Page 18 of Fated to Monsters

Please stop.

Please stop.

Please.

Stop.

Please.

I pinch my eyes shut, convinced that if I pretend I’m not here, I’ll disappear.

Maybe I can just disappear.

Disappear.

“Come back to me,” a whisper floats to me.

It is kind, gentle, safe.

I focus on it, even if it is only a figment of my imagination.

Anything is better than this.

Another torrent of the whip. I am ripped open.

I shake.

Hands, warm hands, grip my shoulders.

“Dash,” the voice calls out again, this time with more urgency.

Is this person in danger more than I am? Do they need me? How can I break away from my hell to save this other person? No one should be helpless, scared, afraid. I must find a way.

“Please,” they say. “I need you.”

I fight. I scrape. I push with every ounce of strength.

And when I open my eyes, I am no longer in hell, but in the arms of the woman who I care most about in this entire world.

“Dash,” she pulls me to her. “Angels, are you okay?”

I hug her back, grateful to be gone from whatever nightmare I was just living through. It felt too…real. No dream has ever made me experience such torment.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry I worried you.”

She releases me but keeps me at an arm’s length. “Are you really apologizing right now?”

“Sorry.”

Her cheeks turn up into a smile. “Dash.”

I pinch my lips together to keep myself from saying sorry again.

Wren blots at my forehead with a towel.

Bo rises from his chair in the corner of the room and moseys over. “Thought you were a goner, bud.” He pats my shoulder. “Where did you go?”

I scoot up and rest my back against the headframe of the bed we slept in last night. Someone must have brought me here when I…

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