Assembly: The Feral Souls Trilogy - Book 2

by Woods, Erica

  Every day, I’d sit by the door, waiting for my mother to come back. Every night, I’d whisper to my dead brother, telling him how sorry I was and how I’d give anything to have him back. And when despair threatened to lock my six-year-old mind behind bars of insanity, I’d pretend he spoke back, having long conversations about nothing while tears streamed down my face, for even then, even at the edge of madness, I’d known I’d never get the chance to speak to him ever again. The real him—not the smiling, dimpled boy I’d conjured with my mind.

  That boy was dead, and I was his murderer.

  I clenched my free hand into a fist, digging my nails into the soft flesh of my palm in an effort to distract myself from the pain ripping open my heart and laying the flayed, bleeding organ out on the table for all of them to see.

  “What about love?” Ruarc growled, voice made of knives and crunching glass. “Affection? Touch?”

  “N-no . . . But I had my own TV for almost two years.”

  No one spoke, but the air smelled of danger and the quiet was not peaceful. Not calm. Not lasting.

  “A fucking TV?” Ruarc roared, and when I jumped, he pulled me tighter to his side, breathing harshly and stabbing the space between us with a growled, “Sorry.”

  Jason squeezed my hand, but he didn’t speak, just stared at the floor with a pallid expression, letting Ash’s scrutiny be the only one I felt.

  And it went deep.

  “Tell me, banajaanh,” he said. “When did things change?”

  “N-not until puberty. That’s when they began . . . hurting me.”

  A helpless sound tore from Ruarc, but when I turned to look at him, he drew me into his lap and hugged me so tightly I couldn’t move enough to see his face.

  “Why then?” Ash asked. The piercing scrutiny deepened. Sharpened.

  “They . . . they told me it was time. That I was old enough to bring out the—the monster. I refused.” My heart tripped. “They . . . They didn’t take it well.”

  Lucien had been aiming his arctic gaze at the opposite wall, but now it cut to me. “How not well?”

  Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

  “T-they turned to . . . t-to other means of p-persuasion.”

  A harsh exhalation on the back of my nape had me shivering, then Ruarc buried his face in my neck and each ragged breath that tore from him soothed the gaping hole in my chest.

  I wasn’t alone. Not anymore.

  “How long?” Jason rasped to my right. “How long did they hurt you?”

  A jerky shrug was my only response. I didn’t want them to know the true extent of my torture. Not because I was ashamed—though I was—but because the thought of causing them pain was repellent to me, and I knew they would hurt on my behalf, just as I hurt on theirs when demons from their past came knocking.

  “How long, Hope? How did you survive?” he whispered. “How . . . how are you still . . .” A weak wave of his hand. “You. How are you still you?”

  “I . . .” Could I tell them a part of me had felt like I deserved what happened? That bearing the pain had felt like the least I could do to make up for what I’d done to my brother?

  Ice prickled at my nape, and then Lucien was standing. “She felt guilt,” he said. “Perhaps she even believed she—” His mouth snapped shut, a muscle jumping along his jaw. A second passed. Another. Then he finally unclenched his teeth and spat, “Perhaps she even believed she deserved it.”

  A loud snarl erupted by my ear, but Lucien never looked away. Narrowed, green eyes scraped over my skin, tasted the guilt on my lips, the shame heating my cheeks, the anguish misting my vision. Then his mouth twisted down, his arms dropping to hang listlessly at his sides. “You did not,” was all he said before averting his gaze and collapsing back into his chair.

  Those words, those three little words . . . They were bullets ripping through skin and bone, shredding my flesh, burrowing deep into vital organs.

  I hadn’t deserved the brutality of the Hunters. No one did.

  And yet . . .

  You evil little monster.

  “Is what Lucien says the truth, banajaanh?” Ash asked.

  Having moved to my hips, the tips of Ruarc’s fingers dug into the flesh there as he waited for my answer. I contemplated lying, but I had promised myself I would only give them the truth from now on.

  “Y-yes.”

