Page 23 of Beloved Sacrifice

“It’s been twelve years.”

“It has, hasn’t it?” She bit off the last two words.

“You had Caden to protect you, and I knew you two were protecting Tabby, so—”

“Protect me?” Rose threw her head back and let out a brittle laugh.

“Fine,” Weston snapped. Her beloved had just died, hearing him minimize what she and Caden had together would hurt. “Love you and protect you. The point is, they thought I was dead, they wouldn’t be looking for me, and I would be free to research and gather information. I couldn’t risk having them find out I was still alive.”

“Love.” Rose stared at him, then her eyes widened and she laughed again. “Yes, Caden protected and loved me.” Another cracking, brittle-sounding laugh.

“Rose, I—”

“No.” She spat out the word, all trace of laughter gone. “You have…you have no idea what…” Her throat worked for a moment. “You have no idea what we suffered. You have no idea the hell I’ve been living in.”

“Suffered? Caden protected you.” He was sure of that. He knew she and Caden were…had been a couple, though it had been in secret, since Rose had been, until only recently, engaged to Devon Asher and Juliette Adams. Still, Weston had discovered they were both members of BDSM clubs all over the country. That had shocked the hell out of him.

“Caden…” She stopped for a moment, and in an almost unconscious gesture, touched her fingertips to her throat. “Caden is gone. And we’ve had this conversation before.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you and I, we’ve done this before. That night. You were sure you knew what was going on.” She flicked a glance at him. “Sure you knew what my training had been like. But you had no idea.”

Wes recalled following her to his room after the spanking and finding Rose kneeling on the floor, ready to do his bidding. It wasn’t until she’d told him about the training that he understood the full horror of what his parents were doing to her.

Seventeen-year-old Rose turned her head and kissed his palm, her eyes closed. She spoke in a whisper, each word aching with heartbreak. “I wanted you to be my first.”

And he knew. He knew what she was trying to tell him.

“No.” Weston shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t.”

“I’m not a virgin, Wes. Not…not any part of me.”

Weston shook his head harder. “He wouldn’t…”

“He’s teaching me to submit no matter what. To whatever he wants to do to me.” Tears slid from her eyes and onto his hand.

His father had raped and sodomized her.

“I’m going to kill him.” Wes surged to his feet, his vision a red haze of anger.

It was during that heartbreaking conversation that he’d cleaned up her cuts, promised they’d run away and get married, live in a house in the country.

The dreams of children.

Then alarm bells went off in his head. “Rose, what do you mean you suffered?” A grisly though occurred to him. “Elroy doesn’t still…”

“Rape me?” She didn’t look at him. “No, after you died, Caden collared me, to protect me from them. That stopped the rape and made me the whipping boy.”

Weston’s stomach knotted. “What do you mean?”

Rose faced him. “Why should I tell you anything? You left.”

“I was shot.”

“You stayed away twelve years. If you…if you really cared, you would have come back.”

“I spent years preparing an escape, a real escape, for all of us.”

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