All Chapters of The Awakening : Chapter 11 - Chapter 12

The darkness is my only witness.It wraps around me like a shroud, cold and absolute, pressing against my swollen throat and my cracked ribs and the places inside me that stopped hurting hours ago because they've gone numb. I lie on the straw, filthy, lice-ridden, damp and I listen to my own breathing rattle in and out of lungs that still remember being denied air.His hands.I can still feel them. The weight of his palms. The steadiness of his fingers. The way he squeezed like he was wringing water from stone, methodical, almost bored, as if strangling me was just another task on his daily list.You should have said yes.The words echo in the dark. I hear them in his voice, that low, conversational tone that terrified me more than any scream ever could. Because screaming means feeling. Screaming means losing control. But Kai of the Bloodmoon Clan doesn't lose control.He chooses.Every squeeze of his fingers. Every breath I couldn't take. Every second of agony was a choice he made, d