“Your wife is suffering from hyperthermia, and we’re trying to get her blood sugar levels up as well as stabilize her heart rate. She has wounds on numerous parts of her body…” The female doctor purses her lips and sighs heavily before continuing. “There is also evidence she has experienced tremendous sexual assault, Mr. Walker. And,” she pauses and swallows. “You wife has also suffered a miscarriage. I’m so very sorry.”

A baby? Avery was pregnant? With my son, or daughter?

And why the fuck is she sorry?

She isn’t really sorry.

There is only one person who will be sorry.

I nod, not giving her a verbal reply before I hesitantly start to open the door that will lead me back to my wife.

I flinch when the doctor wraps her fingers gently around my wrist to stop me. “I need you to be prepared for how much Avery has suffered. It may take her a while to recover from this. Both physically and emotionally.”

Silently, I nod once again.

“If there’s anything you need, or if I can put you in touch with a support group that can help both you and your wife then, please, come and find me.”

She walks away when I don’t respond, the swish of her white coat the only sound in the otherwise vacant corridor.

My hand hovers over the door handle. I’m not even sure I want to step through. Whatever is in this room will change my life forever. I’m doubtful as to whether I’m even strong enough to survive what’s to come.

As the door opens further, I see the back of a nurse as she busies herself with charts. Her backside is round and full, and cowardly, I use the attention it gives me to prevent myself from entering further.

The beeping sound is the first thing I hear, the regular rhythm of it alerting me to the fact that Avery is still breathing at least. More sounds swallow the quiet, and I use them to concentrate on when I finally step inside.

I almost dare not look. And when I do I’m not remotely prepared for what greets me.

Avery’s body is entirely shrouded in a silver blanket, and there are more tubes and wires threaded into her body than I dare count.

Scorch had offered to come with me, and with hindsight I know I should have allowed him. But, I hadn’t realized exactly what was waiting for me.

I hold on to the wall for support when my legs start to tremble.

“Mr. Walker.” The nurse’s voice is faintly muffled alongside the humming in my ears. Her touch is gentle as she helps me over to a chair that’s sat beside Avery’s bed.

The closer I get the more horrifying the sight of her becomes.

Her face is so swollen she’s no longer recognizable as my Princess. Her right eye is so puffy there doesn’t appear to be an eyeball in the there. Her left ear has a section of the lobe missing, and the shell of her ear is edged with teeth marks.

Luckily, I can’t see the rest of her body, the blanket veiling what I don’t want to see.

Bile burns my throat, and I fling myself out of the chair and rush into the room’s private bathroom. My retches are loud, and I wince when I know the nurse is listening to the sounds of my cowardice hit the bottom of the toilet.

Sweat beads on my brow with the force of vomiting, and I grip the seat to stop myself from capsizing.

The grief that takes over every thought in my head is just selfish heartache. Although I dread to think what Avery has been through, I can’t help but believe ignorantly of how this will affect my life, not hers.

I’m not strong enough to be the rock she will need. The thought of that cunt touching her is self-torturous, and I don’t want to know. I don’t want to accept what he’s done to her. If I don’t think about it, then it hasn’t happened.

She will still be the same woman when she wakes up. She’ll smile at me in the same way. She’ll love me the way she’s always loved me. She’ll still come apart under my touch, beg me to help her fly. In spite of everything, she’ll still look at me with the same adoring look as she always has.

More vomit splashes the toilet bowl. I can’t seem to stop. Misery takes on a physical existence as I release more and more pain. I don’t want to feel it, I don’t want the agony in my heart to ache so much, and I purge it from my body.

It’s almost as if my brain can’t cope with what lays in the room behind me, and my body is giving me an excuse to stay away as long as is possible.

I’ve never felt so weak, so defeated by the act of another, but what Axe has done to Avery will batter us both for a very long time.

* * *

It’s almost dark when Avery opens her eyes – or rather her one, good eye. I’d been dozing, the gloom of the encroaching night laying heavy in the room and teasing exhaustion to win its battle on my eyes. The feel of her hand faintly trembling in mine jolts me awake, and I gasp when I find her looking at me.

For a moment I don’t understand where I am, and it takes the sight of Avery’s beaten face to gruesomely remind me, the broken, purple skin slapping me into consciousness.

“Princess?”

She’s staring at me, but it’s a black void that looks at me through her eyes, the lack of emotion or expression making me sit up straighter and physically flinch.

“Baby?”

Her vacant stare has me wondering if she’s lost her memory because it seems as though she doesn’t recognize me. The way she used to look at me is now gone, her adoring gaze now buried beneath a bleak and unnatural starkness. There’s now a coldness in the depths of her once warm eyes, and it’s like she is staring at a stranger.

