Chapter 65
+25 Points
My head felt like two different things were trying to occupy the same space when I woke up.
I groaned, squeezing my eyelids shut, but that just made the throbbing worse. It wasn’t just a regular headache; it was a noise, a constant, roaring static inside my skull.
Then the feeling came. Waves of feelings that weren’t mine.
My eyes snapped open. I tried to focus on the ceiling, but the room was spinning. What was this? It felt like my mind was suddenly flooded with somebody else’s life, somebody else’s burdens. It was overwhelming, terrifying, and I couldn’t push it back.
“Astor,” I whispered.
He was sitting in the armchair beside the bed, watching me. He looked tired, but his posture was
rigid, like he was waiting for a bomb to go off.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my temples, trying to clear the noise, trying to find the quiet
space in my own mind.
“Make it stop,” I mumbled. “Whatever this is, make it stop.”
Astor didn’t move. He just watched, his heavy brows slightly knotted.
I lowered my hands slowly. The memories, these echoes of another person’s mind, were getting stronger. They had a rhythm, a certainty, a depth of emotion that was completely foreign to me, yet
I felt them as if it was my own pain.
But then I figured it out.
It wasn’t just a headache. It was the bond slamming into place.
My hand flew up to my neck, searching. My fingers skimmed the skin just above my collarbone, and there it was, a faint, tender ache, a heat that pulsed in time with the roaring in my skull.
He had marked me.
Astor had done it. While I was vulnerable and unaware, he had claimed me again.
The air rushed out of my lungs, leaving me empty and cold. All the noise, all the alien memories, suddenly formed into one horrifying realization.
I was trapped. Again.
I stared at him, my vision blurry. Not with sleepiness, but with sheer devastation.
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My voice was thick with betrayal. “How?”
Astor finally shifted, leaning forward. “Faith, let me explain-”
+25 Points
“No!” I tried to sit up, but the movement only intensified the noise in my head. “How could you do this to me, Astor? How could you mark me? That too without my consent.”
The weight of it was crushing. Six years. Six years I spent building myself back up, brick by painful
brick in New York. Six years of freedom, of deciding my own future, of knowing I was safe from
him and this life.
I only came back because I was I had to but I seemingly came back to experience my doom.
Because this wasn’t the fix I came back for. This was a shackle.
Tears, hot and immediate, streamed down my face. I didn’t bother wiping them away. I looked at
the man I had once loved more than air, the man who had always insisted he loved me and who
had now proven that his love was just ownership.
I waited for the explanation. I waited for him to plead, to beg, to give me one reason that wasn’t
just selfish possessiveness.
He met my gaze, but his eyes were hard, locked down.
That was it. He wouldn’t even give me words. He wouldn’t give me the respect of an explanation. He just stood there, unapologetic in his destruction of my life.
The last sliver of hope inside me shriveled and died.
A cold dread washed over me. This was the worst consequence. Soon, he wouldn’t just be able to
keep tabs on me physically; he would be in my head. He would know every thought, every fear, every memory I had built separate from him. More importantly my biggest secret.
I can’t let him in.
With a sudden, fierce determination fueled by panic, I slammed mental barriers into place. I pictured thick stone walls, cold, impenetrable metal, anything to stop the slow, insidious leak of his being into mine. It took agonizing effort because it was my first time doing it.
He shifted, frowning slightly, sensing the immediate retreat of my presence.
“Go,” I said, my voice flat, empty of any warmth.
He didn’t move and I couldn’t handle his presence at this moment.
“I said go.” I pushed myself back until my shoulders hit the headboard. The pain, both physical and mental, was blinding. Seeing him, standing there, so after intentionally ruining my life was
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unbearable.
My control snapped.
+25 Points
“Get out!” I screamed, the sound tearing up from my chest. “Get out of here right now! I hate you!
Just leave me alone!”
The force of my demand, coupled with the unfiltered, raw spike of my pain, must have finally pierced his reserve. He flinched, his jaw tightening. Without another word, he turned sharply and walked out, closing the door softly behind him as if the room weren’t filled with the echoes of my
shattered future.
The instant the latch clicked, I slid off the bed and down to the floor, my muscles giving out
completely. I pulled my knees to my chest and buried my face sobbing harshly.
Why?
The question scraped against the inside of my heart until it bled. Why, why, why?
All I wanted was to get better so that I could be there for my son but now everything is destroyed.
There was no distance great enough to escape a mark. The distance would cause an endless, pulling pain until I returned to his side. He had ensured that I could never escape again.
And the worst part? The final, horrifying inevitability of being a marked mate?
Sooner or later, the bond would demand completion. Sooner or later, I would have to mark him
back, cementing the relationship forever.
I was back in the cage. I was back where he wanted me. I couldn’t live through it again. not with my son. I know that I’m being selfish in keeping him away from me as father but he is all I have and
if Astor finds out about him then it will give him a big enough reason to hate me and cause even
more problems in my life.
cphakathi28
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