Page 106 of Their Dark Rose

“What do you—” Mallie turns to us.

Her jaw slacks. A vein pulses on her forehead.

I push into Thorn’s eyeball like my life depends on it. Because it does. I have to fuck him up and push him off me before she crosses the six feet separating us and stops me.

It’s now or never.

“Leave him be, fucker, leave my—”

Boom.

The door is knocked open. The old lock gives in and the green wooden door bursts open, hitting Mallie with a force that knocks her over onto the jade-green carpet.

“Princess.” Furious bottle-green eyes zoom in on me from the doorway. Accompanied by blues and greens of the angriest men I’ve ever seen.

“You filthy motherfucker,” the man who my mind paints to be Falk roars. “Get your fucking hands off our woman.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

My heart gallops in my chest. My insides knot and twist painfully.

The world around me moves in slow motion as it lies and deceives me.

This has to be some sort of hallucination. A cruel joke my mind’s playing on me.

There’s no way Falk found me. That he’s here, charging toward the bed.

No fucking chance that Mason is here too, lifting the door off Mallie. Or that Finn hauls her up to her feet.

“Go take care of Briar with Falk,” the guy I imagine as Finn grits out to the Mason I’m fabricating in my head. “I’ll tie the bitch up to the chair over here.”

They aren’t really in this room with me. I’m sure because they couldn’t have known where Mallie and Thorn took me.

Whatever I’m seeing has to be a result of what Thorn and Mallie used to drug me. It wasn’t just chloroform. They must have blended a hallucinatory drug in there.

It’s the bastards’ Plan B, for sure. Just another way to control and torture me.

Because whatever they thought I’d imagine, they counted on it to distract me. And now this is what happens.

This freaking drug is fucking with my head. Falk looks so real that I’m almost relieved.

I almost lose my fight.

I almost cry.

But I won’t.

If I let myself believe my men are here, Mallie and Thorn win. I’ll succumb to the comfort their presence offers and that’s it.

I’ll break down and cry and release Thorn’s eye. He’ll survive my attack. He’ll be furious and vengeful, and he and Mallie will lock me up for good.

They’ll continue with their malicious breeding scheme, wait until my child is born, and kill me. They’ll make me disappear while taking over my life.

My future.

And with the wealth I’ve inherited, they’ll be unbeatable. They’ll go after my men. They’ll hurt the people I love the most to make sure no one can save me.

Game over.

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