Chapter 137
JESSICA
I want to die.
:
I can die right here and can only think of Grayson and Pierce.
My whole body aches and I sob a little harder not caring if Riot will hear me.
After he… After what Theo did to me, he throws me back into the cell like he did not violate me.
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I sob and shake my head and sob again because I can’t stop him. Suddenly I’m that omega, young, stupid and weak who cannot stop anyone who tries to hurt her.
I don’t care if Riot hears me. I don’t care if he laughs. I don’t care if he howls.
I just need this to stop.
But it doesn’t.
It keeps happening in my head, in my skin, in the stretch that won’t close. It keeps happening like a looped prayer I can’t un–pray. I blink and he’s still inside me. I breathe and it still smells like him–wine, spit, copper, god.
Why is this happening to us.
I don’t mean the pack. I don’t mean wolves. I mean me and Grayson and Pierce. I mean the way we look at each other like maybe we’ll get out, like maybe we can survive it if we stay stitched together, but I’m coming apart, I’m leaking through the seams and no one is stopping it, no one is even looking.
Why is this happening to me.
I was good. I was obedient. I wore the collar, I bowed my head. I didn’t fight. I never fought. I took what they gave me, even when it burned, even when it made me shake so bad I couldn’t stand.
And still it wasn’t enough.
I try to curl up, try to make myself smaller, I fucking try to unlove Grayson so why…why?!
I sob again, harder this time, choking on it. I press my palm flat over my mouth like that’ll stop the sounds but they keep coming, keep pushing out around my fingers, wrecked little whimpers like a pup left out in the cold, forgotten, wrong.
I want someone to touch me and I want no one to ever touch me again. I want Riot to break the door down and I want him to stay the fuck away. I want Grayson to tell me I’m still his and I want Pierce to bite me until I forget what Theo made me into.
But none of them are coming.
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Chapter 137
And I think maybe they can’t.
Or maybe I don’t deserve them anymore.
Not after this.
I don’t know how many hours or days have passed.
:
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I gag on nothing and swallow it again, throat too raw to scream, too used to the choke. I think I tried once, hours ago—maybe longer–tried to scream for Grayson, for Pierce, for Riot, for anyone, but all that came out was a wet rasp, a sob curling wrong in my windpipe like punishment for thinking I was worth saving.
“Riot?”
Nothing.
I drag myself toward it, elbows slipping, hair stuck in my mouth, eyes stinging from salt and shame and the smoke–theo left behind inside my skull.But I crawl anyway. I need to know.
“Riot.”
“Riot, are–are you-?”
I press my hand against the bars, slick with blood not mine, something crusted and old.
“Please. Please be alive,” I say, mouth against the cold metal, tongue stupid from dehydration. “I—I need you to be–I need–I need..”
Someone.
A groan. Barely. A drag of chain across floor like a throat pulled against collar.
“You’re not real,” he says.
I slide my cheek against the iron until it bruises. “I’m here,” I whisper,
“Kill….me.”
I want to crawl closer, but I don’t know if the chain is real. I don’t know if Riot’s body is still attached or if he bled himself out hours ago and left only heat and failure.
“No…” I choke hard. “Riot-” again, and this time it’s closer to a sob, closer to a curse, closer to what I mean, which is don’t die, don’t leave me alone.
I reach for him. My chain stretches. My knees scrape through a puddle that smells like me and him and Theo and a thousand hours of not–clean–enough suffering “You’re fucking here, Riot. I need- I need you to get up.”
“I have a plan,” I say, even though my voice cracks in half trying to hold the lie. “But I need your fucking eyes open. I need your body breathing. I need–I need you alive enough to get us out of here.”
9:34 Thu, Sep 4
Chapter 137
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I push forward until my chain yanks me hard. Fuck it. I let my body fall flat, cheek down against stone like it’ll listen better if I lower myself enough. “You need to get here. We need to be touching, I can’t–can’t do this if we’re not the same rot.”
Another breath. This one a little closer. “Come on, Riot, Reach for my hand okay,”
He drags again, and I feel it–heat before touch, like his death is radiating ahead of him, like I’m pulling him back from the edge just by leaking louder, sobbing harder, bruising myself deeper.
The link jerks again, but I twist my ankle, let it cut me deeper, just to make space to inch closer, to meet his fever with my filth.
His breath is right there now. I smell it. I smell him and then his fingers squeeze mine and I know then this plan is going to work.
It has to work.
I whimper without sound, just a mouth–stretched shape of pain that never leaves my throat, because I know Riot’s too quiet, too still, too breathless for anything to be okay.
He’s heat. He’s fever. He’s not moving, and my palm finds his thigh by accident, and his whole body doesn’t even flinch.
I lie there, cheek against the same floor, eyes trying not to cry because I already leaked everything I had between my legs, and this isn’t the moment I wanted–it’s not rescue, it’s not touch, it’s not holy–it’s just death on delay, like Theo didn’t even need to finish him, just let him fester slow beside me so I know exactly what kind of god I belong to now.
“He’s poisoning you,” I whisper against Riot’s ribs. “I know it. I can feel it in you, like fever bred into the bone. You’re not even fighting anymore.”
My voice cracks again, not from weeping but from the fucking truth of it. I can smell him dying. The others- Grayson, Pierce, the pack–if they see Riot like this, broken and choking on spit he can’t even swallow, they’ll know. They’ll know Theo doesn’t need an army. He just needs to rot us one by one, and make the rest of us watch.
“…what’s…” he coughs, chokes, swallows blood or rot or both, “…your plan?”
I lay my forehead against his hipbone, shaking, licking blood off my own lip just to feel something. “We have to let the others go.”
“You’re insane…” he rasps, voice thick with fever or disbelief, “No…have you seen them?”
“Yes,” I hiss, mouth dragging down his thigh now. “I’ve seen them. I saw what Theo did. I saw what they became. I saw what I became.”
“You want to die,” he says, and it’s not a question.
“No,” I breathe, “I want us to live enough to make them his problem.”
“They’re monsters,” Riot croaks. “They won’t follow us.”
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Chapter 137
He tries to lift his head. Fails. I push closer until my chain slaps wet against his ribs.
“But they will follow me.”
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9:35 Thu, Sep 4
Chapter 138
