Page 26

Eve~

I knew well that I was tempting the devil with my actions. I could feel the heat radiating off him in waves, and he kept me pinned. I smiled, an action that did not hold joy. Just be done with it.

If I had been told five years ago that I would be here, baiting a man into ending my life, I would have been appalled.

I would have never believed it. Yet here I was, doing it.

He just had to snap, just once, and I would be done with this.

I could not keep living like this. From one hell to another, from one monster to another. I was not strong enough.

I recalled the little scars that had littered my body before the Deltas concealed them with their abilities. Little markings inflicted by me. There had been a clear purpose, but again and again, I was brought back from the brink. They needed me alive. I was useful to them.

I remembered each nightmare, each vivid and horrifying detail. And then there were the visions that would attack me the moment I smelled blood. I was not safe anywhere—in reality, in my sleep, or in my own mind. I could feel my will to live draining with each new challenge.

I could not continue to live like this. What would happen after he was done with me?

Which hell would I be sent to next? But just as everything had been taken from me, the freedom to end what belonged to me was taken away.

My life was the only thing that belonged to me, yet again, I was not allowed to take it.

I had men stationed by my room, each with a live feed of the space I was kept in. Even the bathroom had a camera. I had lost my dignity and my privacy. What more was left to be taken?

So, I stared the Lycan king right in the eye, my skin crawling with our proximity as I taunted him. "Come on, your highness."

His face was a mask of pure rage as he glared down at me. What happened next was a blur. He released my hands.

His fist came crashing into the wall beside my face, the sound of splintering plaster ringing through the room as his knuckles buried themselves deep into the surface.

The force of the blow made the walls tremble, and dust fell in a slow cascade over my shoulders.

I didn’t flinch. Not even as the blood began to drip from his fist, smearing the white surface in a bright, angry crimson.

But then the scent hit me—blood, fresh and thick. My body tensed. I could feel it crawling up my nostrils, cold, metallic, suffocating. And then it started.

The first scream cut through the air, shrill and agonized.

I blinked, and suddenly I wasn’t in the room anymore.

I was back *there.* The flashes came fast—faces contorted in horror, hands covered in blood, bodies writhing, tearing apart.

The beast, its eyes glowing red, dripping with malice and death, looming over them all. Over me.

I gasped, my lungs struggling to pull in air as the visions slammed into me one after the other.

Blood. Screaming. The beast. Every flash sharper than the last. I clutched my chest, my heart pounding, breaths coming too fast, too shallow.

The walls around me closed in, and it felt like my mind was being ripped apart.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t escape. Not from the blood, not from the screams, not from the monster inside me.

I pushed back against the wall, my vision swimming, my body trembling uncontrollably. "No, no, no…" I whispered, trying to force the images away, but they kept coming. Faster. Louder. More vicious.

Suddenly, I was on the floor, my knees buckling under the weight of the panic clawing through my chest. The smell of blood was everywhere, drowning me, wrapping around me like a vice.

The beast’s face, monstrous and all-consuming, filled my mind, and I felt it—its teeth sinking into flesh, its claws tearing through bone.

And then the screams—the endless screams.

I clawed at my throat, trying to breathe, to find some scrap of air in this madness. But there was nothing. Just blood and terror.

Somewhere in the haze, I heard his voice. "Princess." It sounded far away, distant, like I was submerged in deep water. His hands were on me, strong, but they felt like iron weights pressing down on my skin, making it worse. "Breathe. You need to breathe."

I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop the flashes, the chaos, the feeling of drowning in a sea of blood and screams.

He gripped my shoulders, his voice firmer now, cutting through the panic like a lifeline. "Look at me, princess. Breathe."

I tried. I tried to focus, to pull myself out of the nightmare, but the beast… it wouldn’t leave.

"You’re here," he said, his grip tightening as his voice softened, an unfamiliar gentleness threading through it. "You’re not there. You’re here with me."

I blinked, my vision slowly clearing, the images fading to a distant murmur. I could feel the floor beneath me, the warmth of his hands, and the steadiness of his breath. The beast receded, the blood and screams dissipating like a fog lifting from my mind.

I was still shaking, my breaths still shallow, but I was here. I was… here.

His hands loosened on my shoulders, and I looked up at him, my chest still tight, but the panic no longer suffocating. His face was no longer filled with rage, but something else—something I couldn’t decipher.

"You think I’m going to let you break that easily?

" His voice was low, still rough around the edges, but there was something in his eyes.

Not sympathy, not pity—but something like understanding.

It hit me like a punch to the gut. Neither the guards nor the scientists at the lab had deemed to look at me that way.

It was foreign, so foreign that I could only stare up at him.

I swallowed hard, the taste of fear still thick in my mouth. I didn’t know what to say, my body still trembling, my mind still spinning. All I could do was try to catch my breath, try to hold on to the thin thread of reality that remained.

But one thing was clear—he wasn’t going to let me go. Especially not with the look in his eyes now as he carried me back to bed. He didn’t throw me; he laid me down gently, his hand already healed. Not even a bruise remained.

Without another word, he left the room.

I was left wondering his words. "You are not there, you are here with me."