Page 356 of Blood and Ruin: The Complete Series

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LUKA

It’s dark.So dark that I’m starting to question if my eyes are even open.

“Kiarra?”

No one replies, making my heart drop. I clench my fists as they shake.

I’m sure she’s fine. She has to be.

Figure out where you are and then go find her.

I nod to myself, a plan now in my mind and away from visualizing everything bad that could have happened to her.

Moving aimlessly through the dark, I finally see a dim light and hurry toward it. The closer I get, the more I can make out a room.

It’s not until I’m only a few feet away do I recognize what room it is, stopping dead in my tracks.

It’s the room where Cillian performed all his spells on me. The place he nearly achieved splitting my soul in half, separating my shadow wolf and me forever, where torture and pain were branded across my skin. The room where my nightmares still come alive, and my shadow wolf cries out in pain.

I never thought I’d see it again, thinking that if I did, I’d burn it leaving no trace behind.

But seeing it now, fear grips me by the throat like icy claws, making my whole body turn to stone.

The fear drags on, making my chest tighten the more I stare at the table in the middle of the room.

Not only because of how real it all feels as it drags up every sick and twisted memory like it was yesterday. But because the room isn’t vacant.

Cillian is right there with a younger me strapped to the table, tears trailing down his face, begging him to stop.

But I know he won’t. No matter how much younger me cries or screams or begs. He never stops. I try to take a step back, to get away from the nightmare in front of me when my world tilts and shifts. I blacken out for a moment and when my eyes open, I’m the one strapped down on the table, my top half bare.

No…No. No. No.

The tight rope burns against my skin as I pull against it. But just like when I was younger, it doesn’t budge. I could never escape with the spelled binds he placed on them. All I could ever do was prepare myself and try to go somewhere else in my mind.

My breathing becomes shallow as I try to make myself realize that this isn’t real. It can’t be.

This is a dream… an illusion…

But my mind doesn’t want to listen anymore. It’s gone into full panic mode as I start yanking against the burning ropes, making my skin raw in seconds.

“Don’t waste your energy. This will all be over in a minute.”

I freeze hearing his voice.

“You’re not… you’re not real.”

Cillian turns to me with a blade in his hand, a cruel smirk on his face. The same smirk he wore every time he came up with something new to strip my shadow wolf from me, finding joy in every minute of my pain.

“I’m as real as you are, boy. Don’t worry though, I’m going to take that evil from you, even if I have to rip it out with my bare hands.”

My eyes widen in horror as he bends over me and places the blunt of the cold steel to my stomach. Once it touches my skin, a blaze of heat scorches the spot traveling inward, making it feel like my organs are fucking melting.

The agony only grows, the longer the blade touches my skin, spreading to every part of my body. I try arching away from the pain, but the binds hold me in place. Cillian pushes the blade further into my stomach, and that’s when the pain grows tenfold.

There’s no outlet for the overwhelming pain I feel, so I do the only thing I can.

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