Page 107 of Conquered
The events of tonight have wrung me out until I feel like a damp rag. Boneless, and like there's no more tears left.
He must feel my body droop because he scoops me up and carries me upstairs, taking me to Loki's room. I hear the others come in as Kai carefully sets me on my feet, removing my towel and picking me up again, then lying me down in Loki's bed.
He tenderly kisses my forehead before straightening up. I crack my eyes open a slit to see Loki and Jax climb in naked on either side of me, the bed dipping with their weight.
“Sleep now, Pretty Girl,” Loki mumbles, pulling me close to him, my back to his chest. “It'll all be okay.”
Before I can utter a word of protest, darkness overtakes me, and I fall into a blissful, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
JAX
Iwatch as sleep overtakes Lilly’s beautiful features, a deep furrow in between her brows that I hate seeing there.
Loki told Lilly it'll be okay, but how can it be? That cunt, that dead man fucking walking, touched her. He hurt her, tried to take what didn't belong to him. She's fucking ours, and no one, no motherfucking one, gets to lay a finger on her but us.
I reach out, my hand falling on her soft waist, and she sighs in her sleep.
My heart stopped in my chest when she ran into the dorm, bleeding and eyes wild, full of panic like a deer who’s been caught by a hunter. Our beautiful, strong girl was broken, and we'd done it to her just as much as that bastard. Guilt slithers over me, sticky and viscous as tar when I recall how we iced her out, taking the pain of her supposed rejection out on her.
It was bullshit! She’s a normal fucking girl, and our lives are anything but normal. How could we have just expected her to have been cool with it? With what we have to do? Especially after what happened to her mom.
And look what fucking happened because of our stupid fucking reaction. This is as much our fault as that fucker’s,Robert. We may as well have thrown her to him, abandoning her like we did. I feel sick with the knowledge that we're to blame. We didn't protect her when she needed us most.
And I'll spend every damn day for the rest of my cursed life making it up to her.
LOKI
I pull Lilly in closer, holding her so tightly I'm surprised that she can still breathe. Tears prick my eyes when I remember how she ran straight into Jax's arms and broke down earlier. I look up over her head and see Jax's eyes in the low light. They reflect the self-loathing and crippling guilt that I feel inside.
We failed our beautiful girl, the only girl I've ever loved in my miserable life. And I let her down. At the first sign of trouble, I quit, not realizing that she just needed time to adjust. Not for us to just drop her like a bag of garbage.
Sure, we were hurting, but she was confused and frightened, and we just walked away like fucking children.
I tighten my grip even more, I've fucking missed holding her in my arms. It's like a piece of me has been gone these past couple of weeks. And when I think about what could have happened to her tonight...My blood boils, searing my insides, and making me feel like I want to vomit, all at the same time.
Robert will hurt so badly he will wish he was dead, long before we do him the mercy of ending his pathetic life.
I've never wished for faith as much as I do now, just so I'd know for sure that he will be tortured in Hell for all eternity.
As I hold her, I silently vow to seek revenge. Then to spend every waking moment loving her with my whole heart.
My whole fucking soul and everything that I am, or ever will be, belongs to her now.
KAI
I close the door softly and take a deep breath, placing my forehead on the wood.
Then another.
Then another.
It doesn't help. Rage, like I haven’t known for years, burns my insides, blackening them until I feel like my whole being is darkness incarnate. Most people see red when they feel uncontrollable anger. I see black. The black of endless night, and monsters that'll devour your soul.
Blinking, I come back to myself. I head downstairs to wait for Ash. He's hurting badly and has never been good with his emotions. Like I told Lilly, he feels like he's personally responsible for what happened tonight.
He's not wholly wrong, we are all culpable. We abandoned her and opened her up for this sort of thing. It just never occurred to us that someone would be stupid enough to touch her after we'd claimed her.
