Page 95 of Taken By Touch and Torment

“I don’t think it’s best for me to be sleeping with you, baby,” Rune said.

I tensed, grabbing his arm. “No, please don’t make me sleep alone.” The nightmares would still be there, and if I was alone, it would remind me even more of my living arrangement in the palace. I needed Rune.

“I’m hurting you, Scarlett.” He felt the back of my skull to assess the severity of the bump.

I tried not to wince. I didn’t want to see the healer right now.

“No, you’re not,” I said, my voice wavering. “It’s not you. I’m sorry. I just get confused. It won’t happen again. Please don’t leave.”

“Shhh,” Rune soothed, pulling me tighter against him. “You’re not in trouble. You didn’t do anything wrong. I will never leave you.”

I slowly relaxed, letting Rune guide me back to my body. I told him what I heard, what I smelled, what I saw and felt.

“I used that technique while I was in the palace,” I said.

Rune made no reaction, only kissed my forehead.

“Who taught it to you?”

“Sadie.” He gently moved us under the covers, my head resting on his chest as we lay in the dark. “She can’t wait to meet you. But wait she must,” he said dryly.

“Wait… was she the witch who was at the meeting with Kole?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

Several loose ends suddenly tied themselves off all at once.

“She was the mean domme who calls Kole a disgusting little rat!” I said, rising from Rune’s chest to stare at him with wide eyes.

I smiled in spite of myself, catching an utterly bewildered Rune off guard.

“That sounds about right,” he said, his eyes narrowed.

I lay back down, my smile fading as I thought about it more deeply. “And a witch is your mentor, because she’s the one who made you a vampire. She’s behind all of it.”

Rune was silent.

“All of it, is a stretch, but she’d enjoy that interpretation.”

“Oh,” I whispered. “No one knows, obviously, except the turned. But how? How have none of you ever let it slip?”

“Part of the initiation process, and no, I will not be elaborating. You already have more than enough information in that conniving, vicious little mind to get yourself killed fifty times over.”

Some kind of magickal binding, I assumed. Sadie was ancient in witch years. Yet she still appeared young. A testament to a very large, dark amount of power at her disposal.

“You think I’m vicious and conniving?”

“Terribly so,” he said.

I scoffed, and a chuckle rumbled through his chest.

“I adore you for it. I adore you for it all.”

Rune cleverly steered me away from my scheming and back into his arms. I wanted to connect more dots. Inside my mind, a game of chess was in motion. Lines were drawn between actors, connections fused between great powers and divisions carved between others. I used to gamify seduction to distract from the trauma of existing as a sex object. Now, I was playing war games.

Did it count for anything that I was self-aware of my own denial?

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