by K. A Knight
“I didn’t hurt you, Mi Alma, did I?” he asks softly, tracing the fingerprints on my hip.
“No. Don’t you dare try to take it softer next time, that was amazing,” I warn, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Amazing, huh?” Thorn asks. I slap his thigh and then just lay between them.
“I guess we better go check on Drax. We need to leave as soon as he is awake,” I say, still not moving from between them.
They grumble, but get to their feet, both of them offering me a hand. I grin and accept both.
We head out hand in hand to check on Drax, with me managing to find a shirt along the way. I find Jax awake and watching his brother, sadness emanating from him. Letting go of Thorn and Maxen, I hug him from behind, wrapping my arms around him and resting my head on his shoulder. He sighs, and the tension leaves his body as he clutches at my arms.
“He hasn’t woke up yet?” I ask, concerned.
“No,” Jax mutters, his voice filled with a wealth of emotions.
“He will.” I squeeze Jax and head to my other twin. Sitting on his bed, I take his hand.
“Wake up,” I plead. Leaning forward, I caress his lips with mine. “Please, baby, wake up.” I let out my fear that I won’t ever see those eyes again, the whisper quiet so my men don’t hear. “I need you.”
Sitting up straight, I watch for any sign of movement. When nothing happens, I sigh and let go of his hand, planning to go sit with Jax so we can hold each other. Drax’s hand twitches and I look from it to his face.
His eyes flicker open partly, the lids heavy and swollen. His mouth parts as his croaky voice comes out, making the room go silent.
“You smell like dessert, babe.”
Blast from the Past
I search until I find a buzzer near the bed. Pressing it, I grab Drax’s hand and wait.
“Hi,” I say with a relieved smile. He tries to wink at me, then groans.
“Damn, I feel like I went ten rounds in the ring with Maxen.” He coughs on the last word, making me and Jax reach for a water glass placed next to his bed. Jax smiles and retracts his hand as I grab it and hold it to Drax, who sips through the straw.
“Why do I smell strawberries?” he asks, as he tries to sit up. Jax grabs one side and Maxen moves to grab the other as they both help him into a sitting position. When he’s comfortable, Maxen claps his shoulder.
“Good to see you awake, brother. Our girl was starting to get worried, which in her case means she kicked someone’s ass,” Maxen says with a chuckle as Drax looks at me with a dopey smile.
“Aww, you miss me darlin’?”
I roll my eyes. I go to reply but the door opens, making my guys and I tense before the asshole doctor who examined me walks in, with a smaller, pudgier man on his heels.
He doesn’t even speak, only throws me a dirty look before moving to Drax’s bedside and examining some machines. We spend the next ten minutes watching as the two doctors examine him and run more tests. Finally, they tell us he’s okay, still healing but well enough to travel tomorrow. My father walks in and nods at the two men before facing me.
“Can we talk, prin-Worth?” my father asks, sounding unsure. I nod before turning to see Drax looking from him to me. I lean in and give him a quick kiss, which he tries to deepen. Laughing, I pull back.
“The guys will fill you in,” I say softly, running my fingers across his face.
His eyes are serious, and his mouth pulls down in a frown as he searches my face. “You okay, babe? Whose ass do I need to kick?”
His threat makes me smile, even injured and in a hospital bed all, he is worried about is me. “No one’s, I’ll kick them myself. Though, if it makes you feel better, I will let you hold them down.”
He grins at me, that sparkle back in his eye. One that speaks of trouble and naughty things. “Deal.”
Shaking my head with a smile, I face my father, my smile dropping away as I prepare for our talk. I follow him out of the room and we walk in silence as he leads me back to his office. Once inside, I drop to the same chair as before.
“So, you in charge or something? You have an office, and they listen to you…”
He rubs his head as sits heavily in his chair. “In a way. I was voted to lead.”
I nod. “What’s wrong?” I demand, crossing my arms as if to ward off a blow.
He smiles sadly at me. “You always were too smart for your own good.”
