1 - DEVLIN

My palms smacked uselessly against the thick muscle on his arms, thrashing against them as my instinct to survive outweighed any other option. I loved Trent, but I also feared him. I never wanted to hurt or defy him, but right now, the only thing that mattered was my survival.

The slippery surface of the tub caused my feet to slide across it, failing to gain any traction, only making my situation worse as I struggled for any chance at air. My legs were useless in my attempt to push against his strength and the energy was quickly draining from my limbs, just like any hope I had that Trent’s anger would waiver. 

I wasn’t shocked when he entered the room. He used to sit in here often and talk while I relaxed in the tub, but this? Of all the things I would have guessed when he stormed in, Trent forcing my head under the water would have NEVER been one of them. 

He’s never been this angry with me… he’s never crossed this line. 

The burn in my chest to take a breath became too much and any tears I cried were being lost to the water around me. The fire on my scalp from where his fingers were laced through my hair tightly told me I wouldn’t have the chance to beg for my life this time. No, whatever it was, I had gone too far this time. 

I wasn’t meant for this. I wasn’t strong, and as my body attempted to scream on its own accord, the water rushed into my mouth. My fingers gripped at my throat, desperately wishing I could clutch it tight to keep the water out, but it was too late. I gagged roughly as the weight of the water within my throat felt like it was crushing me, and as all the fight left me, the water settled just enough for me to see him. 

