Page 30 of Bound to the Guard

If eating makes Damien happy, I’ll do it. And if therapy means I can stay with him, I’ll do that, too.

Because without him, I’m nothing.

Weeks pass, with the search for Jade continuing, and the rhythm of my days falls into a pattern as I begin to speak with a therapist.

At first, our sessions are in the office in Damien’s suite, with him nearby. He sits across the room, a quiet, watchful presence as I share fragments of my thoughts and fears.

Over time, with my therapist’s encouragement, Damien moves to the living room during my sessions. It’s strange, not having him within arm’s reach, but I adjust.

The day I ask him to leave the suite altogether during therapy, my hands shake with anxiety. The space holds its breath without him, but I start to notice something in the silence. Myself.

Not the person locked in the box of my past. No longer just a number, either. Someone new I’m still getting to know.

Damien’s support never falters. Each evening, he brings home a new crafting book, laying it on the coffee table with a hopeful smile. Embroidery, knitting, paper quilling, painting, pages brimming with possibilities.

I try some, my fingers fumbling with yarn and paper.

Nothing sticks.

When frustration bubbles up, Damien says we’ll keep searching.

Three weeks after my arrival, he convinces me to take a tour of the manor house.

“Just one floor,” he encourages as I clutch my blanket, wrapping it around my shoulders like a shield.

It’s a new one, smaller than the comforter from the bed, that Damien purchased especially for me. It carries the scent of our home, the soft fabric giving me courage as we step into the main level of the house.

The rooms blur together, words like banquet halls, drawing rooms, and libraries all blurring together until we stumble upon one unlike the others.

Sunlight streams through tall windows, illuminating polished wood floors and rows of instruments. A grand piano sits in the center of the room, its black lacquer gleaming.

Damien follows my line of sight. “My grandmother used to play.” He gestures to an old photograph on the wall of a stately Alpha sitting at the piano. “No one else in the family ever cared to learn…”

He trails off as I drift toward the piano, drawn like a moth to a flame. I sit on the bench and lift the fallboard to reveal a row of ivory and black keys. My fingers hover over one, trembling. When I press it, a pure, clear note rings out, resonating through me.

My hands shake as emotions crash in a storm that threatens to sweep me under.

Damien comes closer, sitting on the bench beside me without speaking.

Another key, a higher note, joins the first, and tears well up, along with memories from my past that I’ve suppressed for so long.

“The community center where my papa took me had a piano,” I whisper. “It was old, out of tune, and half the keys were missing their ivory tops. But he always made it sing.”

Damien touches my back. “I’d like to meet him one day.”

“You can’t.” The tears spill over. “He’s dead.”

I place both hands on the keys, their cool surface grounding me. Muscle memory takes over as I recall the hours spent perched on that bench, my small hands straining to reach chords.

The first notes ring out, hesitant, uneven. Then they flow, a melody I hadn’t realized I still carried with me.

Tears fall unhindered as I play, each note a bridge between past and present.

Beside me, Damien doesn’t speak, but his hand settles on my back, his silent presence more reassuring than words.

This, more than the therapy, feels like healing.

When the song ends, the notes hang in the air, and I turn to Damien, who stares at me with awe. “I can give you information on how to find my owners and the holding pens where they kept me. It might not lead you to Jade, but the Alphas may have a way to contact the sellers.”

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