“Don’t beat around the bush. I don’t like lies or half-truths.” My voice is loud in the quiet as my head runs through possible scenarios. Maybe Dray has attacked someone, maybe the Berserkers have done something.
“You can’t have kids.” It bursts out of him and then he winces at the harsh statement. “Doctor Sencal…” At my confused look, he carries on and corrects himself, “Evan, came and gave me your test results. It seems your womb is scarred and damaged. I’m sorry princess, whatever you have been through means you can’t have children.” He freezes as if expecting me to freak out.
I blow out a breath. “Okay.”
“That’s it?” he asks incredulously, leaning forward. “Princess, I’ve just told you that you can’t have kids, and you say ‘okay’?”
I nod, my defence up at his questioning me. “Okay. It’s not like I ever thought about having them, and bringing a child into this world?” I shake my head. “Into my world, with my past and my enemies? No, I don’t have anything else to say. It’s harsh and true, but I’m glad that I can’t bring an innocent into this world only to see them suffer.” I watch as he digests my words, thinking them through. “Now, did the doctor say anything else? And why did he come to you and not me?” I demand, angry that they went behind my back. It’s my body, my life. I have a right to know before a man I haven't seen in over ten years does.
“I asked him to let me know of your results. I wasn’t trying to betray your trust, I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” my father defends.
“Then you should have let me make up mind whether to tell you or not. This will never work if you don’t show me trust, or continue to treat me like a child. I have a right to know about my own body and decide who I tell.” I get up to pace, trying to burn off some of the anger.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, Worth. What can I do to make it up to you?” he pleads, standing and coming around the desk to block my path. His face is open and sincere.
“The truth,” I demand. He flinches but nods, gesturing to the chair. Gritting my teeth, I sit back down as he leans back against the desk in front of me.
“What do you want to know?”
“How you have a map of the Wastes if you have been hiding out down here?” It’s the first question that comes to mind and one that has been bugging me.
“We have a deal with a group of survivors.” He keeps eye contact as he talks, crossing his arms, almost mirroring my stance. I drop my arms with a groan.
“Who?”
“Priest, I believe his name is.”
My eyes widen and he nods. “Ah, so you know him.”
It’s my turn to rub my head as the pain meds start to wear off again, making my head pound. “Yes. He’s the leader of The Worshippers.”
“A cult.” At my nod, my father carries on. “We were running out of food a couple of years ago, even with the fruit and veg we grow here, so we sent out a team. I was part of that team, we ended up running into Priest on the way back to his…”
“Settlement? Church?” I provide. He nods and rubs his hands together.
“They attacked us, but Priest stepped in. We made a deal. We would treat his wives and offer medical care, in exchange for food. Through these monthly meetings, I earned some knowledge about what was happening out there, not much, but enough.”
“You never tried to go anywhere else?”
He frowns. “Why would we? We have everything we need here. It’s safe, secure, and we are taken care of.”
“And I guess looking for your daughter was too much hassle,” I mu
tter bitterly. The silence stretches on before he sighs heavily.
“I was a fool. A scared little man. I can’t change the past. God, I wish I could. All I can offer you is my apology. How sorry I am for leaving you, for giving up on you.” His eyes beg me to understand and I find myself breathing deep to push back the tears. My heart pounds against my chest as I look at him.
“All these people, how did they get here? How did they know it was here?” I ask gruffly, ignoring his last remark to return to a safe subject.
I see him flinch and a frown tugs at the corners of his lips, but he answers me anyway.
“Some were born up here in the North. A few worked here, when everything started, they came to somewhere familiar, somewhere safe. They brought their families and friends, and we took in stragglers from outside until we had here what you see now.”
I struggle to think of something else to ask, my mind slow because of the headache.
“You said you brought everyone here, including the men attacking us…Can I see them?”
