My mother nursed me back, she tended to my wounds, but I never fully smiled again. She was gentle and kind, and I began to trust that maybe I would be okay.

Drake returned after some time away and things were okay between us. Our dad monitored our playdates, and our mum never let us go far from the house. Life went on, even if Pongo’s ghost stayed with me.

I didn’t smile until a year later when I found another stray. At first, I wanted to keep walking. I’d promised mum I’d be home in time for dinner after going to the park on my bike. My memories of what’d happened to Pongo made me almost vomit in the grass as a cat hobbled from the trees with a broken leg.

It meowed at me.

Its eyes so big and wet I was sure it cried.

My bike was used as an ambulance as I shot across town with the poor kitty. A different vet this time, but they didn’t turn me away. I used up another year’s worth of allowances and waited for days for the cat to be discharged.

By the time the skinny tabby was placed into my arms with a bright pink cast on its leg, I vowed I would protect it against anyone and anything. I kept it far from Drake. Far from my parents or home.

I made a shelter for it in the park. I brought it beds and bowls and food. I nursed it while the cast set its leg correctly, then took it back to the vet to have it removed. For four months, I cared for her, but I never gave her a name.

Each time I went to give her one, Pongo’s final whimper would clamp my lips together. If I didn’t name her, she’d be safe from my brother.

In the end, I learned another valuable lesson.

My brother wasn’t to be trusted, but neither were other humans. Other kids in the park, teenagers who went to get high, found my cat’s shelter and smashed it. They chased her up a tree, waving sticks and taunting.

I had to wait until they’d all gone before I could climb up and grab her shaking, terrified body. And I made the choice that ensured my life would never be the same.

I carried her home.

I walked straight to my parents’ bedroom and I went in without knocking.

My mum sat at her dressing table applying make-up for yet another seminar dinner. She rose in shock as I huddled the tabby close and asked for the only thing I’d ever requested.

“Please…help me find this cat a safe home.”

She said I could keep it.

I shook my head and said I couldn’t.

We both knew why.

I trusted her.

I shouldn’t have.

I trusted her to find a loving family, and the next morning, when the tabby was loaded into a box and placed in the back of her car to travel to its forever family, I was so relieved. So happy. So grateful.

It gave me purpose.

It gave me something to cling to when Drake resumed his extra activities on me.

From seven years to seventeen, I rescued over forty animals. Rabbits found on the side of the roads, cats who’d been feral for years, dogs who’d been kicked out of home, even wildlife who’d been hurt by humans. Birds who’d been hit by cars, squirrels that’d been stuck in traps, and raccoons who’d been mistreated.

Each one, I spent my allowance on and then my pay cheque from working in my parents’ company doing odd jobs while I finished my studies.

Each one, I made healthy and happy, trusting of human care and ready to be adored by a family far away from mine.

And each one, I gave trustingly to my mother to rehome. Sometimes I asked if I could go with her to check up on the people who’d been so kind as to welcome a stray into their lives. But each time, she said it would be too hard on me. That I had an empathic heart and it would break with goodbyes.

She wasn’t wrong.

But she also wasn’t right.

I wanted to see for myself they were cared for, but I didn’t want to ruin the system. I’d saved lives. I wouldn’t put my own wants before their needs.

But of course, I should never have trusted.

And it was Drake who told me the truth.

On the night of my eighteenth birthday, my older brother passed me a beer with a gloating smile. As I’d grown older and matched him in height and size, his torments had stopped to just verbal. He knew if he picked a physical fight with me, I wouldn’t cower anymore.

I’d strike back.

I’d probably win thanks to my regime of outdoor exercise and rock climbing.

So…he bided his time until he could cut out my motherfucking heart and destroy me forever.

He told me what my mother did with all the strays I’d lovingly rescued, repaired, and rehomed. He took me for a drive to Sinclair and Sinclair Group, unlocked the laboratories with his key card and strode past rows upon rows of lab equipment before unlocking a back room.

He’d grinned as I’d stepped into the room and promptly crashed to my knees.

Bile roiled and acid shot into my mouth.

Because there, in a thousand cages were all the animals I’d ‘saved’.

The raccoons from the streets, the dogs from the slums, the rabbits from the roads.

Each one in misery.

Each one a test subject.

Each one poisoned and injected until their skin fell off, their internal organs failed, their will to live non-existent.

My mother, the one person I trusted above everyone, took the souls I loved and locked them in hell.

The animals, who’d trusted me, had been locked into a fate worse than death.

I wasn’t a saviour of animal kind. I was the procurer of torture.

A scientist’s child who provided an unlimited amount of lab rats.

A steady stream of souls.

So many free bodies for their experiments.

“Sully…Sully!”

I shook my head, shoving back memories that had no fucking jurisdiction over me. I’d atoned for my sins. I’d redeemed myself by saving thousands of lab sufferers since.

But no matter how much I did, no matter how many I saved, I couldn’t get rid of the guilt.

Metal rattled, wrenching my attention to the cage trapping Eleanor.

Too much of my past still swirled in my mind. Seeing her behind bars did something to me. It made me want to rip her free. Get on my knees and apologise.

To let her go.

Not just from the prison I’d put her in but the island I’d brought her to.

She still had a soul—just like the animals I’d rescued.

She was still a living, breathing creature who didn’t deserve to be treated like an object. Who was I to own her body instead of her? Who made me god, controlling her lifespan instead of fate?

But…she wasn’t an animal.

She wasn’t some helpless creature who needed me to be her champion.

She was human.

She had the capacity that all humans did—to choose herself over the lives of others. To be superior against feathered or furred. To willingly ignore that their pain was just as excruciating as hers.

But Skittles trusts her…

“Sully!”

I raked a hand through my hair, noticing the quake in my body. “Stop yelling. I’m right here.”

Her hands wrapped tight around the bars, her face strained and worried. “But you weren’t…you still stood there, but you…your mind wasn’t here.”

I snorted, doing my best to dispel the rest of my past.

I didn’t know why it’d chosen that moment to swarm me. To come so thick and fast. Normally, the memories found me when I was asleep, forming into nightmares I couldn’t escape from, clinging to my thoughts long after I’d woken up, fighting ghosts and mourning those I’d failed.