Page 18 of Unleashed
“For you,” I hear him say, my hands clawing at the mattress, but there’s no escape. The bed isn’t a bed anymore—it’s a slab. Cold.Rough. The pillows are sodden. The air heavy with the stench of rot.
His face looms closer again, split into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, doesn’tbelongto him.
“I told you I’d protect you,” he whispers. “Even from yourself.”
Then—
Everything collapses.
The walls ripple. The blood thickens. His eyes turn pitch black. And I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. Suddenly, his hands are around my throat, choking, squeezing, crushing.
“Do you feel that?” His tone is grating. Evil. “The life leaving you? That’s how they felt, too. Each and every life I took for you.”
Terror engulfs me, and every cell in my body screams for air, to escape, to fight. I claw at his hands, nails scraping with futile desperation… and he laughs. This horrible, unhinged sound spilling from his throat—low and throaty at first, then rising, cracking, warping into something manic and inhuman. It’s the kind of laugh that doesn’t belong in the mouth of a man, but a monster with a death rattle straight from hell. He laughs like he’s already won. Like he’s enjoying every second of my fear. Like my struggle is the darkness he feeds on.
“P…pl…” I can’t speak. I can’t cry out or plead or beg.
Isaia smiles—slow, cold, teeth crimson, his grip tightening. “I warned you, troublemaker.” I scratch at his arm, desperate for air. “I told you I’d paint the world with blood for you.”
My body stiffens beneath his weight, an invisible barrier between our skin and our desires. Shaking, I manage to pushagainst his chest, but he only grins. A chilling, mirthless curl of his lips.
“Isaia,” I choke out. “I can’t?—”
“Shh, baby girl.” It feels like my eyes are about to bulge out of my skull as I thrash desperately, lungs burning, my throat caving in. “I’m your monster, remember?”
“No.” My head starts to dart sideways. “No. No. No.” Anthony was right. He’s been right about Isaia all along.
Oh, God.I can’t breathe, his fingers digging into my flesh, squeezing my windpipe shut.
He’s killing me.
Help!
“Everly!”
Isaia, no. Please.
“Everly, wake up!”
The voice cuts through the nightmare like a knife, and I gasp as I jolt upright, both hands grasping at my throat. It’s still there, the phantom pressure from the dream hasn’t left—invisible fingers wrapped tight around my neck, squeezing, choking. My chest convulses as I try to breathe, but nothing comes. No air. No relief. Just the rising panic of a body betraying itself.
A sharp wheeze breaks free and suddenly everything’s spinning, and my lungs seize, chest rising in shallow, jerky attempts to suck in air that won’t come. I double over, heart hammering like it’s trying to escape my rib cage, fingers trembling as I claw at the sheets, my throat, the space around me—anything to anchor me.
Then arms wrap around my shoulders, pulling me back from the edge.
“Everly—fuck, look at me. You’re having an attack.”
Anthony?
There’s a click, the familiar rattle of plastic, and the cool press of the inhaler against my lips. One burst. Then another, and it hits my lungs like a rush of ice, shocking my system into responding. Air returns in shallow, painful sips, and I cling to them like lifelines, the panic slowly peeling back as the world steadies beneath me.
“Just breathe.”
I glance at Anthony sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes wide, worry lines creasing between his brows. “What?—”
“Don’t speak.” He gently eases a strand of hair away from my face. “Just take a few steady breaths.”
It was all a nightmare. The blood. His voice.Him.It wasn’t real.
