Darius growled before reaching down and grabbing my hair. He jerked my head back painfully, but I couldn’t even fight toloosen his grip. My entire body felt like a dead weight. He sneered at me, looking me over.
“Fucking disgusting,” he said, letting me go and shoving me against the brick wall. My back hit the wall so hard it knocked the air from my lungs in one short wheeze.
“Just let me go. You don’t even want me, so why keep me?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“You’re weak. Eat, or I will force-feed you,” he said, kicking the plate toward me. It resembled toast, only white with no color, but it was as stiff as toast. I turned my face away, looking back at the brick wall.
“I am going to give you three seconds, or I will make you eat,” he said coldly. “One… two… three…”
I glared at him—a big mistake when his foot came down my shin. I screamed. The sound echoed off the walls and made my ears ring as the bone broke under the impact.
Pain radiated up my leg, and I blinked back tears while staring at his foot on my leg, his foot crushing it still as I panted. He counted slowly again, and I could only gasp and stare at him in horror at what he had done.
His face was expressionless, like hurting me meant nothing to him. I supposed it did mean nothing, or he wouldn’t be doing it.
“One… two… three…” He twisted his foot, earning another scream from me, yet I was too weak to stop him, and my magic was all but gone; I highly doubted he would give me any to renew mine.
“Stop! Stop! Stop, Darius!” My scream was filled with agony, and I tried to clutch my aching leg, only for him to stomp on my hand. I heard the sickening crack of my three middle fingers. Bile rose in my throat before I threw up the emptiness of my stomach. Acid burned my throat while I gasped for air as bile spilled from my lips onto the ground beside me.
He removed his foot off my hand, and I clutched it to my chest when the door opened behind him. My entire body trembled, and Darius stepped away from me, looking toward whoever entered. The pressure on my leg faded, but it was bent inward in the middle. Just moving caused me pain, and my blood coated the floor beneath it. The bone jutted out of my skin, and I fought the urge to throw up again at the gruesome sight.
I could only stare at my leg in horror at what he had done. The pain receded, and I knew I was in shock. I welcomed the shock, anything to replace the pain, but I knew it would wear off any minute, and it did.
“What’s going on?” asked Tobias, making me look toward him, but I couldn’t see him, with Darius blocking my view.
“She wouldn’t eat. I was making her,” Darius said simply as if he did this sort of thing every day, and it was merely some annoying chore to him.
“Just leave her be. Hopefully, she dies. We don’t need her,” Tobias said coldly, and it was like a dagger in my chest. Tobias stepped to the side and glanced at me with an expressionless face. His eyes darted to my leg and the blood pooled below it. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, and his eyes went to mine fleetingly before he turned his attention back to Darius.
Darius grunted but added nothing else before closing my cell door and leaving me as he followed Tobias. The moment the steel door shut, I fell apart; uncontrollable sobs wracked my body, causing more pain as the floodgates opened. I could no longer contain it.
My hand shook as I tried to use the one that wasn’t broken to pull my pant leg up, the fabric catching on the jutted-out bone. Pain stole my breath away, and I slumped back, trying to breathe through it as my leg throbbed. Tears trekked down my cheeks. He broke it; he broke my leg and hand and just left me here.
“Why?” I whispered to no one. Was my life always going to be a battle, some disaster? Did the fates think I was indestructible? Because if they did, they were wrong. Gosh, how they were wrong.
Pairing me with these monsters was just cruel. I knew I would never survive them, and I had been asking why ever since their mark appeared on my wrist. The wrist attached to the hand Darius had just broken.I should have chosen death.
I couldn’t fathom how they could hate me so much. I hated them for a good reason, yet I would never inflict this on anyone, never hurt them like Darius just did. I stared down at my leg, hoping it would go numb like the rest of me.No such luck. Hadn’t they taken enough from me? What did they want? They clearly hated me, so why keep me trapped here?
Chapter 6
Ididn’t know what timeit was when the door opened again, but I cringed when it did. Fear coursed through me, making my eyes dart to it. I was worried Darius had returned to inflict more injury on me. My leg needed to be set back into place, and I needed a doctor. Without my mates, I had no way of fixing it myself with one hand, and I doubted I could, anyway. My pain threshold wasn’t the highest.
Relief flooded me when I realized it wasn’t him. It was my usual morning visitor. He walked in, and I watched him as he tossed the water bottle through the bars. It landed at my feet and bumped my foot. I didn’t even feel it, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing because I wasn’t in pain or a bad thing.
“Aleera, please just—” He stopped, his eyes going to the odd angle of my leg and my blood that had frozen on the floor beneath it. His eyes moved to mine before going to the hand still held to my chest. I knew how gross it looked; my fingers were swollen and black, and they still hurt. However, my leg was numb, and I prayed it didn’t mean something terrible.
“Darius did that?” he questioned, and I just looked away from him. He appeared shocked. Why he thought better of him wasbeyond me. All the rumors about his cruelty had turned out to be accurate, and to think that I’d tried to convince myself over the years that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Perhaps I could get past him killing my parents. Thankfully, I never gave in to the hopelessness of living out there and surviving. If I had, I would have been here over four days, and if this was what four days would bring me, just what was I truly in store for and could I survive it?
The door swung open and banged on the bars, and I looked over at the man. He cursed but hesitated for a second before walking over to me with his eyes trained on me like he thought I would do something. He glanced at the door behind him, and I watched as he kneeled beside me. He rolled my pant leg up. His eyes darted to me like he was expecting me to cry out at the movement of my leg, but I felt nothing when I saw his hands move toward my leg where the bone poked out of my skin.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“I can’t leave you like this,” he said. He almost looked guilty, like he was the one who’d done this to me.
“Why do you care?” I muttered, looking away from him.