Trent’s hazel eyes glared down at mine, mere inches of water between us, right before everything went dark. 

~~~

Water fell from my lips as I coughed, and a gentle voice told me to get it all out. 

Alive. 

I was still alive. 

I gasped for breath after breath of air before a towel was placed on my back and I clutched it into my chest as I turned around to meet her light blue eyes. The wrinkles around them creased as she tried to assess me, but the way her vision rolled over me wasn’t the usual way she tended to me, there was clear concern there. 

Yea, Mary, I’m concerned too. 

The pain in my chest with every breath I tried to draw all the way in brought me back to my situation. Trent just crossed a line he’s never crossed before. 

I coughed and gagged some more as Mary supplied a bucket for me. She's the head staff keeper here with a medical background, and this wasn't the first or last she'd see of me. While Trent and most of the people here healed quickly, I was still very much human, with no hint of elevating into my abilities anytime soon. 

"You stupid, stupid, child," she scolded me as her hand rubbed the side of my cheek, pinching it slightly as the heavy footfalls beyond the bathroom had her rising to her feet. There are times like this that I wanted to be angry at her, that I wanted to plead with her to find me a way out, but I knew better. 

Not only was Mary loyal to the Stones, but asking that of her would put either put her life in danger… or mine. They’ve kept her around for all these years because she questions nothing. A good little soldier in their army of corrupt souls he calls a pack. No, Mary might have developed a fleeting softness for me over the years, but she knew better than to ever let it show, and I knew better than to ever test those waters.

Trent's face rounded the door as Mary made a quick escape. His pained anger still rolling off of him with every labored breath he took. 

‘I'm pathetic, I'm weak,’ I repeated the mantra in my head over and over again as I tried to keep myself from lunging at him and pinched my eyes closed to stop the look in them from betraying me. My bath and day had been ruined, and if I was strong enough, I'd drown his handsome face in the toilet and then see how he felt. 

I pressed back into the wall behind me, curling my knees to my chest. I wasn't out of this yet. Trent was angrier than he's ever been with me and while he loves me… that apparently only extends so far. 

"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" Trent gripped my chin, yanking it up to meet his furious gaze as he squatted in front of me, "Did you think you could leave me?" He got nose to nose with me, grinding his face into mine as he screamed at me, "TELL ME!"

I shook my head in disbelief. How? How did he find out? I thought I was so careful, but I should have known better than to trust Mark. 

"I would never-" I tried to play off my head movements, but Trent gripped my mouth so I couldn't speak.

"Don't," he growled out, "lie to me, Dee." His eyes took on the pre-shift glow as he looked back at me and slid his hand up my leg from my knee with a feather-like touch, "Did you give yourself to h-" 

The sound of my palm slapping him carried to me before I even registered what happened. “Whatever you think I did,” my forehead pressed into his, grinding just a little as he had done to me, “I didn’t and I would NEVER give away something that you KNOW is yours.”

My virginity. 

“Your guard had everything set to run away with you,” he leaned back from me just enough to look at my face, “you offered him something.”

I let my eyes grow as big as they could, a fake panic washing over me as my voice came out hoarse, “He what?”

“Oh, I took care of it, Dee,” Trent cocked his head to the side as I desperately tried to make myself cry. The tears NEEDED to come if I was going to escape this with my life. Trent had truly snapped this time, and admittedly, I had offered Mark a life with me and a future, but it wasn’t because I cared for him. I knew I needed out of this, and now that Trent’s escalated while becoming wise to a possible escape plan, I’d have to start from scratch. 

Mark, that big dumb-dumb. 

Ok, think, you’re going to be stuck here forever and Trent is never going to let you leave or have any freedoms. Finally, the tears started to cascade down my cheek and the moment one fell onto his hand it seemed to crack through his anger. 

“Why would you think that of me?” I cried, putting my head into my hands and then looking up in shock as if a thought had just occurred to me, “What if he would have succeeded? What if he had taken me and I never got to see you- and you thought- but I didn’t-” I sobbed into my hands and Trent tried to pick me up but I swatted at his hands with a feigned weakness. The emotional anger I was directing at him was more frustration on my part that my plan didn’t work, but it served its purpose by being let out now, “You tried to drown me, Trent!”

“I-” his brows pulled together as he stood, angrily running one of his hands through his hair before he started launching items on the bathroom sink across the room and yelling out. He picked me up off the ground roughly by grabbing the outsides of my arms and making me stand, “You drive me crazy, Dee! You can’t leave me, you can never leave me,” he cupped my face roughly, “when I caught him loading up a vehicle with all of your things, I just snapped. He was dead, and I was so mad at you for trying to leave me.”

“But I didn’t,” I whispered over his lips, which were hovering above mine. While Trent’s little reveal was terrifying, it was almost better that Mark was dead… there would be no one to speak against me now. No one to know of my true involvement, and going forwards I would only rely on myself. 

“Goddess, I’m so stupid,” Trent moved suddenly, placing my hands into his hair, and I gently pulled at the length of it repeatedly to try and soothe him back from this spiral I knew all too well. “I just love you so much it hurts. You know that, don’t you? That I would do ANYTHING for you. You were always meant to be mine. You’ll see. When you elevate into your abilities, I just know you’ll be my mate, and you’ll see.”

“I don’t want to die like the rest of my family did, Trent.”

“You know I’m under a lot of pressure, I didn’t mean to,” he looked like he was going to turn back to being angry with me. 

“I know, but it scared me, Trent.”

“Never again,” he picked up my hands and kissed them, “I promise, Dee, once we’re married and I take over the pack, you’ll see. Things will go back to the way they were, but so much better. You believe me, don’t you? It’s you and me.”

“You and me,” I repeated, and as his lips brushed against mine, it was hard to not let everything fade into the background. His tongue claimed my mouth and my whole body reacted to him the way it always had. He was mine, and I was his. The problem was that we circled this pattern so many times that nothing had ever made me aware of just how wrong it was until recently, and almost drowning today has only secured the path I’m on further. 

He watched me crawl out of the river when I was nine. I could have died at the bottom of it with my parents and twin brother, and not once over all these years has Trent ever crossed the line of threatening me near or in water, but today he did it without a second thought. He never apologized for it and he won’t, nor has he worried about the trauma that he just resurfaced. 

I’ve been living in his shadow, remaining protected, hidden, and soft, but he’s just been one monster protecting me from the others. One day soon he’s going to realize he didn’t pay enough attention to the shadows, he didn’t give them the respect they were due, and they’re hiding a little monster of their own.

My head bobbed against Trent's forehead, exhaustion pulling at me as my limbs grew heavier and slower, no longer able to move them as I tried.

“I got you, Dee,” in one fluid motion he had me in his arms and when he laid me down in bed, it surprised me when he crawled in behind me. After everything, I shouldn’t want him there, I shouldn’t want him near me, and yet I did. 

There was something so incredibly messed up about it, about my brain, that I would want the person who almost drowned me anywhere near me, but Trent would always be the one who saved me the day of the accident, the one whose eyes I clung to like a lifeline, and the only way I made it through all the grief of losing my whole family. I don’t know where I would have ended up if it wasn’t for him or if I would even be alive. Maybe I would have been better off somewhere else, but until recently, I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else. 

My head lay on one of his biceps, his heart thumping loudly against me, and his hand curled over my waist as he drew me as close to him as possible. His soft kisses along my temple lulled me right to sleep because while my life may be in danger by his hands sometimes, when I was in his arms, nothing could touch me. 

I could hate myself in the morning for loving his touch and seeking refuge in his attention. I know his attention had his hazel hues looking down at me through several inches of water tonight, holding me under, but eight years ago they were pulling me closer. They saved me from the event that haunts my sleep, and I still don’t know how I’m supposed to let him go.