Page 40 of Gift from the Nexus

My hair is absolutely wild and tangled with matting in the back from where I thrashed my head around so much. There’s purplish-blue bruising and blood on both sides of my face, but I can tell the healing vial took care of the majority of the swelling. Those colorful reminders will stay for at least another day, if not longer since the healing is going to be a slower process right now.

The black robe Tillman dressed me is long, past my knees, and the front crossing comes up high on my neck, but not high enough it blocks out the two perfectly circular puncture wounds. The longer I gawk, the harder it becomes to breathe, to swallow, to think.

“Don’t look, little warrior. You don’t have to do this to yourself,” Tillman says gently, stepping in front of me, blocking out the sight of myself.

Wordlessly, I nod. I don’t need a visual of my entire body to know it looks rough. I just need to wash the evidence away and go to sleep. That’s what I want.

Tenderly, his magic skates across me, removing the robe and my ruined bra and underwear. When he turns me toward my shower, I pause my steps when I see Corentin and Caspian, still fully clothed, already in the shower stall, waiting for me, and Draken gently places his hand on my lower back, steering me in there with them.

It’s not that I have any issues with them all seeing me naked. It’s nothing they haven’t already seen of me before. It’s the markings. The cuts. The bite marks. The burn. My ruined mating mark. I don’t want the sight of me to disgust them.

“I’m trying to give you a little privacy, but I can’t ignore you when things like that cross your mind. We find nothing about you disgusting. Not a single thing.”

I don’t answer Tillman right away as we step under the spray and the first splash of hot water is enough to draw a hiss from mylips. It takes my body a moment to adjust to this sort of pain, but it quickly numbs as gentle hands begin to rub away the dried and crusted blood.

“It’s me,” I whisper.

“What’s you, Primary?” Caspian asks.

“I had a not so pleasant thought about myself, and Tillman called me out about it. I was worried you all would find me disgusting because of this and he quickly shut that down. And I know it’s the truth. But my truth is…it’s me. I find myself disgusting.”

My tears come swift and rapid as I admit that to them. It’s not easy saying it out loud, but one thing I’ve learned since coming here is I held all my trauma and feelings in for so long, my coping mechanism became to ignore it and act like it never happened. It took considerable effort in the nonmagical realm to suck it up, survive until tomorrow, but it weighed me down heavily. I don’t have to do that here.

Here, I have them, and they’ve helped heal so much of me already, teaching me with their actions how to trust, how to communicate, showing me how to experience pleasure without ridicule or force, and I refuse to have come this far with loving, trusting, devoting my mind, body, and soul to them, just to shut them out and let this new trauma take hold.

I won’t do it.

“When I got rescued, I refused to look in the mirror for a month. I refused to face what had been done to me. I felt…vile.” Caspian’s quiet voice sounds amplified in the silence of the shower, and I hold my breath, waiting for him to continue speaking. I need more than anything right now for him to relate to me so I can figure out how to process this without it affecting all of us negatively.

“I wouldn’t let Corentin help me. Tillman, my mom, dads, uncle, or Gaster. I didn’t want it. I wanted to ignore it. Bury it deep within myself. Handle it all myself.”

Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do.

“You can’t ignore it, Primary. It’ll fester and grow into hatred, resentment, self-loathing. I won’t allow you to do that to yourself,” he says sternly but also sweetly, like he truly fears what will become of me if I let myself go.

“Help me.”

Like sending out a SOS, they each begin to lather their hands with my soap, resuming their careful cleaning. Each of them takes delicate care of whatever wound they come across, and the comfort of each touch overshadows any pain I may feel.

Once the water quits flowing pink, and I’m sure every surface of me from my head to my toes is clean, they stand in front of me, mapping out every last marking on my body. Even if I couldn’t see their gazes running the length of me, I’d know by the rising emotions that’s what they’re doing.

“Close your eyes, Primary,” Caspian orders, and without hesitation, I listen to his command.

Softly, I feel his fingers trace the bruising of my right black eye before he lays a tender kiss to my lid. “Tell me how this happened.”

His demand takes me by surprise and at first, I don’t want to answer him. It’s too painful, too fresh, but then it dawns on me, that’s exactly why he’s asking. It’s all still new, and he’s not giving me time to bury it. Still, I don’t know if walking them through what happened is the best idea.

“I know you all are going to get upset, and I don’t know if I can handle that right now,” I admit quietly.

“Don’t worry about us, princess. This is about you.” Corentin’s voice almost pulls a sob out of the depths of my chest.I wasn’t sure how much longer I could give him not speaking to me or acknowledging me before I broke down.

Nodding, I answer Caspian. I answer each question honestly as he takes his time, tracing the bruising on my face, the cuts on my arms, the swollen, busted vein in the crook of my elbow. I tell him the truth of each one.

Then Tillman.

I feel him lower himself to his knees in front of me, and I want to open my eyes and look down at him kneeling in front of me again, but I don’t. I don’t want to break this courage, this concentration I have right now on spilling everything openly.

Down each leg he goes, paying the double puncture marks of Bryce’s teeth attention, lavishing each of them with gentle caresses and soft strokes. Every cut he runs his finger across smoothly as if he can erase the line with an easy swipe. With a light kiss to the scar on my stomach, he rises to his feet and tucks my hair behind my ear before stepping back.

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