His hair is down past his shoulders, sectioned off in honour braids. The more hair the Berserker has, the stronger they are, and the more fights and tests they have won. His one mud brown eye stares through the glass like he can see me, the other a scarred twisted hole where his eye used to be. Plucked from his head by Ivar as a punishment. I remember it like it was yesterday, his scream staying with me even now, as blood ran in horrifying rivulets down his face.
Ivar stood over him, the man’s eye clutched in his hand like some sick kind of trophy, with a vicious smile on his face. The man was wailing hopelessly, so full of agony on the ground below Ivar, clutching at his face. It was the first time in years I had smiled, living for it, loving him getting a taste of his own medicine. Of course, I didn’t know then that it would warp his mind, that the pain and horror would break him until nothing existed but a crazed warrior intent only on bringing others pain.
Dreven wasn’t Ivar’s torturer, no that sick son of a bitch will be by his side, but Dreven here was his warrior. His fighter, because he didn’t fear anything. Hell, it’s like after that day, he never felt pain again. His mind was always locked on his next slave, his next fight.
He is one of the monsters I left behind, one even my mind tries to block me from remembering. My days spent in his tender care are some of the worst of my life, until all I knew was the scent of my own blood and the feeling of agony racing through my veins like a fire he controlled at whim.
My father brought me to the holding cells and I picked the first one, guess I’m just that lucky. Apparently, they captured four Berserkers with the other four already being dead. Two of those Berserkers didn’t last the night due to wounds from my guys, so it leaves us with him and another one I haven’t been in to see yet.
Staring back at me through the one-sided glass mirror is one of the men who features in my nightmares. He looks smaller without all his weapons, namely his knife. The one he named Lijepa bol, which means beautiful pain. The one he took great pleasure in using on me. My hand drifts automatically to the scar on my hip. The one I got when he slammed the blade into me, tearing through skin and muscle, and pinning me there like a butterfly as he approached me, the lust clear in his eyes.
My breathing picks up, clouding the glass as I try to anchor myself in the here and now. But when that same sadistic smile twists his lips, I am thrown back into one of my worst moments, a nightmare made real.
“Mewl for me pet, let me hear that sweet sound of pain.”
When I refuse to let the scream lodged in my throat escape, he becomes wild, all sanity leaving his eye as he watches me. He leans down and puts his face in my long tangled hair, his rancid breath smelling like blood and beer wafting over me as he whispers in my ear. I try to strain against the bonds even though I know it is no use. I am tied spread eagle to a stone table in the dungeon, my punishment for making eye contact with him. For the defiance, he says he saw there. Ivar laughed as I was dragged from the hall in the middle of the feast, my legs trailing behind my body, hitting every stone on the way out, making my eyes water even as I kept the noises inside. Dreven lifted me by my hair and threw me down here, following after me before I could so much as try to scramble away.
Fatigue, pain, and starvation making me weak, so I couldn’t even fight him off. Not that my fifteen year old body would be able to. He’s double my height and has stones of muscle earned from wars on him. I was quickly bound and tied to what he calls his lover, the stone table, the position mortifying and offering me no semblance of decency. Left like an animal, only shame and dirt from not being allowed to wash in two months coating my skin. He uses my hair as a handle, pulling me to him. I swear if I survive tonight, I am cutting it all off. Never will it be used against me again, it’s a weakness I can’t afford.
“I was hoping you wouldn't.” He stands up, towering over me before turning to his table of toys.
“What shall we play with today?” he yells, the insanity clear to hear as he talks to the toys. I focus on the light flicking from the torches dotted around the room, it bounces off the stone ceiling, the shadows twinning and twisting like a brutal dance. A tear drops from my eye, but I refuse to let any more fall. My body is shaking and my chest is tight as I try to breathe through the panic. Maybe he will finally kill me, maybe my body will finally give in. The thought doesn’t make me sad, in fact, it’s a relief. At least I would finally have peace.
“Ahhhhh!” He holds up the rusty metal clamp in the light, showing it to me even as my eyes strain to focus on the dancing of the flames, trying to transport myself anywhere else. “I stole this from Kellam, let’s see if it will make my pretty pet mewl for me.”
