Page 49 of The Doll and The Domination

“Certainly.”

“Entitled.”

“Definitely that.”

“Stunning.”

I open my mouth, but this time I’m the one to slam it shut. My head pivots to look straight ahead. Stunning? I’m almost pissed at the way my stomach flops forward. The way my chest tingles.

Stunning.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asks with a knowing smile in his tone.

“I should try to get some sleep,” I tell him with a fake yawn. Truth is, there’s no way I can sleep with Skylenna like this. I can feel the aches, the throbbing in her bones, the chill resting under her skin from here.

“Good night.”

“Warrose?”

“Yes?”

I sigh, closing my eyes. “You have a beautiful voice.”

Peeking up at him from beneath my lashes, he smiles to himself.

“Thank you, little rebel.”

12. Family First

Dessin

Skylenna wrinkles her nose as she starts to wake up.

It’s her tell. It’s that little sign I wake up early to see. That adorable movement that makes my ice-cold heart begin to thaw.

“How is she?” Kane rushes to the front, burning my thoughts with crippling stress and guilt.

“She survived the night.”

We both sigh heavily.

I thought I lost her. The gurgling sound in her chest. It could have meant a lot of things. A broken rib puncturing her lung, causing a collapse. Or the space between her chest wall and lungs filling with blood.

She was kicked, stomped on, scratched, thrown, and beaten as if by a cluster of apes.

My fists clench and shake at the memory. She tried to protect her vital organs, but they came from every angle. That strength couldn’t have been matched. And she was blind to it all.

Last night was hell to live through without a moment of sleep.

I glance over at her again with uncontained anguish swelling in my gut. She stirs in Warrose’s arms, taking shallow gasps, feeble whimpers, and furrowing her brow.

“How will she be able to walk through the prison with you all?” Greystone asks with an uncharacteristic tenderness to his tone.

“She can’t. I won’t let her.”

The lack of sleep and food is causing my system of alters to suffer. The anxiety, panic, and creeping fear are worse than the asylum. Because now we have to keep them all safe. Keep them all fed. Keep them all from dying a gruesome death.

Watching Skylenna touch the brink of death, hearing her scream, and now seeing the aftereffects of her beating made me violently sick. I vomited hot bile in my cage. Heaved until nothing could come up. My thoughts raced on building the escape plan. But I’ve been so distracted, so tired, so hungry.

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