All Chapters of Baine Family Love and War: Book 2 Finally My Own Love: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Samantha’s POV … Present DayI count the miracle every night, the man who bought me is dead. But death is hollow here. It doesn’t protect me. Not from the auction, not from them, not from myself. The house waits like a predator, patient, inevitable. And I know, I know they’ll come for me. Soon. I stare into the warped, rusted scrap of mirror they give me. My own eyes glare back, strangers behind their pain. My body is a battlefield, every scar a wound that refuses to heal. If I escape… who could love me? Who could even want me, broken and raw like this?Night presses against the cell walls, thick and suffocating. The guards will come soon, boots echoing like a drumbeat announcing doom. After that, I can reach out to the only people who still tether me to hope. I promised them a year ago they would see the truth, all of it. Every piece of me that has been broken, stolen, violated. Especially Ava. She’s fragile, almost human again, but still haunted. I destroyed the vial before it could

**Samantha’s POV** Elder Lee was an uncertainty I couldn't afford to misjudge; trust was a luxury reserved for those who had never seen it honed into a killing edge. In this place, power wasn't an abstract concept, but a physical weight thick, suffocating, and pressing against my pores like a second atmosphere. It carried a heavy, sensory bite the metallic tang of iron filings, the grit of ancient dust, and a sharp, electrical charge that signaled a breaking storm. To draw a full breath was to risk choking on the sheer density of the air, a constant reminder that survival required knowing exactly where and what you were.Yet, he had intervened against Steven, a single act that lodged itself beneath my ribs like a shard of cold, brittle glass. Relief didn't arrive with a flourish; it seeped into my marrow with agonizing caution, a tentative thaw in a life defined by permafrost. I knew better than to let my guard down, for small victories were often the most gilded traps, designed to ma

**Liza — POV** We had to unravel the mystery of what those monsters had done to Sam’s witch. It defied every law of our world; witches weren't meant to be containable, certainly not in the suffocating, absolute way Sam had described. As I sat there, the silence of the room amplified the dread pressing against my ribs, a heavy weight that grew with every passing second. Every wasted minute was another heartbeat she spent trapped in whatever nightmare cage they had forged for her.Thanks to Samantha’s frantic guidance, dream-walking was our only remaining bridge, but forcing a werewolf into that vulnerability was a war of its own. My potion had claimed me easily, dragging me into the gray, but Dominic was stubborn as all hell. The wait felt like an eternity. So, when he finally stirred and the fog of sleep cleared from his eyes, I didn’t even bother to mask the sharp edge of my impatience.“About time, old man,” I muttered, though the sting in my voice softened. “Come on. We need to go

Samantha’s POV “Liza!! LIIZZAAA!!” My scream tore through the dream‑cave like a blade scraping bone. The air tasted of cold stone and old nightmares. My voice echoed back at me thin, broken, alone. I tried again, my throat raw, panic shredding me from the inside out.“Liza…please! I need you!”For a heartbeat, nothing. Then the shadows shifted, like a held breath finally released.“Samantha! I’m here! Are you hurt? We’ve been trying to reach you.”Her voice hit me like oxygen after drowning pure, desperate relief. But the next thing she said stole the breath right back out of my lungs.“Sam… they’ve been giving you witch hazel in your tea. If you keep drinking it… your witch will die. Permanently.”My pulse slammed against my ribs.“How do you know that?”"Xena sought me out. She revealed your witch to me, imprisoned and held in a cage."Her voice wavered, tight and trembling, as if she were trying not to shatter."Sam, Mom was right…those blood tests weren't for health; they were a

Third person POVThe darkness took Ava first not gently, and certainly not all at once, but like a living, breathing thing that swallowed sound and shape in jagged, hungry gulps. One heartbeat, she was just standing there, framed by the sterile white corridor and the rhythmic, humming fluorescent lights. The next, the light was gone. It wasn’t a transition; it was a theft. Hands that were too large and impossibly cold clamped around her like iron bands, snatching her from the hallway and dragging her backward into the suffocating shadow. Her breath vanished in a sharp, panicked gasp, a desperate hitch in her chest that never became a word before a heavy palm smothered her mouth. It killed the scream before it could ever truly exist, burying her terror under a cold, predatory silence that felt heavy enough to bruise.“Mom…” The word died against skin and pressure, her voice becoming a trapped, frantic thing swallowed whole. As she was hauled away, the corridor warped into a nightmare o