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I yanked and I yanked until I felt my wrist snap. I screamed as I dropped to my knees and clutched my broken wrist to my chest.

Big mistake being on my knees. I immediately choked on water. My lungs burned as if I had swallowed acid, and I jumped back up to my feet.

The movement jostled my wrist, and the sobs finally came as I fell into my feelings headfirst. I could do nothing but stand there and cry as the hole filled with water.

If I died down here in this hole, then so be it. Maybe when I died, I would finally be able to see my family again. They’d been lost to me since the raid. I didn’t know what happened after that until I woke up down here, but I definitely remembered them all dying and hearing their screams.

Would I ever stop hearing the sounds of their screams?

I cradled my wrist to my chest and cried hysterically as the water rose higher and higher.

There was no point in fighting it, and I was so very tired.

The water rose up to my chin.

Up past my mouth.

Finally, both my nostrils were submerged, and I couldn’t help myself. I rose up on my tiptoes and breathed in through my nose. I stayed that way for as long as I could, but the water just kept rising higher and there was no getting away from it.

Even though I had told myself I wouldn’t struggle or fight it, I guessed that in the end I didn’t have it in me to just stand here and die without putting up any kind of fight, even though I knew it was pointless.

I fought, pulling uselessly on my chains.

On the opposite side of my body from the arm with my broken wrist, I felt my shoulder dislocate.

I opened my mouth and screamed, and the water poured inside me.

I screamed. I fought. I struggled. Still, I drowned down here.

I woke up still blind and chained up down in my hole, my wet tangled mess of hair clinging to my body as I lay in a heap on the damp, muddy dirt.

My wrist and shoulder stung with the aftereffects of being recently healed.

There’d been nothing but darkness in death, and I had never been so disappointed to wake up before in my life.

A steel-toed boot connected solidly with my thigh, and I groaned as I attempted to curl up into myself protectively.

“Ah, good. I see you’re finally awake, child. Now, you can either spread those thighs and offer us some form of gratitude, or we can turn the water back on for another lesson in manners. It’s your choice, but you’ll have to speak to make it.”

I didn’t move from my protective ball on the dirt. There was no fucking way I’d ever offer up my body to these repulsive men.

The water came back on, and there was no way of stopping the scream that ripped its way right out of my throat.

7

She Screamed Louder

Finn

I woke up to screams. Not just any screams either, but the kind that came from someone who was experiencing true terror.

I leapt up to my feet and ran toward the sound. My knee clipped the corner of the coffee table and pain shot up my leg, causing me to stumble.

The sound was coming from the direction of Isobel’s bedroom, and the voice matched hers, but I didn’t want it to be hers.

Her door was open, and in my panic, I couldn’t remember if I’d closed it when I’d been in here to put her stuff away after putting her to bed.

The overhead light was on, as was the lamp on her nightstand.