Page 95 of Broken Souls

Screaming, I jump to my feet and slam a fist in the wall. Then I clutch my head in both my hands and curl inwards on another scream.

I only have myself to blame for this. I told him to go get his dick wet, but I was pissed off and hurt, and at the time, it seemed like a good idea to give myself another reason to hate him. Another sin to remember so I don’t give in to his attentions, no matter how intense they get.

“I don’t want him back,” I rasp as I squeeze my head in my hands. “I don’t care what he does with her.”

Tears burn my throat, calling me a fucking liar.

So I press my hand to my neck and think about how he raped me last night. How he bit me, nearly killed me. How I lay in his arms, bleeding out, feeling like a lamb to be killed for his substance. My life under his.

Not an equal.

Just a breedmare to be used and discarded.

I hold on to those feelings, use them to regain control of my breathing, to grab both sides of my heart and stop it from ripping apart completely. I can do this. I can survive this marriage. I can watch him take mistress after mistress so he doesn’t go without sex, and I can learn not to give a damn. It’ll take time for the pain to stop, but eventually it will.

His cock slides into her hot, wet pussy. He’s groaning in her ear. “Fuck, baby. You feel so damn good.”

Digging my nails into my neck, I force those thoughts to keep going. To sear those images in my mind so I will never forgive him. Never waver even when he looks at me like my silence is killing him. When I can feel his pain ricocheting inside me, making it hard to breathe as it comes down the bond I don’t want.

A bond, that for some reason, he doesn’t believe in.

That thought cuts through my pain, a question that needs an answer, and I swallow hard as it rides to the forefront of my mind. My hand presses to my stomach as I breathe.

Why can’t Varius feel it? Is it because of what he is?

A monster from the Shadow Domain.

My mind flickers to the bat-snake Sau pulled out of her shadows. Is he the same species? Or something different? Does he have another form he can change into? My heart plummets into my stomach. Or did Sau change him in order to keep him as her son? To pass him off as Caden’s? Is that why their father cursed her with his dying breath?

That knot grows. As does that feeling of sickness as so many things start to make sense. The story about her saving Varius as a child… Was part of it true? But instead of his father having hurt their firstborn, was it her? After waking up from a nightmare, did she accidentally kill him, then in her grief, replace him with a monster she spelled to look like their child so no one would know?

Does Varius even know?

He said he didn’t remember a thing about what he did to me last night, and I felt his anger, his horror. I believe him, so is it part of his curse? Keep him in the dark so he doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t feel like the monster he is?

Acid burning my throat, I press a hand to my stomach.

Is the thing inside me likehim?

Oh my gods.Is it going to pop out of my stomach like inAliens? Or worse inSpace Balls?

Shit. Am I going to have to drink blood?

My breath catching, I try to keep control of my rising panic. But I don’t want to drink blood! I like my steaks well done. And I especially don’t want a fucking monster baby popping out of my uterus and starting to dance and sing “Hello, My Baby” while I’m lying in my own intestines!

Fuck. Micha. Breathe.

Fuck breathing! I need answers!

Jerking my head towards the door, I run out of it, seeking Sau. I find her in the hall where I fought her monster. She’s sitting with it, one hand on its scaly hide, right below where its head used to be before I turned it into a pile of ash. She’s singing softly to it, her voice so godsdamn raw, and for a moment, I hesitate.

Despite all the shit she’s put me through, she is clearly grieving. A mother who’s lost a child. Pain etched in every crease of her face. In the sagging of her shoulders. In the tiredness of her aura. She is in agony as she says goodbye. I killed her baby, and she saved mine.

My heart in my throat, I shift awkwardly on my feet. “It fought well,” I finally say as I approach.

“She shouldn’t have died,” she replies softly, not looking at me, her hand stroking the blackened scales.

“I –”