I don’t close my eyes, knowing it won’t help with nothing to focus on except the pain, but my body braces as I strain to keep my eyes locked on the shadows above me, twirling faster now, as if to match my racing heart. Maybe I have finally gone mad, because all I want is to float up from my broken and used body, no, not my body––theirs––and join the shadows beckoning me. I will twist high above where they can’t reach me, where my body doesn’t exist and dance to the music of the fire.
Agony, pure unfiltered agony, rips through my right developing breast as he clamps it on my nipple, which is puckered from the cold to my horror. I bite my tongue to keep my scream in as I float away. I don’t know how long I have been laying here, time slipping together as my mind blurs the pain and torture Dreven is painting across my skin like a canvas. I stopped being ashamed after the fourth toy he used, now I am angry and tired. So tired. It’s like watching it happening to someone else, as if my body is numb, my soul trying to slip away even as he keeps it trapped here in a cage of horror. When he stops at the bottom of the stone table and grips my weak thighs, I know that the worst horror is coming. The room comes back with a pop as my eyes clear, and my ears stop ringing just in time for him to slip up my body, preparing himself to defile me in the most cruel and ruinous way.
Please, please let me float away again. Let me dance in the flames, my soul twisting in the shadows above, so that I do not feel it when he pushes into my unprepared and unwilling body. So that I don’t have to experience the horror of being reduced to nothing but a toy.
I yank myself back to the present and rest my head on the glass, breathing through the memory. My body twinges in pain, as if remembering has made it rush back through me. It’s the first flashback I have had in a while, but it’s like the floodgates have opened. All the horrors of my past are clambering to shine in the light, to subject me to their shame and cruelty. Is it not enough that I lived through it? Now I have to remember it? It’s like it knows the happiness I have been feeling, the love surrounding me, and it’s determined to tinge it with darkness. To return me to the pain and flames of my former life, as if my contentment has called it from the bleakness.
“Princess?” my father asks from behind me, sounding confused. A tear slips from my eye as the man in the cells face blurs with my me
mories. Changing, morphing through the years of suffering spent at his hands.
“I’m broken,” I whisper, it slips out before I can help it.
“What? No, you are not,” he cries, his hand coming to land on my shoulder. I don’t know what makes me do it, apart from that I need someone right now. I need to feel safe, I need comfort and light to fight my way through the darkness. I fling myself in his arms and sob, the tears ripping out of me unwillingly.
“Princess, god, I am so sorry. It’s okay... You’re okay, you’re safe. I’ve got you, princess,” he murmurs, his strong arms surrounding me, reminding me of when I was a child and found safety in his hugs.
We fall to the floor, me curled into him, my heart punching through my chest and sob after sob ripping through my shaking body. He holds me, his words mixing together. Reassurance after reassurance as he tries to hold me together. I can tell he doesn’t understand, in the way that someone who hasn’t experienced pain and suffering can’t, but he offers me everything. He holds me as only a father can until my sobs slow, my breath hiccupping with the remaining pain.
I raise my head from his wet shoulder and gaze at his face. He looks defeated and so heartbroken, the lines on his face deeper and his frown fierce. He cups my face, his hands transferring his warmth to me, until I realise I’m ice cold.
“I’ve got you, my little girl. I’m right here, even if you hate me. Even if you’re angry at me, I will be here for you, always, to dry your tears, and hold you when you hurt. I’m here, my princess.”
We stay like that for a while, both of us lost in our own thoughts as I try to put myself back to together again in my father’s arms.
Facing Demons
After my embarrassing mental breakdown, I try to distance myself from my father so he won’t think I am weak. I wipe my face and slip into a bathroom to throw water on it. When it doesn’t look like I just spent half an hour sobbing, I head straight into the cell of the Berserker. Straightening my spine, I walk into the room like I own it, unwilling to show any weakness to the man who is responsible for my darkened, damaged soul.