Page 23

I don’t know how long I sit in the shower, letting the scalding water pour over me, but my skin feels raw, like it might peel off entirely if I scrub just a little harder. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe if I can scrub hard enough, I’ll wash away all the filth, all the memories. All of him .

But no matter how hard I try, I can still feel Kade’s hands on me, still taste his vileness lingering in my mouth.

It’s like he’s a stain that won’t come off—clinging to my skin, to my soul.

I can’t get clean, no matter how many times I do this.

No matter how hot the water is. No matter how raw my skin becomes.

I’m tired. So damn tired of this fight. Every day, I wake hoping it’ll be different, hoping that I’ll feel… something other than his hands on me. Something other than this suffocating emptiness. But it’s always the same. The same memories. The same scars. The same shame.

I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t even know what I’m holding on for. Every time I catch my reflection, I see someone I don’t recognize. Someone Kade destroyed. Someone broken.

Tears sting my eyes, but I force them back. What’s the point of crying? No one can fix me. No one can change what happened. And no one can change what I’ve become.

A knock on the bathroom door startles me out of my thoughts, but I don’t respond. I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to talk. I just want to be left alone with my misery, as pathetic as that sounds. But then I hear her voice.

“Abbie? It’s me,” Azalea calls softly from the other side of the door.

I freeze, my grip tightening on the scourer in my hand. I don’t want her to see me like this. I don’t want her to see what’s left of me. She’s the queen now. And me? I’m just… nothing. A rogue. You. A broken girl who couldn’t even save herself.

The door creaks open, and I hear her steps as she enters. I should tell her to leave, to go back to whatever important duties she has as the queen, but I can’t find the words. The water keeps pounding down on me, masking the sound of my shallow breathing.

“Abbie?” she whispers again, closer this time.

A second later, she opens the shower screen, and I know she can see me now—curled in the corner, scrubbing myself like a woman possessed.

But they don’t see what I see, they don’t see the invisible hand prints I feel on my flesh, they don’t feel the cock choking me, or the one tearing me apart.

But I feel it all. Like it’s happening all over again.

She doesn’t say anything right away, just steps into the shower fully clothed, sitting down beside me on the wet tiles. The water quickly soaks her clothes, and steam billows around us, making it hard to see clearly.

I don’t know why, but her presence doesn’t irritate me the way it should. It’s Azalea, after all. She’s the only one who’s ever truly understood. The only one who’s ever really seen me, even when I didn’t want to be seen. Still, shame creeps up my neck, hot and suffocating.

“I can still feel his hands, Az,” I whisper hoarsely, not looking at her. “Still taste his vileness in my mouth.”

My voice sounds strange to my own ears—empty, hollow. Just like I feel inside. A tear slips down my cheek, disappearing into the flood of water swirling down the drain. My lip quivers, but I bite down on it hard.

Azalea doesn’t say anything at first. She just reaches over and takes my hand, her fingers lacing through mine, gently prying the scourer from my grip.

“Sometimes it’s okay to remember the dark parts, Abbie,” she says softly. “Just don’t stay there too long. Don’t let it trap you. Don’t give him the control he no longer has over you.”

I finally turn my head to look at her, and for a moment, we just sit there, the sound of the water filling the silence between us. I want to believe her. I want to believe that I can take back control. But how? How do you reclaim something that was stolen so completely?

“I don’t want control,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “I want to forget. I want to hate him and not still love him. How can you still love someone even after they do something like that? I should have listened to Gannon. I should have stayed.”

“It was the mate bond,” Azalea says gently, squeezing my hand. “That wasn’t really love, just some twisted version of what you perceived as love.”

I shake my head bitterly, fresh tears welling in my eyes. “I was naive. And stupid.”

“No, you wanted something more than what we’ve been given. And that’s not your fault.”

Her words are kind, but they don’t erase the guilt weighing me down.

I stayed with Kade, hoping he’d keep his promise, hoping he’d love like mates are supposed to, hoping that he’d give me back Tyson—the boy I raised, the boy I loved as my own.

I let myself believe in that hope, and it destroyed me.

“I can’t live like this, Az,” I whisper after a long moment. “I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to be the broken doll.”

