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"Sorry?!"a woman cried. "Why didn't you resist before today?"

"Why not save my Hanna? Why only Liam?" sobbed another.

"I fucking knew it. You ARE a monster," Darlene hissed. "And now everyone else can see it, too."

I slumped against the bars, tears breaking free.

Another voice echoed Darlene's words. "Monster."

Then another and another.

Soon it was a chant more painful than anything Holden or that mind mage had ever done.

And I couldn't even deny the words.I am a monster.

The Harlsteds tried to stop them, but their voices were lost in the roar.

Maybe at one time I would have defended myself — tried to escape the barrage. But I knew better now.

My gaze slid to the 106 marks on the cell floor.

They were right to attack me. I'd failed so, so many …

That one on the left was Mirrim.

The one at the end of that row was Gram.

And the newest mark was the woman who'd been taken from her husband yesterday.

Fuck. I didn't even know her name …

I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed a fist to my mouth, silencing the sobs threatening to pour out like a wave.

"Are you lot deaf?!" Liam yelled, hard voice slicing through the angry roar. "The mind mage is real and just as dangerous as the legends say." He rattled the bars on his cell to get their attention. "And Kaiya DID fight. The mind mage said she fought every fuckingday. But no one could stop that power. Not while strapped to a chair. Even from across the room, I could feel the magic — like a drill boring into my skull."

They all stopped to listen as new tears welled in my eyes.

"You have no fucking idea what she's gone through." He bit out the words, voice rough. "Every day she is tortured, and every day she fights. For you and yours! And I guarantee that none of you could have resisted the mage for a fucking minute, let alone for how long she does every single day."

I held back the tears his words tried to rip from me, and something fluttered in my chest — warm and tentative …

"Even Holden admitted it! Kaiya fights every day. She endures the seven hellsevery day! And for what?" he spat. "For youassholes. And for the ones you love. In and out of that fucking room she goes — quietly taking all your abuse, she fights to save you, regardless of the cost to herself."

He laughed, the sound harsh and angry, as his green gaze locked with mine. "You don't deserve her. None of us do."

Something in my chest shattered.

What —why did he say those things? He hated me … didn't he?

"I — I didn't know —"a hesitant voice said.

"But where is my child?" asked another.

"Why did she save you but not the rest?" called out a third.

Before more voices could pile on, Liam cut them off. "I survived by luck, not a lack of Kaiya trying. A visitor interrupted the session, and had he not, I would be bonded like the rest. So stop taking out your pain and anguish on her. This is not her fault."

Not my fault?I struggled to make sense of the words and why he was lying.