I couldn’t tear my eyes away. “Everything’s wrong,” I murmured. My heart thudded with lust, so different to the driving throb of taking her last night. This was different. It was laced with something deeper, more profound. I wanted to be deep inside her. I didn’t want to come fast or search for a quick release, but just feel her heat and rest a while.

Rest.

Sleep.

A chill seeped into my bones, and I dimly wondered how much blood had spewed from my body to floor.

Perhaps it was best if I just let go. Let death finally take me.

Anything would be easier than the constant fight—even if Zel had shown me hope.

A rustling caught my attention and I craned my neck to look at Zel standing above me. “You move and I’ll stab you.” Her green eyes glowed and the knife stayed pointed in my direction. “Stay there.”

The incredible urge to say ‘yes, sir’ filled me with amazement.

Oh, my f**king hell.

By earning my utmost respect, she’d somehow earned a top hierarchy in my mind.

I’d done it. I’d found what I’d been searching for and constructed a replacement for my handlers. If I could learn to obey Zel’s every command—to find that sweet surrender of never thinking, always obeying—I might find freedom.

I would belong to her body and f**king soul. She could order me to do anything and I would, regardless.

That’s not freedom.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to curse. I hadn’t found freedom. I’d just replaced one prison with another.

My head swam as I closed my eyes. I’m f**ked.

The sound of the door locking gave me something to latch onto, but I let myself drift—welcomed the vagueness, the coldness, ignoring the intermittent shivers and lightheadedness.

Sighing, I let myself tumble back into memories.

The stars above glittered in the black velvet sky. A small flurry of snowflakes made their way into my pit when the wind blew from the northeast.

Frostbite was my only friend and I lay on the icy ground with only leaf matter and mud for insulation.

I made a promise.

The first opportunity, I would kill myself. This wasn’t a life. It was servitude. I would be better off dead than alive and doing the devil’s work.

Crossing my seventeen-year-old fingers, I swore on the moon.

“I will kill myself to avoid more orders. I’ll put myself down like the predator they’ve trained me to be.”

My eyes flew open. I’d forgotten that promise. It’d been pushed to the depths of my mind as more and more travesty was layered upon me.

But I could keep that promise now. I didn’t have to search for someone to obey, so I could fall back into old patterns. I could control my own fate for once.

The pill.

My head flopped to the side, looking toward the wardrobe. I couldn’t keep putting people around me at risk. I was too messed up; I needed too much help. To think I could change was a fairy-tale. I wasn’t the handsome knight who won the girl—I was the scarred troll whose only purpose was to be killed.

It was time to end it.

The day my handler tossed me out, he’d given me a goodbye gift. His parting order had been to swallow the pill and erase myself from existence. I fought the command for days, not wanting to die.

But every day I suffered a slow death of misery.

Zel wasn’t my cure after all. There was no cure for my disease.

Rolling onto my elbows, I hoisted myself up amongst multitude of aches and spasms. The beating from Poison Oaks made my muscles stiff and unmovable. More blood gushed down my calf and thigh as my heart pumped harder with exertion.

Putting pressure on my leg hurt like a motherfucker, but I walked like normal, forcing my body to move around the injury. I’d worked with worse. I’d gone days with a broken femur or collarbone to finish a mission before I was given any medical care.

The two slashes Zel gave me were nothing.

I left a trail of red behind me as I entered the wardrobe and shoved aside rows and rows of black attire to reach the safe hidden in the back. Squashed into the racks, hidden by cashmere and cotton, I punched in the fourteen digit code and cranked open the door.

My old life greeted me in a gust of memories.

“It’s complete. Do you feel the brotherhood, the shared power and awareness?” my handler asked, stepping back and surveying his handiwork. He passed me a mirror. I held it up, angling to see over my shoulder.

My back had been transformed from adolescent skin into a canvas of disaster. Every symbol closed my throat in fear—they’d marked me forever. I would never be free.

Keeping my despair hidden, I nodded. “Yes, sir.” Those two little words. The only conversation we were allowed. Every response required nothing more than ‘yes, sir.’

“You did good. You took a while to see reason, but you obeyed in the end.” He slapped my burning shoulder, smearing fresh blood from the tattoo. “Do you agree?”

My eyes flickered to the small boy’s corpse in the corner of the room. Lifeless, blue, starting to smell. I’d done that. It’d taken me weeks to break, but they’d done it.

I was theirs.

“Yes, sir.”

The gun lay like a sleeping enemy, resting beside five hundred thousand in cash, and a small medicine bottle with one word on the label.

Konets. Russian for ‘end.’

This was the end.

Unscrewing the lid, I tipped the innocent blue pill onto my awaiting palm and stared. What would hell be like? Would I survive more unhappiness?

I’d passed up all rights to go to heaven on my seventh birthday. I knew I had no chance of finding the pearly white light people spoke of.

Looking down at my leg, I frowned at the soppy wetness of my trousers. The blood hadn’t stopped. I could just bleed to death.

Take the pill.

It would be fast. Hopefully not too painful.

Working my throat, I tried to create enough saliva to swallow without needing water. My dry mouth refused to cooperate.

I couldn’t do anything right.

The weight of everything was suddenly too much, and I bowed my head against the edge of the safe. I would rest for a moment, then find a glass of water. A few more minutes before I died.

I slipped into a semi-trance state and didn’t hear the footsteps until it was too late.

My reactions were compromised. I no longer cared.

Something hard cracked against the back of my skull, and I plummeted like a rock.