Azalea stiffens beside me, but she doesn’t let go of my hand. “You’re not broken,” she says firmly, though her voice wavers slightly. “You’re my best friend. My sister. You are more than my life.”

I want to believe her. God, I want to believe her so badly. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m nothing more than a burden on everyone.

“No,” I murmur, my voice hollow. “We are nothing. We are rogue. We are whatever they let us be and nothing more.”

“Only if you let yourself be,” Azalea counters, her voice growing more determined. “You are not what he did to you, Abbie. You are not what the butcher did to you, and we are not what Mrs. Daley made us believe.”

But she is wrong. I am everything they said, everything they did, how does she not see that?

“You aren’t,” I say quietly. “You are a princess and soon-to-be queen. You are Azalea Ivy Landeena. I am rogue. I am nothing, and now everyone knows what they did. Everyone knows the dirty things I wish I could forget. I’m sick of them looking at me with pity.

Sick of them staring at me with disgust. Sick of being what he made me. ”

Azalea’s grip tightens on my hand. “Then be Abbie,” she says simply, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Be who you were before them. Be who you want to be.”

I shake my head slowly, resting it against the cold tile wall behind me.

“But I don’t know who she is,” I whisper.

“I don’t know how to be Abbie anymore.” I barely remember a time without pain, even the memories before the orphanage, before we lost our parents are grainy, so distant I can barely grasp the image of their faces anymore.

“What they did to you is not you,” Azalea says softly. “It’s a reflection of who they were. They’re gone, and you’re still breathing. They don’t get another chance, but you do. So take it.”

Her words stir something deep inside me—a flicker of something I can’t quite name. But it’s not enough to chase away the darkness.

“You sound like Gannon,” I say bitterly, wiping at my face. “But even he looks at me the same as everyone else. Even you do. I know you can’t help it, but…” My voice chokes off, and I feel my whole body shaking. “I’m tired, Az. So tired of being what they made me.”

Azalea pulls me into a hug, her arms warm and steady around me.

“I don’t look at you with pity, Abbie,” she whispers.

“I see you. I see my best friend, my sister. The girl I jumped with. The girl who kept me going when she wanted to give up herself. You are not giving up. More than my life, Abbie. I’m right here, and you are staying right here with me.

You go, I go. So which is it? Are you jumping?

Because if you are, I’m jumping with you. ”

“You have a mate and are queen, so don’t say that. I am nothing compared to you,” I tell her. She escaped I never did, and now I am just holding her back in a past she never belonged in.

“You are everything to me. You always have been. My title doesn’t change that. And you have Gannon and will be my Beta. So don’t tell me you are nothing because the only reason I am still here for any of this, is because of you,” she snaps at me.

I chuckle and shake my head before leaning my head against the tiled wall. “I am a werewolf. You are a Lycan, I can’t be your Beta, and I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a Beta.”

“You think I know how to be queen?” She laughs, sitting up to look at me.

“I can’t even read. But we have people here who will help us. I have Kyson. You have Gannon, and me.”

“Yeah, until he tosses me aside when I can’t give him what he wants.” I know he will, I can’t be his mate, I can barely handle his touch, he’ll get bored of me, toss me away when he realizes I am useless to him.

“He wants to change you and mark you. He isn’t going anywhere. And even if he does, I am still right here,” Azalea tells me.

“You would change me?” I ask.

“Wouldn’t think twice about it! But we may have to ask how though, because I am not sure how to,” she chuckles, and so do I before my smile falls.

“Who would have thought freedom would be worse than the chains that restricted us,” I whisper. How I’ve longed for freedom in death, only to truly have freedom and still wish for the other kind.

“Freedom isn’t something given, Abbie. It’s a mindset. Only we can free ourselves,” Azalea tells me and my eyes meet hers.

“Do you feel free?” I ask her, and she sighs.

“I don’t know. I know we aren’t the orphan rogues anymore. I don’t know who I am, either, but I am determined to find out. And I prefer we find out together,” she replies.

“More than my life,” I whisper our old mantra.

“More than my life,” she replies without hesitation, and I know she means every word, she always has.

“More than my life,” Gannon’s deep voice says, making us both jump. Neither of us heard him come in, and Azalea swipes a hand down the glass to find him leaning against the sink basin.

“Gannon?” I sigh heavily, shaking my head. “How long have you been there?”