Page 145 of Hunting Pretty

She wasparalyzed.

She had been drugged with one of my father’s vile potions.

My father had been abusing her. Using her.

And I had let it happen.

I had watched.

I hadtouchedmyself thinking of it.

The guilt hit me like a wrecking ball, ripping through every excuse I’d ever made for myself. It defined me. Every choice I’d made up until then, every time I’d turned my back, it all came crashing down. I let it happen. I let her suffer.

I couldn’t live with that.

That was the moment I knew I had to stop it. I had to put an end to it—no matter the cost, no matter what it took. Protecting her became my mission, the only thing that mattered anymore.

I made the decision to save her, to shield her from the monster that was my father. And I did it the only way I knew how.

By becoming a monster myself.

Back in the kitchen, I stepped between Ava’s legs as they dangled off the counter and handed her a steaming mug of milky, sugary tea.

She held it between us like a shield.

I took a sip of my own tea, burning my mouth, trying to delay the inevitable.

All too soon there was no more tea.

Nothing left to do but confess.

I swallowed down the guilt lumped like a rock in my throat.

“I didn’t realize at first what he was doing. I thought… I thought you wanted it. Wantedhim.”

She sucked in a gasp, realization crossing her eyes like she just put two and two together. “That’s why you hated me.”

God, she looked so small sitting there, curled around her mug of tea, her eyes shimmering with wetness.

I wanted to protect her. Wanted to curl around her and never let her go.

But there were things that even I couldn’t protect her from. No matter how much I wanted to.

“I realized too late that my own father was drugging you.”

The words slipped from my mouth like a venomous hiss, the guilt sinking into my veins like poison, spreading through every inch of me. It consumed me, tainted everything I was.

My guilt had twisted me, warped me into something darker. It clung to my soul like a curse, burning through my veins until there was nothing left but shame and self-loathing.

I had let it define me. It hadchangedme. Turned me into the monster I am now.

I could never stop paying for it.

No matter how many times I saved her, no matter how many demons I fought to protect her, it would never be enough.

Because nothing—nothing—could make up for those nights when I should have saved her but didn’t.

The nights when I just watched instead of stopping the nightmare she was trapped in.

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