for the first time recedes to the back of my mind, nothing in my life has ever been easy. I thought Damyn and his pack would save me from my parents—a young, naïve, hopeful kid. But time and experience has shined a light on my youthful innocence. I know now I would have traded one prison for another, no matter how many sweet promises he made.Nothing is free, never has been in my life, until I met the men who I know love me. The instant connection between us, finding my true mate amongst them was fate. After everything I had lost, I’d found my everything in them.

I’ve had to fight to live, to survive in a world as a Beta on my own, and I will fight for the world I’ve built around me. I will fight somehow to get back to them.

The door creaks open.

I’m hyperaware of Damyn’s presence as he moves across the room. The low thump of his footfalls against the carpeted floor, the swishing noise his jeans make as his thick muscular thighs rub against one another, and his slow even breathing. When he stops beside the bed, his body casts me in shadow, blocking out the light overhead, I close my eyes, refusing to look at him.

“Oh, Butterfly, open your eyes beautiful,” Damyn says tenderly before his fingers gently trace up and down the side of my face. I flinch away, or at least I try to.

Yanking out of his hold he tsks in what sounds like disappointment. “Open. Your. Eyes,” he repeats with a little more force. Unfortunately, I can’t talk back, so I swallow past the pain in my throat and keep my head turned away from him.

Damyn blows out a heavy breath. The tension builds as he looms over me. But I won’t relent in my stubborn standoff. I can’t look at his face. I thought my heart and mind were in agreement, both deciding unanimously to play his game, but my heart still wants to cut a bitch. So, I grit my teeth and draw my line in the proverbial sand. This isn’t a game. This is war.

“I heard your screams, Freeya. The desperation behind every sharp rise of your voice. The panic in the inflection of my name.” He hums in perceived satisfaction; my anguish apparently thrills him. “There’s anger in your cries, pain inyour pleas. I fucking relish it, Butterfly. Give me more, open those hate filled eyes and turn them on me. It will be our love language.” He sighs out a shuddering breath. I don’t need to open my eyes to see the pleasure he’s getting from this.

I view him through a watery haze, and I give him exactly what he wants. I put as much hostility behind my gaze as I can muster, then I mouth. “I. Hate. You.”

Damyn smiles, and for a moment I catch a glimpse of the man I met when he was first introduced to me. Charming, handsome, and caring; all the things that endeared him to me. Alarm bells go off in my head, his response was unnerving and sinister. Then his mask slips, the smile fades, replaced with a manic, possessive hardness. His eyes are wild, glazed even, his smile is all teeth—a wolf, eyeing his prey. Me.

“Good,” he replies, then he forcefully grabs my chin, holding me still, and without warning slams his lips to mine in a brutal kiss. I can’t fight strapped down like this, he invades my mouth, tongue circling and licking the inside. I lay there, horrified, shocked, my mouth open, dead, not kissing him back. I bite down on his lip hard, he groans, breaking the kiss with blood dripping down his chin.

He licks his bottom lip. His face still a breath away from mine. My chin remains firmly in his grasp, he whispers, “Did you enjoy that, butterfly? Did it make you feel better making me bleed?”

The bitter metallic taste of his blood on my tongue sickens me, my stomach rolls but I keep my eyes on his and nod. Yes, asshole, I enjoyed it, and I wish to do more,I think, I want to say it, but keep my vitriol to myself.

“You and I are going to get along just fine,” he croons, his voice like a purr as he skims my face with his nose as he deeply inhales my scent. I cringe. “In time, you won’t fight me, you will give in. You will be mine. Those beautifulfluttering wings of yours won’t matter anymore because eventually, you will have no desire to fly. No desire to run.”

With his free hand, he slides it down my throat, over my breasts, past my stomach, where he pauses for a second and frowns. “Soon. . .there will be nothing between us, Butterfly,” he says as his hand continues to roam my body, making me tremor violently from the violation of his touch. When he reaches the hem of my shirt, he stops again.

I try to shake my head no, but his grip is strong. My eyes beg for the man I used to know to not hurt me, not like that, anything but that. I won’t survive. A tear slips from the corner of my eye, and he watches it fall and tracks it rolling down my face. He tilts his head, studying my reaction, then I see it, his eyes soften a fraction, his old affections shine in his eyes and his grip loosens.

“I don’t take what is not freely given. But when I claim you, I have no doubt you will give me all of you. Love and hate are one and the same, beautiful.” Damyn winks, releasing my chin and lets his hand fall away from my skirt and I sag in relief.

When he eventually walks out of the room, I’m still strapped to the mattress. Damyn won’t stop until he gets what he wants, takes what he wants. I don’t think my consent will matter for much longer.

Please. Please. Please. I beg. Calling out to my mates, hoping they can feel my desperation and my diminishing hope.

CHAPTER 9

VIC

Three more days passed. Three days of anxiously waiting and moving around like a mindless, desperate zombie. Three days of feeling our beautiful Beta call out to us through our bond and being unable to do anything to soothe her. You may as well bind my legs and wrists and toss me unceremoniously into the bottom of the ocean for how useless I feel. Yeah, I am getting creative in my suffering. I’ve never experienced torture before but I imagine this is what it would feel like. Slow, mind-numbingly painful ministrations until there is nothing left but a bruised empty husk for a body, no soul or spirit left. Yep. . .it’s official. I’m losing my mind, long past panic or worry, those emotions seem too small to express my mental state.

Three days until finally, Malcolm, tech genius that he is, came up with the goods. Tired, bleary eyed, and way past exhaustion he found the SUV. Of course, it was located in the middle of nowhere, but it was all the information Dez needed to rally his team for our Omega. The SUV Malcolm found via highway camera had been left abandoned for days on a sideaccess road. It was a location, a pin on the map to start our search. We went from standing still to rushing around frantically to prepare for our departures. We are finally moving, and I am all for productivity.

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