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Sutton
The Chemist sliced into me again. I screamed until I tasted blood. The twisted monster cut deeper into my flesh as I thrashed. Something gave inside my abdomen as he tore one of my organs from my body. A wet thud sounded as he dropped it into the dish beside him.
I didn’t know how long I’d been here. My only reprieve was blessed unconsciousness, at least until he healed me, bringing me back so he could start his “experiments” all over again.
He’d broken through our coven’s wards, invading our home, then had singled me out.
I needed this to end. I’d rather he kill me now than suffer another moment of this horror.
Shadows creeped in at the edges of my vision, and I thanked the goddess that the terror and the agony would finally stop, even if it was only for a little while.
Numbness slowly traveled through my body, and I let darkness take me away.
A low, deep voice reached out, wrapping around me, pulling me back from the murky depths. My eyelids were weighted, my body bound tight from terror, but as that voice called to me again, warmth spread through my veins, and the terror slipped away.
I was okay.
The comforting scent surrounding me told me that everything would be okay now.
My skin tingled, heating where the monster had sliced into me. Still, my eyelids, my limbs, were deadweights, and there was no talking past my raw, swollen throat.
More voices reached me now, but the one closest still murmured to me, and every time it stopped, there was another wave of those warm tingles.
“Fucking wake up, Sutton.”
Actual words. I could make them out now. Woo-hoo . Go me.
“Come on. Open your eyes.”
I recognized that growly voice. If only I could open my eyes, or better yet, my mouth, and tell him I was awake.
More tingles, more warmth.
Prince Charming. The arrogant hellhound who had snatched me from the street and taken me to see Fern when she’d been hurt. Yeah, that voice. His scent. That was definitely Jagger.
As the numbness slowly thawed, I realized what was causing the tingles. The hound was gently licking my wounds to get them to start healing. He was growling low as well, almost constantly now.
I tried to open my mouth again, but my lungs were being crushed and my heart was in a vise. I desperately struggled to drag in a breath.
“Sutton needs a healer,” Jagger growled.
Then everything went dark again.
Two weeks later
The darkness of my room closed in, and I struggled to draw breath. The Chemist’s face, those black latex gloves, the scalpel, it was all flashing through my mind on repeat, and I couldn’t make it stop—like a twisted Ferris wheel that I couldn’t get off.
Snatching up my phone, I hit Fern’s number. She understood. My friend knew what I was going through. He’d hurt her first. He’d hurt her so many times.
“Sutton?” Her voice was calm, gentle. “Breathe, babe, slow and steady. You’re okay. He’s gone. He’s dead. You’re safe now.”
I didn’t reply, I couldn’t, only managing a pitiful whimper before I hissed. It pissed me the hell off that he was still here in my head, even though I knew I was safe. Having Fern right there on the phone helped me slow my breathing and pull it together enough to finally speak.
“Th-thanks,” I whispered down the line, then squeezed my eyes closed.
“Fuck…sorry.” She’d been through far worse than me, for far longer.
She was also newly mated, and here I was waking her in the middle of the night to drag her back into Hell with me, like some walking, talking, physical embodiment of her trauma, forcing her to relive it all over again.
“I’m here for you, day or night. You don’t need to apologize to me, not ever.” She was silent for a moment. “If I hadn’t?—”
“Don’t,” I said, feeling even worse now. I had to stop doing this. It wasn’t fair to her. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. You did nothing wrong, and neither did I. That twisted fucker did this. This is all on him.”
“Yeah,” she whispered after a beat of silence.
The last two weeks had been one step forward and four back.
I wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt when The Chemist had broken into our coven house.
Phoebe, my other best friend, had been badly hurt as well, and the rest of the coven had been magically bound and locked up.
Thankfully, we’d had the best healers in the city come and tend us.
If it wasn’t for Agatheena, a well-known witch who practiced dark magic, and Fern’s newly found great-grandmother, I wasn’t sure I would have survived.
The growl of an engine rumbled in the distance.
Anticipation filled me, and I shoved back the covers, easing my still weak body out of bed, and shuffled to the window.
A big, black bike rolled to a stop. The rider—tall, broad…huge—swung his well-muscled leg over the seat and climbed off.
Jagger.
“Charming just showed up,” I said.
When I’d first met him, he’d been the complete opposite, so I’d called him Prince Charming. The name had stuck.
