.
Two weeks after her rescue.
I’M IN PROVERBIAL hell.
I’d been held against my will for so long before they left me for dead and dumped me, but I’ve gone from one set of captors to another. I’ve seen shit that I never thought possible, and I’ve been through shit I can’t even get my head around right now.
I’ve been saved, and now I’m apparently free.
Oh, but I can’t leave because it isn’t safe.
I want to run. A million fucking miles from here. To where, I’m not sure, but I want to be as far away from this freak show as possible. Oh, but there’s a catch. I’m an addict. Yeah, that’s right, I’m a fucking addict. And having this particular addiction means I can’t go anywhere even if I wanted to. They hold all the cards. Me, I’m just existing. My only way out is death, and that’s what I have to work on because I sure as shit am not sticking around for this shit show.
The worst thing about it is no-one will be missing me. I bounced around in the foster care system as a kid. I was not what they called ‘adoptable’, so I was passed from home to home. Some were good—some weren’t. It was just what it was, and I dealt with it. I never complained, and I was always really well behaved. I achieved at school too because I wasn’t going to live that life forever, I promised myself that. And that’s how I ended up at university. I worked my arse off to get the grades I needed. I didn’t bother with boys, and I didn’t bother with friends until I got here. My only real friend, I guess, had been Devon. I say had because that friendship is fucking done. The mere thought of her boils my blood right now. I hate her. I hate this place, and I hate everything about it. Them too. Whatever they are—because they aren’t human.
I thought I was hallucinating when I was taken. Drugged up to a point where I was imagining things. I even thought that I’d wake up in my dorm room after a crazy-arse dream, but it didn’t happen. The nightmare was real, and so were the freaks that had taken me. I had just started my life and was celebrating my hard work. And then bam. It was all gone. Kidnapped, raped, beaten, left for dead, saved, and locked up again. I mean, as if I didn’t have it hard enough to start with. Who said life was fair though huh? Not for me anyway.
They tell me I’m safe here. That no one will hurt me again, and I’d like to believe it, believe Brad. He says they are different from those that hurt me.
Brad. He’s my addiction. Not him exactly, but his blood. I need it every damn day just to be able to get out of bed. I’m not a sicko. I don’t drink it or anything. No, I have it jacked straight into my veins. I hate that I need it. Hate that I look forward to having it. Hate that it makes me feel amazing. I’ve seen druggies all my life and never had any sympathy—now I guess I’m just the same. It’s Brad’s room that I’m in too. He’s always talking about stupid shit when he’s left to babysit me. He’ll talk, even though I pretend to be asleep so I can ignore him. But it doesn’t stop him. He has a sense of humour, and if we’d met under different circumstances—and I didn’t know he was some kind of beast from hell—I’d find him amusing. Funny even. But I’d been through enough at the hands of those weird bastards not to find anything even remotely funny ever again. I wish I’d just died. It would have been easier. What the fuck is the point of a life like this?
I’m still in a lot of pain, and I can’t sleep without reliving the nightmares. Even when I’m awake, I see shit. Could be the drugs they have pumping into me, but I’m guessing without them, I’d be in a whole lot more pain. So I keep quiet and let the woman, Zoe, do her stuff. I’ve also heard them talking out on the landing about the alpha. He says I’m not allowed to stay alive because I know too much about them. I’m hoping he hurries up and kills me already, but I know that Devon and her man are arguing for me to stay. I’ve been here for around two weeks I think. I watched as Devon killed the woman who sold us out. I watched the whole thing and felt nothing. No emotion. Even though I know deep down that she was the real reason I was taken. She’s the one that told them to take me—to get Devon to talk. I know this, and yet I still can’t stomach being around Devon.
‘You have Devon to thank for this,’ my captors would say to me, over and over when they—
I can’t go there not now. I’m badly messed up. I have injuries all down my right side. Burns from my ear, which is barely there—just a little bit of mangled skin. My hair just behind it is gone, and the burn stretches down the back of my neck and shoulder, down to my elbow. I have another patch just above my hip and another just under my right boob. It’s awful—like Freddy Kruger skin. It still itches too. My leg and hip were broken, but the blood heals me because they aren’t human. They are werewolves, shifters, or whatever. They heal really fast, which is why they gave me Brad’s blood to try and save my life. And it worked, except, because my body doesn’t produce that blood, I now have to have it every day.
Sometimes I feel grateful to be alive. When the blood kicks in, I’m even grateful that they saved me. But most days, and especially nights, I just want to end it all.