Prove Your Obedience(5)

The study was dead quiet after the storm. The only sound left was my ragged breathing and the faint tick of the clock on the mantel.

The guest's hand had left my hair. They had let me slide from the desk onto the floor, and I lay there on the cold marble, completely spent. My cheek rested against the stone. Neither of them spoke. They just walked out, slow footsteps fading down the hallway until the door shut behind them. The silence that followed was heavier than any scream they could have made. It pressed against my ears.

I stayed exactly where they left me. The floor was cold against my skin, and the robe lay in a heap somewhere out of reach. My throat was raw, and every swallow hurt a little. My body ached in places I hadn't known could ache.

I turned my head just enough to see my reflection in the tall mirror on the far wall. My eyes were bloodshot. My cheeks were flushed. My hair was a tangled mess. I barely recognized the woman looking back.

I crawled.

Slowly. Painfully. Every movement sent fresh waves of exhaustion through me. My arms shook. The distance to the mirror felt longer than it should have.

When I finally reached it, I sat up on my knees, back straight, and looked at myself. She looked back at me from across the glass, small and pale against the dark room, and for a moment I wanted to look away. I made myself keep looking. If I looked away, I thought, she would become someone else's problem. As long as I was looking, she was still mine.

I looked wrecked. Ruined. And beneath the exhaustion, beneath the fear, I felt something I didn't have a word for. Then I found one. Claimed. The word sat heavy in my chest.

I turned it over, trying to decide whether it frightened me. It did. But there was a quieter feeling underneath it, one I was ashamed of, a kind of terrible relief at no longer having to decide anything. I pushed it down. It rose again anyway.

My body was altered. Not just the soreness, not just the marks. Something deeper had shifted, and I couldn't put it back. I had been shared. And now I was alone. The quiet of the study made the ache louder.

I thought about the door. It was only a few steps away, solid oak, and I had no idea whether it would open if I tried. I thought about the key I had heard turn at the start of the night and how small a sound it had been for something so final. I didn't move. I told myself I was too tired. I told myself that was the only reason.

I stayed there on my knees a long time, pressing my fingers against the tender marks on my shoulder and wrists. Every touch made the soreness sharper. Every touch reminded me exactly what I had let myself become. My fingers trembled against my own skin.

The heavy oak door opened again.

Daddy stepped back into the room, locking the door behind him with a soft, final click. The sound echoed like a sentence. He crossed the study, shoes quiet on the marble, and stopped beside me. Then, without a word, he held out a thick leather collar. The leather smelled faintly of oil. I lifted my chin and let him slide it around my neck. The metal buckle was cold against my skin, tight enough to remind me I had no way to take it off.

I didn't resist. I couldn't have said why. Maybe it was exhaustion, or maybe it was something worse, something I'd been moving toward all along. His fingers were steady at the back of my neck, and the whole room seemed to shrink to that small, cold sound of the buckle.

His voice was low, chilling, and final.

"You're mine now, Grace. You'll never be alone again. Never hide. You belong to both of us... and this collar proves it."

I wanted to answer. I wanted to say something, anything. But my voice had gone somewhere I couldn't follow it, and all I could do was meet his eyes in the mirror and watch the man behind me watch the woman on her knees.

The small lock on the buckle snapped shut. The weight of it settled against my throat. The room was silent again.

And this time, I knew I was never getting out.