Page 96 of Jagged Souls

---

Powerless.

Only Khalid can affect the alexandrite.

Only Maddox could infiltrate the school.

Only Aleric can phase me to my wife.

I’ve never felt so fuckingweak.

My body trembling, I watch as Khalid picks up Micha’s doll.

I can’t breathe.

My chest feels too tight.

Like I’m being crushed from every side.

I open my mouth to suck in more air.

My lips wobble as I struggle to stay calm.

But every second is dragging out.

I can’t –

“Take the tattoo!”

Micha’s voice punches me in the gut, slamming up into my chest, and I fall to my knees on a wretched cry.

I know it’s just a mark on her skin, something I can redo, but her desire to remove it feels worse than a demand for a divorce. Like a rejection ofus. A sub removing a collar. A dom demanding it back to put on someone else.

But fuck, if it saves her eyes… if this is the choice… hurt me or hurt her…

I will pay it a thousand times.

She is mywife.

It is my job to protect her.

So I will gladly have my heart ripped out to save a single strand of hair on her head.

She is my wife…

“You want to hurt him, right?” Micha says. “Punish him for what he did to your gang? Then take the tattoo. He does not give a shit about me as long as I’m still his property.”

My throat closes as I fall forward. My hands barely catch me before my face hits the ground. I know she’s only saying this to manipulate him, but the words cut deep.

The fear that she believes them.

That even if she doesn’t, maybe one day, while trapped in Antonio’s prison, she will come to think that they’re true.

“So cut it off,” she says, a ringing hatred for me so clear in her voice. “Show him that he’s failed and I’m no longer his.”

I squeeze my eyes shut on a silent scream. My hands fist on the floor as her words beat down on me.

Because Ihavefucking failed her.

She should be home. With me. With Bambi. Smiling and laughing and planning a nursery. Antonio should be dead, cut down by our ambush at the crocodile farm. Instead, we killed his double while he ran into our house and murdered our baby girl, then kidnapped my wife.

---