Page 40 of A Bloom in Winter

Back when the hospital had been a going concern, more than a hundred years ago, the first floor of the core had clearly been a check-in and waiting space, and courtesy of some serious effort, it was once again sparkling clean, the floor polished, the walls freshly painted, and the ceiling patched.

No furniture, though. Also no people.

As he wandered around, motion-activated lights came on, but he didn’t need them. There was plenty of daylight streaming through the triple-paned glass, and as he went farther in, everything continued to be well maintained.

The next thing he knew, he was down a hall and standing in front of a door that made his blood run cold.

He was exactly where he didn’t want to be.

Except this was the reason he’d come, wasn’t it.

The scene of . . . the crime that had been perpetrated on him.

When Apex and the others had decided to overthrow the head of the guards and free the prisoners, he’d joined in on the attack on the latest in a series of despots. Why? He was used to fighting and he liked it. As a wolven, combat was a way of life, whether it was defending the clan’s territory from other wolven or killing poachers before they killed members of the clan. Besides, pain had never scared him, and he was fast on his feet—and his paws.

Not fast enough that night. Not that time.

In a trance, he put his palm flat on the door. On the other side? The private quarters of that female who had tied him down and used him until he had separated from his own flesh.

Images filtered through and registered viscerally in his body, hands touching him, rolling him over facedown, a male body mounting his own.

In a sickening rush, he remembered that female watching him as he was fucked . . . before she turned him back over and threw a leg across his hips to ride him.

After a while, all he had known was whether his face was in the mattress or he was staring up at the ceiling.

Eventually, he hadn’t even felt any physical sensations anymore.

It was as if a hole had been dug with each session and his soul had sunk further and further down, away from the corporeal world.

Into a prison inside of himself.

At some point, he’d lost consciousness. And he only knew that because, eventually, he’d woken up.

A scent had been what had brought him back.

“Apex . . .” he whispered.

The vampire’s presence had been his beacon to return to the physical world, and he’d followed it back for reasons he hadn’t understood. And at first, he’d refused to open his eyes—because he wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing the male he had been so attracted to.

Lying there on that bedding platform, he’d gotten stronger with the passage of days, his body rebounding thanks to the nourishment Apex had forced down his throat. And that hadn’t been the only thing provided to him. His wounds had been carefully looked after, his base bodily functions attended to with diapers, his skin ever so gently cleansed and rebandaged on a regular schedule.

As he’d noted the contrast with the way his body had been treated by that female, that was when the first claw of sorrow had dug into him.

So he’d refused to think about it again.

Instead, he’d concentrated on the sounds of the voices, the comings and goings of the medical staff, and where Apex was—which was never far. Through his eavesdropping, he’d learned that the liberation of the facility was sticking, that the guards who had been commanded by that female had all run off or been killed, that the site was secured by the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and that the prisoners who hadn’t died of starvation and disease were being treated.

He’d also known Kane was around. Lucan, too. And their mates, especially Nadya, who was a nurse.

He’d memorized the schedule, knew when darkness fell because that was when Apex always brought in the first round of food—and then the male would leave for a stretch of time, returning freshly showered with something that Callum, until he’d finally opened his lids, had assumed carried a spritz of perfume.

Not perfume, though. White blooms.

The night he had decided he was strong enough to leave, he had waited until Apex left to go get the first of the meals. Then, he had finally opened his eyes.

He’d been on his back, and the sight of that ceiling? It had ripped him back to that female riding him—for a split second, he had blinked and seen her straddling him again, felt the sensations, jerked at binds that no longer existed.

He could still remember the battle it had been to stay in the present. And his wonder at the flowers had helped him focus.

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