Page 105 of Cruel Cravings

“You… you…” he chokes out, but he can’t finish his sentence.

I expect punishment. For him to hit me in the face or much worse.

If he weren’t bleeding out before me, something tells me that’s what would happen. I would be tortured until I really did lose my mind.

It still might happen if he survives. Once Big Bird and the others find out what happened?—

The door bangs open so suddenly, the walls shake. Whoever’s forced it open has practically ripped it off its hinges.

My head snaps to the side as I stare at the hulking figure in the doorway. He fills the space from one side of the doorframe to the other, so tall he skims the top too.

He’s built like a monster out of a nightmare, body solid and broad, carved by bulging muscles. His face isn’t the face of a man’s—it’s that of a minotaur, his curled black horns jutting out like a bull.

I blink and vaguely wonder if I really am in the middle of a nightmare. If I really am dreaming right now.

This can’t be…

Brontë spends a second studying the scene before him—my thin blue hospital gown bunched at my waist, my legs gaped open, Dr. Wolford in the space between with his pants undone, now clutching at his gushing neck—and then he releases a howl unlike anything I’ve ever heard.

It’s a primitive, thundering sound from deep inside his broad chest. The sound’s pure ferocity, shaking me to my core.

He charges forward, once again resembling a bull as he launches himself at Dr. Wolford. He collides with the bleeding doctor, the two soaring together across the room.

They land in a tumble on the ground as Brontë quickly comes out on top and pins him down.

Still strapped to the bed, I crane my neck, tilting my head forward for a look at what’s happening.

Brontë’s fist comes down, pounding into his father’s face until he digs his fingers into the open gash on Wolford’s neck, stretching it wider, tearing at the skin and the vessels and tissue he finds on the inside, coating his fingers in blood.

The room fills with a juxtaposition of Brontë’s beastly grunts and his father’s feeble cries. The sound is almost musical, almost beautiful in its brutality.

Brontë’s literally ripped his father’s throat open with his bare hands.

But even that’s not enough—he reaches for the ECT machine on the cart and smashes it into his skull, immediately creating a massive dent in the bone. He brings it down again and again, bashing his skull in until there’s hardly anything left.

It’s completely cracked open and the inside is in full view.

His father’s body twitches even seconds after he’s otherwise stopped responding.

Brontë rises to his feet and stands over him as if processing what he’s done. His breaths are deep and labored, his back to the bed. Raw fury emanates from him, a palpable feeling that reaches me all the way across the room.

It’s as if he’s so lost to his baser, animalistic instincts that he’s struggling to contain himself.

Finally, he turns to me, seemingly remembering he’s not alone in the room. The mask disguises any expression he could be wearing on his scarred face, but his eyes tell me enough. The fire burning in them extinguishes for the twisted affection he has for me.

He crosses the room in two quick strides and goes straight into fixing my gown and undoing my binds.

Relief sinks into me. I release a whimper from my throat as his massive, gentle hands strip away the leather cuffs and my aching wrists are finally freed. He moves onto the cuffs around my ankles until I’m fully mobile.

After weeks of laying stationary in bed, my body feels unlike my own. He has to help me sit up, an immediate soreness present. He lifts me off the bed into his arms, a surge of warmth passing through me. His energy mixing with mine.

I close my eyes and savor the moment.

For the first time in recent memory, I feel safe. I feel real.

Sane.

He was never a figment of my imagination. He wasn’t an inanimate shadow or part of a dream.

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