Chapter Thirty-Six

Havermouth, Present Time

There was a dark place inside her mind into which she sank as the hours passed.

For almost half her life, her head had been filled with others’ thoughts, so much so that she sometimes wondered if she possessed a single original thought of her own, if her views were hers, if her feelings were her own. Her defence mechanism was to be reactive, to trust her first instinct, rather than try to over analyse things – because if she overthought it, could she trust that the thoughts were her own?

Perhaps, she thought, if her grandmother had lived until Aislen was fully trained in her gift, her life would have worked out differently. Maybe she would have learnt to block others out with more control earlier. Perhaps she would have found a purpose for her gift. Perhaps she would have not shut herself off to such an extent, and meeting Cameron would have gone differently…

Perhaps if she had been less obsessed with the graphically sexual contents of Heath and Cameron's heads, she might have gotten to know them better, and she might have liked them. If they hadn’t been incited to be mean to her from envious jealousy and spite by her preference for Rhett...

Teenagers were sexual, she knew that. Werewolf teenagers more so. Had she chosen to be repulsed by the Triquetra’s sexual thoughts, because she had been afraid of her own sexuality?

If she could do it over, would she do it differently?

She was peripherally aware that Rhett worked for a time and then took a break, stretching out stiff muscles and standing back to admire his workmanship, and she knew that Heath and then Cameron came in whilst Rhett was out, but she had gone so deep within herself that she was beyond talking to them.

Rhett packed away his equipment. He returned and smeared a layer of ointment over the tattoos before applying a bandage carefully over each. He did not meet her eyes or say anything as he left the room.

Cameron came in and sat on the bed next to her with a first aid kit. “I think it’s time that we took these off,” he said and released the handcuffs. He rubbed the sore muscles of her arms and shoulders, the palms of his hands warm and calloused against her skin, and his thoughts tumbling through her mind were filled with images of a skittish horse dancing in a field.

He applied ointment to the skin of her wrists, torn raw from her struggles, and bandaged them before moving down the bed and releasing her ankles, rubbing over the rope marks left in her skin. He scooped her up off the bed and carried her out of the room for the first time.

She recognized the hallway, but it was now carpeted and freshly painted, the woodwork picked out in a white gloss which set off the traditional style lights. A door to the left was open, and he stepped into what could only be his room, the furniture solid wood, simple, country style, the bedhead upholstered in leather, and the quilt cover in a rich moss green over crisp white sheets.

He set her down on the cow-hide rug, the coarse fur underfoot an odd sensation that recalled her to the present. He held her for a moment, making sure she was going to stand on her own, a wise precaution as her legs felt like jelly, her head swimming.

“Good girl,” he crooned, and opened a door. “Do you need the bathroom?”

She went in and used the toilet, the door open as she had when Rhett let her up to use the bathroom during the many hours in his room. She stared at her reflection in the mirror over the sink, her eyes overlarge on a face washed free of colour.

“Are you going to let them break you?” She asked the girl in the mirror, under her breath. “We are tougher than that. Get it together.”

She leaned over and drank from the tap.

“I will get you a drink from a cup,” Cameron said hastily. “You don’t have to drink from the tap, Aislen.”

She ignored him and swished the water around her mouth before spitting it into the sink several times, and then washed her face. She filled her mouth up with water before turning off the tap, and walked up to him, meeting his eyes before spitting the water on him.

He danced back a step a moment too late, and she soaked through his t-shirt. His cry of surprise brought Heath to the bedroom door.

“Just be glad I didn’t fucking pee on you,” she sneered.

“That’s just fine,” Cameron replied, as he pulled off the t-shirt, throwing it across the room so that it struck the wall before falling into the laundry basket. “Just. Fine. I was going to take that off, anyway.”

“Alright?” Heath said to him.

“I’ve got it,” Cameron replied.

Heath closed the door, and Aislen heard a lock snick into place.

“You have a lock on the exterior of your door,” she said slowly. “Ah,” she realized. “That’s part of the plan for keeping me prisoner. Locking me in with you at night.”

“It’s better than tying you to the bed, isn’t it?” He replied, removing his jeans so he was equally as naked as her. He threw them over a chair. “Well?” He raised his eyebrows when she didn’t respond.

