Chapter 4

The treatment continued until dawn.

Every time I passed out, they threw ice water over me and turned the current higher. The restraints cut my skin. Blood ran from my wrists to the floor. I bit through my lower lip, but nothing could stop my body from convulsing.

At sunrise, they dumped me back in Ethan's room.

My arms no longer worked properly. It took almost half an hour to cross a corridor that should have taken less than a minute. Every step tugged at the wounds across my knees, shoulders, and back.

My brother's monitors beeped in a steady rhythm.

I pressed my cheek into his palm the way I had when we were children and whispered, "I'm getting you out of here, Ethan. Soon. I swear."

His fingers moved faintly against my skin.

It may have been nothing more than a reflex.

I accepted it as an answer.

His equipment had been restored and his vital signs had stabilized. I had no strength left even to lift my hand, yet relief loosened something inside me because he was still alive.

My phone vibrated.

Vivian had sent a screenshot from an old digital album Adrian and I created during our first year of marriage. It was a list of places we wanted to see together: the winter sky above Iceland's Blue Lagoon, a stone cottage in the Scottish Highlands, a sunset drive along California's coast, and a wildlife reserve we once planned to sponsor.

The first photograph showed Vivian and Adrian standing on an Icelandic snowfield.

Her hand rested in the crook of his arm. The angle was intimate, though they weren't kissing.

At the time, I couldn't tell the difference.

All I saw was Adrian taking another woman through every dream I had once written for us.

Over the next few days, they went from Iceland to Scotland and then to California. Vivian sent pictures from every stop.

With each new set, I burned another piece of our marriage.

I sobbed so hard over the first photograph that I couldn't breathe. By the third stack, I could turn the ashes with a poker without feeling anything.

The hardest picture to destroy didn't show our faces. Adrian stood behind me, both of his hands spread protectively over my still-flat stomach while I laughed against his chest.

It had been taken during our first year of marriage, after he caught me sketching a nursery for the estate.

On the back, he had written:

[One day, right here. Our pup will have your eyes and my stubbornness.]

Adrian had once been the one who talked about children first. After he found the contract, he spent years making sure that future could never happen, watching me swallow each pill as though denying us a pup could punish me for wanting one.

A spark burned my finger when I placed the picture in the fire. I barely felt it.

I burned old movie tickets, handwritten notes, the silver bracelet he'd given me, and the instant photograph from our first date.

On the day the Council approved my termination petition, I threw the final stack into the fireplace.

The flames had just caught the edges when Adrian's roar shook the room.

"What are you doing?"

He charged across the study and yanked me away from the fire. I was too weak to keep my balance. My back struck the bookcase, and white pain flashed across my vision.

"They don't mean anything to you anymore," I said. "Keeping them will only upset Vivian."

He stared as if he were seeing me for the first time.

His eyes moved from my hollow cheeks to the injuries around my wrists, then down the nightgown hanging loose from my body. Anger drained from his face and gave way to panic.

"Who did this to you?"

The question came out like a growl.

For one second, I saw the old protective fury in his eyes. I also saw the defense rise behind it. If I told him his orders had caused every wound, he would have to admit he had nearly destroyed the person he'd once sworn to protect.

I stayed silent.

Silence gave him room to misunderstand, but it gave me the last scrap of pride I had.

Without warning, he pulled me into his arms. He held me so tightly I could barely breathe. His cedar-and-snow scent closed around me, and after weeks of silence, my wolf trembled at the nearness of her mate.

"Lena." His voice softened for the first time in years. "I don't want to live like this anymore."

He pressed his face into my hair. "Just tell me you didn't choose me for the money. Tell me, and I'll forget everything."

"Forget everything?" I repeated against his chest.

He went still.

I wanted to ask how he planned to forget the pills, the public humiliation, the blood on the clinic floor, and the way he'd turned the future he once wanted into another weapon against me.

Then I felt his racing heart beneath my cheek.

At last, I understood. He wasn't offering me forgiveness. He was begging me to hand him an excuse to believe he still deserved to love me.

Even now, he thought the truth was something I had to kneel and convince him to accept.

His phone rang.

Vivian cried that someone was following her.

Adrian's arms tightened once around me.

I didn't push him away. I waited for his choice.

A few seconds later, he let me go.

"I'm going to make sure she's safe. I'll come right back."

Before he stepped away, his fingers rested at the nape of my neck, the place mates used to soothe each other. He looked as though he wanted to kiss me, but in the end he only pulled the collar of my nightgown higher over my shoulder.

"Wait for me," he said.

I had heard those words countless times. I had obeyed them countless times.

This time, I watched him leave and said nothing.

When the door closed, I slapped myself across the face.

"How can you still hope he'll stay, Elena?"

Two days remained.

In two days, Ethan would be transferred to a rehabilitation facility in Canada, and I would be free of Silverpine forever.

That night, I had barely fallen asleep when icy liquid hit my face.

Berry soda ran through my hair and burned my eyes.

Adrian stood beside the bed, his expression black with fury. Night mist clung to his hair, and his shirt was wrinkled as though he'd driven back at full speed.

"You had Vivian kidnapped?"

If he only wanted to punish me, he could have sent guards. Instead, he had come himself.

The mate bond carried his rage, but beneath it was fear. He was terrified that I had become someone cruel because of him.

He still loved the kind woman he remembered, yet he stubbornly believed money and jealousy had twisted the woman in front of him beyond recognition.

That kind of love was more vicious than no love at all.