Page 4 of Bound By the Wraith: Northern Realms

Emotionally crushed would be the proper term.

Only she couldn’t say that she was, because her husband had slipped her something that made it almost impossible to speak coherently. This man she loved, that she literally sold her soul to save, had used her.

Had drugged her.

All those times she sat next to him during rough chemotherapy treatments, bathed him, held a bucket for him while he was sick and cleaned him up after. Everything. She thought he was her heart and soul. So much so, she sold her own soul to save him and now he was having her committed?

And she couldn’t even explain herself.

She couldn’t argue with him.

And the tox screen—he’d said she used these drugs because she was addicted. They believed him too, which is why she was under a twenty-four watch.

This was not the man she fell in love with. As they strapped her down on a bed, wrapping lambskin around her wrists, she realized that he wasn’t the man she thought he was. She’d been duped all along.

Which wasn’t new.

She’d been used all her life.

Her parents were never nice to her. They had their own mental health issues that saw them in and out of hospitals, and she’d spent her whole life people pleasing and taking care of them. They both got cancer eventually and died. Then she met Simon and he swept her off her feet. Their romance was a whirlwind and he was a gentleman, telling her that they’d be together for the first time on their wedding night. They got married and then he explained he had cancer too and the meds made him impotent and sterile. She’d been devastated. It meant no children, she’d been crushed and deceived. She almost left him then, but he was sick and she couldn’t leave him. She had to help him battle the disease.

Simon was always grateful. Even as it got worse and there was no hope.

He had pancreatic cancer. She’d fallen in love with Simon because he was the first person to ever be truly kind to her.

She was a fool.

All he wanted her for was a caretaker. She saw that now. He used her like her parents did.

Then that demon came, promising a cure in return for her soul. Simon begged her to sign that contract so that she’d have a life with Simon. A family. All of her dreams, because that’s all she ever wanted. Simon promised her so much, if she only made the deal. There was no threat to her soul because he’d be with her forever.

Peace, love and happiness. Everything she’d been denied.

There was an ache in her heart, dreams that she dreamed, of someone who adored her, but was always taken away from her. A face that terrified her, yet she yearned for. She thought, when she met Simon, he was the face.

She’d had those dreams for years and they felt like fragments of past lives, that’s why she believed that Simon was the one.

However, her ultrareligious parents said past lives were a sin. Soulmates weren’t real. Even thinking of that or anything out of the ordinary meant she was destined for hell. The thing was, it was all real and she was headed straight for there anyways. Her soul was doomed. Simon had broken the contract by leaving her. He got his cure. Then to tell the doctors she was having a breakdown. Then he lied, saying he didn’t know about the contract or how she sold her soul.

Now, as she lay in the room alone, staring up at the tiled ceiling of the hospital, she just wanted to scream. Only she couldn’t. Everything in her system numbed her.

Why didn’t the doctors see that her husband had drugged her? She wasn’t addicted to medication. Why did no one believe her?

The room changed and it felt like she was spinning, like she was being pulled away. She was no longer in the original room. It was like she had moved, somewhere dark.

Had she drifted off again?

This was all so wrong.

Maybe hell is a better alternative?

“Not really.”

Cali startled at the voice that appeared out of the shadows of the room. He was dressed in black leather, his skin so pale that it was glowing. Her heart skipped a beat when she looked at him, her eyes locking with those glowing eyes that gleamed in the darkness, and there was a sense of familiarity there.

It reminded her of a face she’d seen, but also not.

Instinctually, her body reacted to him like she knew his touch. Craved his touch, actually.

---