I exhaled, my legs bouncing. Nausea twisting deep in my guts had me fisting my hair.
The thought that someone had forced my girl. . . robbed her. . . terrified her. . . hurt her.
My body trembled, the tears rolling down my cheeks.
I didn’t fucking cry. That wasn’t who I was, but the image in my head wouldn’t stop playing on repeat. It brought with it an influx of ugly fucking memories from my childhood in the underground.
My specter didn’t deserve this shit. She was all that was good in this fucked up world.
I was just about to tear my hair out and go on a killing spree, vowing to gut every motherfucker in this place until I found one who bled the truth for me, when a hand grasped mine.
I snapped my attention to Sirena, whose colorful eyes peered at me through dark lashes.
“Specter,” I whispered, my voice laced with emotion. I grasped her hand back and brought it to my lips, where I pressed a fierce kiss to it. “Oh, god, Sirena. I-I—”
Tears trailed gently down her cheeks, further breaking my heart.
“Fuck, what can I do? I tried to find the rabbit, baby. I-it was Bryce, right?”
She let out a tiny whimper and shook her head.
“I saw you with the rabbit in the clearing. I followed you,” I said thickly. “I knew. . . Fuck. I don’t know what I knew, just that you met this fucker in the woods. And he hurt you. Bryce was behind the mask. We found him in the woods—”
More tears streamed down her face, and she shook her head slightly.
“No? It wasn’t him?” My heart fell. “Then who did this? Who hurt you, Sirena?”
She trembled and squeezed her eyelids closed.
“Fuck, baby. You need to tell me. We can take care of him so he doesn’t hurt you again.”
“C-Cady. W-want C-Cady.”
I stiffened. We hadn’t told Cady what happened.
“She doesn’t know,” I said gently. “We didn’t tell her. Your parents don’t even know. We want to handle this.”
She let out a soft cry, crushing the broken pieces of me further.
“S-Seth,” she whispered. “P-please.”
I studied her for a moment before nodding. If she wanted Asylum, I’d make it happen. In that moment, it was anything and everything for her.
“OK. I’ll get Seth. Anything you want,” I said.
“H-home,” she choked out.
“OK, baby. We can go home. I’ll have Doc come in and check you out, and then we’ll go, OK?”
She closed her eyes and went silent, her body still trembling. Her lip had started to bleed again. Doc said it looked like she’d been bitten. The fury that radiated through my body at that was enough to drive me to the edge of my sanity alone.
The rest shoved me off the ledge of it and left me tumbling into the abyss of crazy.
I kissed her hand once more before getting to my feet and poking my head out.
“Get Doc O’Brien,” I said to one of the wards.
He nodded and left. Doc O’Brien was the only one I trusted here. I had no idea if he was in my father’s pocket, but based on his fairly newcomer status, I felt confident my old man hadn’t sunk his claws into him too deeply. Yet.