Page 21 of Mated To The King’s Gamma (Lycan Luna: Abbie & Gannon #3)
We hadn’t eaten in three days. Mrs. Daley used to make us share whatever scraps were left over.
There was nothing left over for the last three days, and I knew Azalea wouldn’t last much longer.
She was fainting frequently, and each time Mrs. Daley caught her, she accused her of slacking and whipped her more.
She couldn’t handle much more; she needed food and time to heal.
“You just need to help him stack the freezers. If you do, I will let you eat with the rest of the children tonight. It's a reward. I know you girls have been working hard today.”
“You’ll let us eat?”
“Of course,” she smiled. I swallowed, glancing at the basement door where the freezers were kept.
“It will only take you a few minutes. He has already put half of it down there,” she told me, and a shiver ran up my spine. I ignored it.
I shouldn’t have.
“So chop, chop, then you can prepare dinner and eat with the rest of them,” Mrs. Daley said.
So I helped. I rushed around, helping carry the meat down, taking the last box down, and setting it in the freezer.
I turned toward the stairs just as Doyle sauntered down them.
I stepped aside to let him pass with the chicken he had, but he didn’t.
“Excuse me,” I murmured, keeping my gaze on the floor. He cleared his throat, and I saw Mrs. Daley close the basement door—my heartbeat like a drum in my chest before I heard the TV turn up.
Too loud.
The butcher reached for me, and I shrieked at the look on his face before he grabbed my hair, shoving me toward the back of the basement where the freezers were.
“I want to leave, you’re scaring me,” I told him, trying to pass him. Then he grabbed my hair, bending me over the freezer as I struggled and kicked. I almost froze in fear when I felt his breath on the back of my neck as he pinned me down.
His calloused fingers skimmed my thighs as he gripped my tunic and yanked at it, tearing the bottom open.
Then the sting of my flesh as he ripped my underwear down and felt the warmth of my blood as it cascaded down my legs when he shoved his way inside me and made me scream.
His hand closed over my mouth to muffle me.
His scent was putrid, like rotting meat and steel, as I choked on the breath stolen by the pain.
“I have waited so long for this!” he groaned, using his other hand to hold my head against the cold freezer top. The taste of his fingers as he muffled my screams of agony made me gag and retch.
The voices above us from the TV grew louder, and I knew Mrs. Daley turned it up so the kids wouldn’t hear me.
The tune that played at the start of it, I would never forget.
It taunted me as I tried to focus on it instead of the agony tearing up my backside as he raped me.
It felt like it stretched on for hours before he was finally done.
I remained frozen in place, staring at the wall covered in cobwebs, as I heard him zip his pants before he pressed his lips to my cheek.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Good, girl, hopefully by next week you’ll be ready for round two,” he purred before I listened to his footsteps climb the stairs.
I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear, paralyzed with the humiliation I felt as my blood streamed down my legs.
I wanted it to stop when I noticed the rope hanging on the wall.
My hands shook as I reached for it and tossed it over the banister above before dragging a chair over to it and making a noose.
He would come back for me. He would come back. So I slipped it over my head.
I wouldn’t let him do that again. Tears streamed down my face. The chair wobbled and I am about to take a step off when I hear the door open. Fear momentarily paralyzes me again, wondering if he returned when I saw her.
Azalea had stepped into the basement, and her eyes roamed over me and widened in horror as they took in my torn tunic, my thighs covered in blood. Then the rope around my neck.
“Abbie,” she had whispered, taking a step toward me but I shook my head, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t live like that.
“Go, Ivy,” I sobbed, my shoulders shaking with each breath I took as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Not without you,” she choked. I shook my head, and she moved closer before peering around the room. She moved toward a chair and placed it next to mine. She climbed up on it and loosened the noose, slipping her head in beside mine.
“More than my life. Mine isn’t worth living if you aren’t in it. If you go, we go together because I am not without you,” she told me.
We both jumped, but the rope didn’t hold our weight. I felt the burn of the rope as it slashed through my neck, and our heads clanged together before we hit the floor.
“Stop!” Azalea commands.
The word cuts through the darkness, and I gasp, my body jerking as I am ripped from the memory.
The warmth of the present comes rushing back—Azalea beside me, her hands pressing against my temples.
“Enough,” she whispers.
I blinked rapidly, my vision hazy, and suddenly, the walls around me change.
The darkness is gone.
The basement melted away, replaced by something softer. Something new.
Playing in the sun when our parents were with us, painting with the children, the apple fight, her smiling face, and as my memories began to paint the walls: a small cottage with wildflowers and pebble footpaths and my mother.
Granny's house. Azalea watches herself in the memory.
I can see her confusion. Does she still not remember?
Tile by tile, she helps build the walls up that kept me going, kept me strong, the little things worth fighting for until the blood evaporated, the bathroom was clean, and it was just us.
“More than my life,” she whispers to me.
“How are you doing this?” I ask as tears brim and spill from my eyes.
“I have no idea,” she chokes, clearly shocked.
“But it’s time you let it go,” she tells me.
“How?”
“By letting me replace the feeling behind it.” I’m confused by her words, yet I trust her completely.
“You can do that?” I ask, glancing around at all my memories.
“I don’t know, but I feel like I can,” she says, holding up her hand. It glows subtly.
She steps closer to the walls of my mind, and I watch. “What are you doing?”
“Replacing them.”
She touches one of Mrs Daley and it dissolves, barely visible on my wall of filed memories before it glows.
Suddenly, I see Azalea and me as kids, huddled together under a torn blanket in the attic, whispering stories to each other, making up grand adventures to escape the hell we lived in.
She moves to the next, replacing one of Kade’s with Gannon, holding my hands, and then to the lake for the second time, teaching me how to swim.
His voice is patient, his hands steady. “I won’t let you go, Abbie. Just trust me.”
I see Tyson, his tiny fingers tugging at my sleeve, his wide eyes filled with love as he signed, Momma safe? when he first returned to me.
Each memory replaced the horrors in my mind, one by one. The past was still there, lingering, but it was pushed back by something stronger. I want to ask how, and she must feel the question I want to ask.
“I’m reinforcing these memories and overriding the others; I’m giving you something to live for,” she whispers, pressing her hands to the tiles. We are flooded with white light as each bad memory glows at once.
Azalea smiles, though tears fill her eyes as she is forced to live through each of mine all at once, enduring my memories as if they are her own before replacing them.
I swallow hard, my hands trembling.
“It’s time you let it go,” she whispers.
I want to.
I need to.
She reaches out again, pressing her palm against the memory in my mind.
And this time, instead of darkness?—
I let the light in.
I gasp, being thrown back into the real world, and I am shocked to find her hands in the same place, one on each side of my head.
I blink, the haze lifting.
My eyes met hers.
For the first time in what feels like forever, I feel light.
I don’t understand what she has done.
I don’t understand how she did it.
But the weight in my chest isn’t as heavy.
“More than my life,” Ivy whispers.
“Always more,” I reply when I see something dribble down over her lip.
“Azzy?” I frown, my hand reaching toward her face when her eyes roll into the back of her head.