  Jason made a pained noise and gripped both my hands between his larger ones, squeezing until I forced my shimmering eyes to meet his. Their glow, the beautiful, amber glow intensified until it felt like I was staring into the face of the sun. “Sweetheart . . . how could you ever think that? You are all that is good and kind and beautiful in this world. What happened was an accident, and even if it hadn’t been, you were a child. Should all children be so cruelly punished for their mistakes?”

  “Of course not!” Children were innocent! To even suggest that they should be hurt, for any reason, was just—“Oh.”

  “Exactly.” Jason smiled—a sad, trembling offering that died a quick and brutal death. “You were only a child. Allow yourself to remember that.”

  I wanted to argue, wanted to scream that it was not the same! But I didn’t. They would never have allowed that to stand, so instead I kept quiet and tried not to be unnerved by Lucien’s heavy silence or Ash’s burning scrutiny.

  “Why did you not give the Hunters what they wanted, banajaanh? If only to spare yourself the pain?”

  The memory of those early days rushed back to me. The first time I was strapped down. The first time I felt the snap of a bone breaking, the tear of a ligament. The first time I saw my own blood splashed across a Hunter’s eager face and understood they would not stop until I was broken.

  My breathing grew labored. A sick feeling twisted my stomach, turned it hard and too small to contain the agony throbbing at its center.

  “Mo chridhe . . .” Ruarc’s breathing matched mine, as though he was claiming my pain, stealing its cutting edges, trying to draw it out of me and into himself.

  “At first it was because I was s-scared. M-more scared of the monster than the Hunters. I thought maybe if I . . .” My voice broke. “Maybe if I forced it down and never thought about it, it would disappear. Hurting anyone again . . . It would have destroyed me.”

  Lucien dragged a sluggish hand through his hair and hung his head. Behind me, Ruarc was so stiff, so tense, all the muscles along his front vibrated with strain.

  “And after that?” Ash’s voice had deepened, lost all smoothness and replaced it with ragged edges too sharp for human fingers to touch without shredding.

  “After it was—it was still that, but also that I didn’t want them to win. I . . . I hated them so much,” I whispered. “And I knew they would find a way to use me to hurt others. I knew if I could hold out, I would spare others the same pain being inflicted on me.”

  “Oh, love . . .” Jason shoved one of Ruarc’s arms away and grabbed my face. Pressing a solemn kiss to each of my eyelids, he stared down at me with something akin to awe. “You were so brave. You still are.”

  I jerked back and out of his hold. “No, I wasn’t.” Compliments were the last thing I’d been expecting. It made me feel dirty. Like he hadn’t understood a single thing I’d told him. Like he’d forgotten what I’d done. How I’d lied to them all, kept secrets and placed them all in danger by associating with them. And how I’d . . . how I’d killed—

  “You are,” Jason said firmly, but before I could disappear into a slimy puddle of shame, Ash speared him with a look. One that spoke a language I didn’t, but that the others had no problem understanding.

  A heavy, rattled breath heaved out of Jason, and Ash leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and grabbed my hand. “I know this will not be easy to discuss, banajaanh, but we need to know what they did to you.”

  I jerked like I’d been hit, and something boomed in my ear. Crashing uneven beats that stumbled forward, halted, tripped and tore open. />
  I didn’t want to remember.

  Flesh splitting beneath gleaming blades.

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  Blood bubbling up my throat.

  Broken.

  Pain. Fear. Terror so deep, so cruel, so despairing it swallowed my will to live.

  I was broken.

  “I d-don’t want to talk about it!” Starting as a whisper, ending as a shrill cry.

  The room went utterly quiet. Fingers dug into my hip, but the ache was too slight, too distant. Somewhere, something shook, and the sound of harsh breathing overtook the silence.

  “It is . . .” Ash jerked, pupils expanding; bleeding midnight fire. Then he stilled, chest slowly rising, slowly falling, slowly rising. He tried again, “It is important we know. We do not want to hurt you, but that is what will happen unless we know what triggers you.” His gaze sharpened. “We need to know what makes your skin feel tight. What makes panic seize your lungs and cold fear paralyze your clever mind. What pulls you out of the present and sends you tumbling into the past.”