“Princess? How are you feeling?”

“Don’t call me that.” She croaks out. Her voice sounds odd, deep and scratchy.

I don’t know what to do, what to say to her. I’ve never been lost for words, but my mind is filled with nothing but horror and fear as I silently beg her to say something.

But when she speaks next, I want her to be silent.

“Go home, Slade. Leave me alone.”

“I can’t baby, I’ve been going out of my mind searching for you.”

“Well, you didn’t find me. Just leave me alone,” she begs.

Selfishly I can’t. I reach for her hand that she’s pulled from my palm, but she shakes her head and flinches. Water falls from her eyes.

“Please, leave me alone. Don’t look at me. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Pain tears through me as though she’s physically punched me in the gut. But, I know she doesn’t mean it. She’s just anguishing over what I’ll think of her. It’s a natural thing when you love someone, the need to protect their feelings even if it means burying your own.

“What? Of course I’m not going to leave you.”

The previous void in her eyes is swallowed by a blazing fury, licks of fire dancing in a swirl of hatred. Her lip curls and she glares at me with so much vitriol I can almost taste its bitterness.

“Get the fuck away from me.” She bellows, her voice breaking. “You did this! You and your fucking family. Get out!” she demands pointing to the door. One of the wires in her hand rips free and blood splatters the foil blanket covering her.

I can’t move. My body is struck frozen as I struggle to draw breath in the dense smog of revulsion spilling from her.

“GET OUT!”

Her screams bring a flurry of doctors and nurses, the room suddenly filled with a mass of white coats and grey uniforms.

The chair tips over behind me when I stumble backwards, each vehement scream that is directed at me a blade to my heart.

“Mr. Walker, I must ask you to leave.”

I shake my head, snatching my arm away from the nurse when she tries to guide me out of the room.

“FUCK OFF!” Avery screams, her body thrashing as the nurses try to hold her still. It’s like she’s been possessed, a supernatural entity using her to massacre me. “I hate you for this, Slade. I HATE YOU!”

“Mr. Walker!” the nurse repeats more desperately. “Please!”

“Avery.”

“Get out, get out, get out.” The monitors bleep and the agony in her scream destroys me.

Defeated, I turn and walk away. The blade she wounded me with, with every word spewed, has won in its war to butcher me. She has shredded my heart, my soul sinking under the weight of the blood that flows from each slice.

My lungs are shocked frozen, each draw of breath an exertion. Horror has taken my mind, and I can’t think straight.

The corridor is hectic, the bustle of visitors racing to see their loved ones making it difficult to hurry to the exit.

I need air. I can’t breathe. Her hatred is stuck in my throat and I can’t swallow it.

I can’t see. Everything is distorted as my brain replays Avery’s hate-filled screams.

“I hate you for this, Slade. I HATE YOU!”

“You did this! You and your fucking family.”

“I HATE YOU!”

My lungs soak up the air when I burst through the double doors and out into the chill of the December night.

There’s a choir to one side of the main doors singing ‘Silent Night’, each harmonic lyric sang disputing the carol’s title as their voices cut through the silence of the night.

Finding a wall, I place my palms on it and use it for support as I strive to regulate my breathing. Panic has me gulping like a fish out of water. Desperation and terror blind me, and I punch the wall in frustration. Blood oozes over each knuckle when I release every ounce of pain that guts me from the inside out. I don’t feel the soreness from each thump, the agony in my soul engulfing it in its intensity.

Was I to blame, like Avery said? Perhaps I was. If it weren’t for my brother’s cuntish behavior, Avery would never have been forced to abandon the Cutters, her family, and the arranged marriage her father had forced on her to the club VP. She would have been married off to Axe, and although he’d have been a cunt, he wouldn’t have ever done this!

Avery is right. There’s so much blame on me for this. Although I never physically hurt her, I ruined her life from the moment she said, ‘I Do.’

The engine of my bike roars to life, it’s howl in the night akin to the scream in my soul. I tear out of the parking lot, desperate to find a bar and submerge this hell in a bottle of Patron. Flood every emotion in a haze of alcohol and white lines.

It only takes Scorch six hours to find me, and it’s only when I feel his arm around my middle to hoist me up out of the booth I’d drunkenly passed out in, that I’m even aware I’m still breathing.

I don’t want to breathe. I don’t want my mind to taunt me with the echo of Avery’s pain and suffering. I don’t want to think of facing this life without her. But I know I have to. I know I have to fill my lungs every day just so I can find my Rhi.

I won’t give up on Avery. I love her, I always will. But I have to give her the space she needs right now. She deserves everything she wishes for.

Even if one of those wishes is to never see me again.