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When she reopened her eyes and focused her glorious orbs on me - a color that wasn’t quite blue but wasn’t quite green - I lost myself. I could wander through her gaze for an eternity.

Her words pulled me out of my bliss, a metaphorical bucket of water dousing me.

“If you can't save me, kill me.”

The world stopped. Time stopped. Everything fucking stopped. If it wasn’t for my heart beating erratically beneath my rib cage, I might’ve thought I was dead. My mind replayed her sincere words, but try as I might, I couldn’t comprehend them.

She wouldn’t have asked me to…?

“Addie.” Ronan’s voice was aghast. I hadn’t even heard him enter. He brushed a hand through his green-tipped hair and dropped to his knees. “You better not fucking mean that.”

She was already nodding her head before he had finished speaking.

“I do, Ro. If they capture me, and for some reason you know you won’t be able to save me in time, I want you to kill me.” Her pleading voice had garnered the attention of the other men in the room.

“Don’t fucking talk like that,” Fallon snapped, glaring at Adelaide. She pursed her lips stubbornly.

“I don’t want to be used as a toy, a prop, a tool. I refuse. The things they do…” she broke off, voice choked. My heart broke for her, for her childhood, for the woman before me who was both so incredibly vulnerable and yet incredibly strong. “I refuse to.” She met each of their eyes before seeking out my own. “I know you kill, Asher.”

She couldn’t possibly be asking me what I think she was asking.

“Not you,” I rasped out. “I won’t fucking kill you. How can you ask that of me?”

Because I wouldn’t want to live if something happened to her. A world without Addie in it was not one I wanted to be in. Insane thinking, maybe.

And if it was by my own fucking hand?

I may have been a killer, but what she was asking of me made me ill, nauseous, my stomach curdling like weeks old milk.

Beneath all that, I was devastated. How could she think I’d agree to something as awful as that? Did she doubt my love for her?

“No. Absolutely not. No fucking way.”

She must’ve seen the resolve in my face, for she turned her pleading eyes onto Fallon. He continued to glare at her, possibly too angry to speak. Ronan and Ryder had similar stony expressions on their faces. Tamson refused to meet her gaze, but Declan did. And held it.

I prayed to God that it wasn’t assent I saw in his eyes.

One thing became clear as I held her trembling body against my own.

If she ever did come into contact with her asshole parents, it wasn’t them we had to worry about.

I knew never to underestimate Addie, and one thing was clear: she would do whatever it took to free herself of her parents.

Even at the expense of her own life.

* * *

Addie

I knew they wouldn’t understand.

How could they?

Theydidn’t have to endure year after year of endless torture. The slap of a hand. The fist pelting your chest, stomach, and face. Burn marks on your arms and legs. Unwanted hands grabbing at you, undressing you, touching you.

And because they didn’t understand, they had no fucking say. Now that I knew freedom, happiness, and love, I could never go back to the half-life I’d been living. A life where men who weren’t my fiancés touched me. A life where one misspoken word led to a thousand bruises. A life where happiness was fleeting and pain was a guarantee.

No more.