  A small twitch of my eye, the thought no more than a flash before his attention shot to Ruarc. “You triggered something? What happened?”

  In a tight voice, Ruarc said, “It’s private.”

  “Nothing is private between us, niijikiwenh. Not when it comes to our female and her wellbeing.”

  Probably noting the stiffness in my body, Ruarc held his ground. “No.”

  “It’s okay, Ruarc,” I breathed, relieved I could keep the rest of the memories at bay—if only briefly. “You can tell him.”

  “You sure? Don’t have to.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Twitching, muscles vibrating, Ruarc growled his way through what had happened the first time we’d tried to be intimate and his gaze had lingered too long in a vulnerable place.

  I didn’t listen, just closed my eyes and thought of something else. It was embarrassing that they’d all know, but Ash was right; there could be no more secrets, and though my pulse jumped and fought, kicking so hard against the skin at the base of my throat that I was starting to feel sick, a dangerous, disbelieving light began to stir.

  They knew about my brother, and they were still here. They knew I was a monster, and they were still here. They knew I’d been debased and abused and devalued, and they were still here.

  Maybe . . . Maybe they’d stay for the rest too, even once they knew just how broken I really was.

  Prickling along my skin pulled me out of my self-imposed exile. No one spoke. The silence was deafening. Ripping. Too much.

  “They . . . they never raped me.”

  The silence swelled, the prickling turned to an itch, the ripping to a tear.

  “I don’t t-think they were allowed.”

  Fury. The air tasted like barely contained, masculine fury.

  “I don’t know why or who made that rule, but for all their . . . all their threats, they never did . . . they never did that.” Could silence be murderous? If so, this one was, and the more I spoke, the sharper, deadlier, wilder it grew. Yet I couldn’t stop talking. My throat was tight, so tight I could barely squeeze the words out, my heart a manic, frenzied hammer pounding at my chest. My palms were damp, my lungs struggling, my stomach a hard, burning rock. And still, I kept talking. “They o-only taunted and—and watched. When I was n-naked, I mean. Not . . . not other times. It was worse when . . . when I was strapped down—”

  A screech of something tearing. Claws tipped the end of Lucien’s fingers. “Why,” he hissed, “were you strapped down?”

  “F-for their experiments. And the torture.”

  Harsh expletives exploded behind in a language I didn’t understand. The air rent with a riiiip, black leather peeling beneath Lucien’s curved grip, and opposite me, a low, terrifying rumble.

  “Torture . . .” Jason shuddered, his grip on my hand squeezing almost to the point of pain. “I thought . . . I never dreamed . . . Assumed you meant—”

  “Scars.” Ruarc’s fingers twitched, arms shaking. “Where’re your scars?” So much raw fury, so much agonizing pain in that question, and my stomach tied itself into fiery knots.

  Breathing heavily, he rested his forehead against the back of my head, both hands moving to the bottom of my shirt, clenching in the fabric before stilling. Pushed up against him like this, I felt the vibrations going through him, the coiled tension. Almost like he was fighting the urge to tear off my clothes and inspect every inch of my skin for evidence of my pain.

  Evidence that would gut him.

  “They didn’t leave any scars,” I whispered, hoping to spare them at least a small part of what I’d endured. Torture could mean many things. Broken bones. Isolation. Beatings. It could mean nails being ripped out, nerves being pinched, teeth being drilled. I’d been exposed to all of these things; none of which had left scars. And those that should’ve permanently marked my skin—the knives, the saws, the scissors and cutters—hadn’t.

  My monster eventually healed them all—even those inflicted by the Hunter’s special metal.

  A harsh sound rasped out of Ruarc’s throat, but he didn’t speak. Just held me tighter. Still shaking.

  “That means nothing,” Lucien hissed. He lifted his head and sliced through my crumbling composure with a cold, terrible fury. “No scars mar this . . . perfection”—his hand slashed through the air, a scornful, self-directed gesture—“and we all know why.”