The hounds were taking turns watching the house. Yes, the danger was over, but they offered to do it anyway, while the coven healed mentally and physically after the horrors that happened here.
“Is that okay?” Fern asked.
I blew out a shaky breath as Boo, my sweet familiar, landed on my shoulder and, tucking in his bat’s wings, pressed his soft head into my neck.
“Yeah. Now that he’s here, I’ll be able to sleep.
” Jagger seemed to be on guard duty more often than not.
I guess he was the unlucky one who kept drawing the short straw, but I had to admit, I only really slept when he was here.
The other hounds were great, but Jagger was the only one who made me feel truly safe.
The fact that he was super freaking arrogant and kind of cold didn’t seem to matter.
“I’m glad. Has he spoken to you yet?”
“No, not since…” I swallowed audibly. Not since he’d held me in his arms, licking my wounds and begging me to fucking wake up in that rough and desperate voice of his.
“He just stands out there, scowling, then leaves early.” I blew out another breath, and this time it didn’t come out as shaky.
Win! I studied his chiseled features and handsome face.
“Why does he come here if it pisses him off so much?”
“I think what pisses him off is what happened to you and Phoebe, not that he has to be there. Hounds really don’t like it when females are mistreated.”
“Right,” I said, not believing a word of it, well, except for the part about hounds being protective of females. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here. I fought back a yawn and failed. “I think I’ll try to sleep now.”
“Night, Sutton.”
“Night, Fern.”
One week later
The sound of Jagger’s bike echoed up from the street, and I took my first deep breath all day.
Yes, I knew what his bike sounded like. They all sounded a little different, and I’d figured out which one was his since he was here more than the others.
His bike sounded deeper and resonated through my chest when the growl of the engine filled my room in the dark.
As I always did, I shoved back the covers and went to the window.
He was leaning against his bike. I waited for him to pull his phone from his pocket and settle in for the next several hours like he usually did—instead, his head tilted back and his glowing eyes, that were currently hellhound gold, gazed up at my window.
I froze. Could he see me here in the darkness? I held my breath, my feet cemented in place.
Jagger didn’t look away. When his hound was in check, his eyes were a stunning shade of green but could also change to bright red when he was pissed off.
Step back.
But before I could, he crooked a finger at me.
Did he really want me to go down there?
He did it again.
I quickly stepped back. He did, he wanted me to go down there. Crap .
I swallowed, my mouth as dry as hell. Get it together . If the surly hound had something he wanted to tell me, at the very least, I owed it to him to go down there and listen.
I shoved my feet into my pink fluffy boots, and Boo stirred.
“I’ll be right back,” I said as I slid on the long yellow cardigan I used for a robe.
I shut Boo in before he could follow me, then headed downstairs.
My heart raced as I opened the front door and stepped outside for the first time since everything had happened.
Jagger watched me walk along the path, striding forward to meet me with that swagger of his turned all the way up to peak swag.
We both stopped with the tall iron gate between us at the end of the garden path. “Hey,” I said, feeling awkward and shy and…weird. I hadn’t stood face to face with him, talked to him, since that awful day, and even then, he’d been the only one talking.
“How you doing, Sutton?” he asked, taking in my face, before his gaze slid over my hair. He breathed in deeply through his nose before his gaze carried on down my body. His jaw tightened, as if he were seeing each wound under my cardigan, each slice carved into my body by a madman, all over again.
“Um…yeah, okay, I guess.” I could pretend I was tough, but he’d see right through it, and I’d never been the type of person who felt the need to pretend I was okay when I clearly wasn’t, and besides, he deserved the truth from me. “Nights are the hardest.”
He did that jaw-tightening thing again. “Yeah?”
I nodded, chewing my lip. Yep, this was totally awkward. I didn’t want to talk about that night, but I needed to say this. “I want to…to thank you, Jagger, for what you did for me that day and…and now. When I know you’re out here, I can actually sleep.”
His eyes, that had returned to moss green, reignited like a fire had been lit behind them. “You don’t need to thank me,” he said, then looked away for a moment, his chest expanding on a rough breath before he looked back.
The silence stretched out between us. I wrapped my cardigan around me tighter. “Was there, um…something you wanted to tell me?”
Table of Contents
- Page 1 (Reading here)
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