She returned to the bathroom and opened the vanity, locating his toothbrush and the toothpaste. Her stomach growled. They hadn’t fed her at all during the day, and she figured by the locked door that they didn’t intend to do so. Brushing her teeth wouldn’t fill her stomach, but it might trick her mind into thinking that she had been fed.

She scrubbed and spat, before scrubbing again. She was procrastinating brushing her teeth, avoiding looking at herself and avoiding Cameron. She put away the toothbrush and forced her eyes down. Her body did not look like her own with the pierced nipples and the bandages covering the tattoos. She fought back tears, clapping her hand over her mouth to stop the sob.

Rhett was a talented artist, and he had done beautiful, painstaking work on her. She peeled back the smallest of the bandages, the one on her shoulder, and saw the detailed tattoo of the knotted triangle in the mirror. Of all the things they could have done to her, at least they had made it beautiful, she told herself, as she replaced that bandage and began to peel back the edges of the largest one. This one she could see better with her own eyes, but less well with the face-level mirror.

She swallowed hard before beginning to remove the third bandage. It was this, the newest addition, on the v of her thighs where her pubic hair had grown in rebellion of the Triquetra’s mockery, and that Rhett had waxed from her before beginning the tattoo, that was most mysterious for her, as lying flat as she had been, she had been unable to see anything at all as he had done it.

He had continued the greenery theme with leaves and flowers, and a butterfly perched on a chrysalis.

She replaced the bandage and closed her eyes, bracing against the vanity. Three piercings and three tattoos. It could be worse – she had seen many horror movies that proved that there were definitely worse things that could happen to a girl tied to a bed. But telling herself that didn’t take the edge off the violation, or the knowledge that there was no one who would know that she was missing to come rescue her. She was on her own, utterly alone, imprisoned by three alpha werewolves who intended to fuck with her head until she didn’t know her own mind.

Don’t let them win, Aislen, she told herself. Do not let them win.

She stepped out into the bedroom, lit now only by the bedside light. Cameron was in the bed, his back propped up against the bedhead, twisting the signet ring on his little finger. She knew that the ring would have a knotted triangle on it.

He looked up at her. “All good?” The comfortable room and his question were both so domestic that it invited her to pretend, she thought, as if he were her boyfriend, as if this were another night in, and not a horror movie.

“I’ve been abducted, chained to a bed, and pierced and tattooed against my will. What answer are you honestly expecting?” She demanded.

He looked away at the wall for a long moment. “My mother took her life last year,” he said quietly.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” she closed her eyes in empathy, her heart twisting. She knew what he would say next.

“You knew that it was going to happen.”

“I didn’t,” she said, not sure if she were telling the truth or a lie. “Not really.”

“You seem to have a talent for not really knowing what will happen,” he turned his head to look at her.

“I didn’t know that you guys were going to abduct me,” she pointed out ruefully.

“No,” he agreed. “But you have always had a blind spot when it comes to us. Come to bed, Aislen. It’s late. We’re both tired.”

Part of her wanted to be stubborn and refuse, to sleep on the floor, but she crossed the room and slipped into the bed. She laid for a moment before turning, trying to find a position that did not put pressure on a sore spot on her body, but Rhett had, almost deliberately, spread the modifications across her torso.

Cameron turned out the light, and in the dark, his eyes glowed as he stretched out his arm. “Lie on your back,” he told her, positioning her so that his arm fit below her neck and rolling onto his side, placing his hand on her ribcage. “Alright?” He murmured in the dark.

She nodded fighting back tears.

“It will be alright, Aislen,” his thumb stroked over her ribs. His thoughts lingered on a new box of condoms in his top drawer. “It will be alright.”

“How?” She wondered and the tears overflowed. She tried to keep her weeping silent, trying to hold onto the ragged edges of her dignity. “If you’re going to fuck me, just get it over with,” she said angrily. “Or stop thinking about the fucking condoms in your top drawer.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “Stop thinking about the condoms?” he repeated. “You can read my thoughts.”

“God, you guys are so fucking dim,” she said miserably. “And you accuse me of having a blind spot.”