  There it was again, the deadly, murderous silence. But this time, my head was spinning, reeling from what Lucien was revealing.

  “Those who enjoy inflicting pain also know how to avoid scars. After all, what are they but permanent proof etched into our skin?”

  My stomach bottomed out.

  Lucien had been hurt. He’d been hurt by someone who’d liked hurting him.

  Just like the Hunters.

  A twisted, bitter sickness invaded my stomach, flooding my mouth with the taste of bile. “Lucien, I . . . I’m so—”

  “You said experiments,” Ash interrupted in a voice made of fangs and claws and things that went bump in the night. “What kind?

  I froze. Pulled one damp hand out of Jason’s desperate grip and another out of Ash’s firm one. Struggled to breathe through the oily blackness pouring down my throat and filling my lungs.

  Drowning.

  “I . . .” There was a roar in my ear. A thunderous, deafening roar. Like a thousand rushing waterfalls. Like a booming metal hammer. Like a thousand explosions being set off one after the other. “Experiments t-to see . . .” I gasped. “To see h-how much p-pain I could take before passing out. And how much d-damage I could recover from. And—”

  “Enough,” Lucien whispered. “Enough.”

  Sagging against Ruarc, I stopped speaking. Relief trembled through every cell of my being, every inch of my ragged, splintered soul. I was so . . . so grateful Lucien had put a stop to this hellish retelling. Even if it was because he couldn’t bear to hear anymore.

  But when I looked at him—deathly pale, jaw shadowed by stubble, drawn and weary and still so impossibly beautiful—I realized his attention was locked on me. On my trembling lips, on the death grip I kept on the tops of my thighs; the pinching pain of flesh that was durable helped dull the raw edges of the agony inside my soul. An agony that only grew with each secret I revealed, each memory I dusted off and examined with much more scrutiny than I’d planned.

  I had a feeling he’d have sat through everything if he thought it would help me, and that he’d only put a stop to my retelling to spare me further pain. To spare me the agony of reliving every hurt, every humiliation that had been inflicted upon me during my captivity.

  A warm, fluttery glow stirred in my chest, but I was too tired, too wrung out, too exhausted to do anything but breathe.

  “Should have looked for you.” Ruarc’s raw voice broke the taut silence. “Should’ve known. You suffered and we did nothing. Nothing!”

  “Ruarc . . .” His tight
grip prevented me from turning, but I could still embrace the arms he’d wrapped tight around my middle while his ragged breaths warmed my nape. “You didn’t even know me back then. There’s nothing you could have done.”

  “Could’ve saved you.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “You couldn’t.”

  He said nothing, just pressed his forehead against my neck and continued those harsh, shredding breaths.

  “You can’t . . . You’re not allowed to claim that guilt as your own. It’s not your fault.”

  “How did you escape?” Ash asked.

  I ignored him. “If you take on that guilt, Ruarc . . . it’s not right.”

  “He won’t,” Jason said. He watched Ruarc through dull eyes, stroking a finger down the slope of my nose when I opened my mouth to protest. “Give him time to digest what his female has gone through, and know any one of us would have swapped places with you in a second.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted that,” I protested.

  Sadness flickered in Jason’s eyes. “I know.”

  “How did you escape, banajaanh?” Ash asked again, head tilted, gaze intent. It was Ash’s gaze, but the rest of him . . .

  The bones of his face were sharper. A strange, gold tint colored the blue of his irises. The air around him had darkened, grown heavy and shadowed, as though something clawed to escape the flesh that contained it, pushed and strained against bonds that could never hope to hold such a force.

  A creak and a snap, Ash’s jaw moving in a way that should’ve been impossible. Stillness. Then, “Please,” he said, and his voice was his own. “Tell us.”

  Cold sweat trailed down my back.

  He’d said please.

  No more secrets.

  I closed my eyes and thought back to the day Matthew had been tortured. What I’d done, what I’d failed to do . . . and almost choked. So I skipped forward, told them how I’d thought Matthew was dead, how he’d eventually been dragged out of his cell, how I’d come to the conclusion that only the dead left the Hunter’s compound.