Page 38 of Hell Kissed
Spots break out across my vision as the lack of air sends my head into a spiral. I barely have time to think, let alone come up with a plan to get myself out of this situation before my lungs use up the last of their reserves. Nails dig into the bony fingers encapsulating my head, but they don’t make a dent in the frozen assholes holding me down.
For one glorious second, my mouth breaks the surface, and I drag in the gulp of air my lungs are starving for, but then I’m thrust back under the water.
What. The. Ever loving. Fuck!
I can’t think. Can’t breathe. Can’t so much as scream for help or mercy or curse the shit out of the murderous bastards trying to ‘cleanse’ me.
My head aches as my wolf growls the most menacing sound into my mind, but her strength wanes, her power feeling as numb as my lips.
I can’t reach her.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
Between the oxygen deprivation and the flood of magic that fills the water, my head spins dizzily.
The holy water bubbles against my skin, sending tiny tingles skating along my limbs. For every minute that passes, the magic increases until it’s burning me like I’ve been tossed into a hot vat of boiling water.
I grit my teeth, needing to scream against the pain that’s slashing like a million tiny knives slicing over my flesh. It traces its way up my legs, across my thighs, cutting over my stomach before my arms are being tortured by the same sharp torment.
Images of my life race past me, and I wonder if this is it. I’m dying. This is the movie everyone always talks about when they say ‘my life flashed before my eyes.’
And what I see is almost more depressing than the fact that I’m enduring a slow, agonizing death as I drown.
Alone.
Just the way I lived.
I see Mary and Bea. I see the pack and Alpha Morganson. But mostly I see Kyvain and his friends, taking little pieces of my soul every day of my life. Their torture was slow. Each act, each bullying word carving away at me until I was left half a person. Until I was forced to listen to my wolf and harden myself against the world. Until I was so broken by their actions that I’d come to expect their daily harassment as routine.
All I ever wanted was to belong in the world.
A pack.
Friends.
A family. That word haunts me. It’s everything I want and yet nothing I have.
Maybe that’s why I followed Latham and Aric and even Torben up this gods forsaken mountain with nothing more than a whisper and a prayer. Against my better judgment, I wanted to trust them when they said they’d take me to the mother I spent a lifetime wondering about.
Every year that passed lessened the hope in my chest that some day my parents would come back for me. That they cared. But with one word about my mother, the embers reignited and burned steadily… just like the candle on my tenth birthday that I refused to blow out until my mother came for me. I didn’t even know if she was alive—or if she wanted me if she was—but I’d created a whole story for her in my head. The delusions we tell ourselves as children can sometimes be cruel, even when they’re well intentioned. I can still see that flame flickering away as I waited, watching that candle burn to nothing but ash in the frosting.
Pale blonde hair floats around my face as my skin draws tighter and my lungs beg for a breath. My hands lower as my feet slowly stop kicking.
I drift for a tiny moment, finally finding a place where those nightmarish hands can’t touch me.
I can’t hold out much longer.
No. Fuck this. I’m not going out this way, and if I do, my tombstone will tell the world I went down the fighter my wolf always told me to be!
I thrash and kick and claw and swim.
My chest expands until I’m positive I’m going to explode into a million shards. Or have a heart attack first.
Fury ignites inside me, and I push myself harder.
The pulse thrumming through my veins slows as I grow warmer and warmer.
Overwhelming magic pours from me as I beg the Fates, the gods, the stars, anyone who will listen, for help.
