Page 44 of Beautifully Damned (Sinful Fates #2)

Ayla

Teeth tear through my skin. The pressure and ripping turn my body into fire and glass. I can’t think, can’t breathe. Pain blooms in every nerve until it swallows thought. I am being eaten alive.

Somewhere in the chaos, my mind reaches for Roman. But the world gives me nothing back.

The agony is too much. I feel myself slipping under, as though I’m sinking in black water, lungs locked. My vision folds in on itself, and time unravels. My life plays in fragments.

I see the truth clearly for the first time.

I was loved, yes, but never chosen. My mother loved me, but never enough to stop abusing her sleeping pills.

My father loved me enough to keep me alive, but not enough to keep me safe.

Emir… he said he loved me, yet his fantasy dragged me toward death.

There is no running from this world, and he knows it best.

My parents’ love was always conditional. The moment I crossed the invisible line and ended up in Roman’s bed, they carved me out of their lives.

Roman… he was never even part of that list. He let me see pieces of him no one else touched. Told me secrets. Made me feel cared for. For a moment, I thought he was human with me. But he can’t love. Roman Volkov can be fascinated. He can be consumed. But he cannot love.

Pain drags me back under. This must be the end. Even if it is, maybe it’s a release. Dying means I don’t have to keep forgiving people who never gave a damn. It means I stop carrying the weight of loving people more than they ever loved me.

Heat rolls through my body again, a savage heat, as though flames are being drawn across my skin. My mouth opens, and the scream that’s been building finally bursts out.

The cold vanishes. Warmth seeps in. Gentle, steady, coaxing my mind back to the surface. There’s a voice in the haze. My name. Over and over, as if the person saying it is trying to pull my soul back into my body.

My eyelids flutter open.

Roman’s face looms over me, and I’m in my bedroom. He looks feral, and for a moment, I wonder if I’m still trapped in the nightmare.

I cough when I try to speak. Roman moves so fast he nearly sends the water glass crashing to the floor. I try to take it from him, but he makes a low sound in his throat and holds it steady for me. Each swallow stings, but I drink until I can’t anymore.

He takes the cup away. I expect him to snarl, to be livid that I tried to run and take away his spoil of war. Instead, his arms come around me. He crushes me to him, burying his face in my hair.

“Why the hell would you do that? Don’t you ever do that again,” his voice breaks. “You hear me? Never. I don’t even know what I’d do if—” He cuts himself off, breath ragged. “Never again.”

I don’t want to give him the comfort he doesn’t deserve. But my arms betray me, winding around his back. He holds me so tightly it hurts, as though he’s afraid I’ll vanish.

He pulls back, sweeping my hair from my face, scanning every inch of me. My arms are bruised, my thigh wrapped in a thick bandage stained through with blood. An IV drips beside me. His hands roam over me again, as if making sure the doctors didn’t miss an injury.

His forehead presses to my stomach. His voice slips into Russian. I catch fragments. God. Please. Thank you.

The devil is praying .

After long minutes of Russian words I don’t understand, he lifts his head from my stomach.

“Where does it hurt? Tell me right now,” he asks.

“Roman, I’m—”

“Don’t say you’re fine,” he snaps. “You were on the ground bleeding. Those dogs—” His jaw flexes hard, his throat bobbing. “You could’ve…” He doesn’t finish.

I try to piece together why his eyes look glassy. This isn’t the man who spits venom when he’s upset, who looks straight through me when he’s done with me. This is someone I don’t recognize.

“Don’t ever run from me again,” he orders.

My pulse hammers.

“If I hadn’t found you… If those beautiful eyes didn’t open again…” His eyes are crazed, his pupils darting back and forth, studying every inch of my face. “You would’ve left behind an absolute monster.”

My ribs ache, my thigh throbs under the bandages, and my mind spins trying to reconcile this man—his voice breaking, his hands trembling—with the Roman Volkov I know.

The Roman I know doesn’t pray. The Roman I know doesn’t panic. But I do know this: he doesn’t get to decide he loves me only when my blood is drying on the ground.