He didn’t pause. Didn’t give her room to argue.
Because in that mont, Phei wasn’t asking.
He was declaring a promise to her and his already Marked woman, Sierra, her daughter.
And the man who had done this to her—the monster who had turned her life into an unrelenting hell of bruises, blood, and bone-deep terror—would soon learn what true, unending, rciless fear felt like.
"Otherwise, what would be the use of saving Sierra only to watch her get consud by darkness and guilt after she learns what’s been happening to her mother?"
Phei’s voice was low, cold, relentless. "You could die here. He doesn’t care anymore. He’ll kill you if it served his desires. What do you think Sierra would do when she finds out? That you died protecting her? That you sacrificed yourself so she could live while you suffered in silence? Let help you. And I can."
Everything ca out in a single, icy breath.
Because giving her ti to think would let her rebuild the walls. Ti to find reasons why she had to stay and convince herself that this endless hell was the only way to save her daughter.
He wouldn’t allow it.
Roxanne pulled out of his arms.
Phei let her go.
She sat there on the bed, covers pooled around her waist, looking at him with those glassy, shattered eyes. And he looked back.
First her eyes — hollow, red-rimd, filled with the kind of soul-crushing exhaustion that ca from years of rely surviving, not living. The eyes that said a story of who had been slowly murdered from the inside out.
Then her face.
Bruises. Dark and ugly, spreading across her cheekbone like spilled ink mixed with rot, curling around her jaw in vicious, overlapping fingerprints. Fresh ones layered brutally over fading ones — a grotesque, living tiline of violence carved directly into her skin.
Deep purple blooming into angry black, sickly yellow edges bleeding into rotting green.
Her lower lip was split wide open, crusted with dried blood that still oozed fresh crimson. One eye was swollen nearly shut, a grotesque, puffy ss of purple-black flesh that wept silently with every terrified breath.
He looked lower.
Her neck. More bruises — perfect, brutal imprints of fingers that had wrapped around her delicate throat and squeezed until she gagged and fought for air that never ca. The unmistakable shape of hands that had tried to choke the life out of her more tis than she could count.
Her chest. The thin silk nightie she wore was barely holding on, delicate straps slipping off her trembling shoulders, leaving her arms and upper chest exposed.
Only horror. Bruises scattered across her upper breasts and chest like soone had used her body as a punching bag for their drunken rage — dark splotches, vicious handprints, the faint imprint of knuckles that had hamred into her again and again.
Her arms. The sa nightmare. Purple and yellow and black, overlapping in brutal, calculated patterns that spoke of repeated, rciless beatings.
Phei reached down and pulled the covers away from her legs.
She didn’t stop him. She couldn’t.
The nightie ended high on her thighs. And below it — more. Her calves. Her thighs. Everywhere. So fresh and livid. So old and fading into sickly hues. So layered so deeply they looked like decaying flesh beneath the skin.
Her legs were a canvas of unrelenting tornt.
He didn’t want to imagine what fresh horrors were hidden beneath the silk.
Because Jonathan had been careful for years. Beating her where no one would see. Torso. Thighs.
The places clothes would cover. What Phei was seeing now was what happened when the mask finally ca off.
How much worse is it underneath?
Roxanne shivered violently as the air in the room began to change.
It grew colder. Sharper. The temperature plumted like sothing murderous and rciless had reached in and stolen every trace of warmth, leaving only the promise of violence. Frost began to creep across the window, delicate patterns of black ice spreading outward, cracking the glass with soft, ominous sounds.
Phei’s eyes had changed.
The warm athyst was gone, replaced by sothing ancient and terrible — void-black sclera swallowing the whites, glacial blue-white irises burning with frozen starlight, pupils razor-thin slits that drank the light instead of reflecting it.
"Master."
Eira’s voice cut through the cold — high, sweet, childlike.
"You’re scaring her."
He blinked.
Snapped out of it.
The cold retreated instantly, the frost on the window evaporating as though it had never existed. His eyes returned to normal.
The oppressive pressure in the room lifted like a weight being taken off her chest.
Roxanne was pressed hard against the headboard, trembling so violently her teeth chattered. She stared at him with a new kind of terror — not just the fear of expected pain, but the raw, pitiful dread of soone who had just glimpsed sothing vast, inhuman, and ancient wearing the face of the only person she thought might save her.
"Sorry about that," he said quietly, voice still carrying that glacial edge.
He stood up.
"Get whatever you can take. I’m asking, not ordering." He held her gaze — cold, steady, unrelenting. "I’m asking you to trust , Roxanne. I can’t leave here without you. I can’t just choose one when I can make sure both of you survive."
"Master."
Eira’s voice again. Sharper this ti.
"Jonathan is in the hallway. About to enter."
They heard the footsteps.
Heavy. Deliberate. The stride of a man who owned everything in this house — including the broken woman cowering in his bed.
Roxanne’s whole body seized with terror. A full-body convulsion that started in her spine and radiated outward, making her curl inward, making herself as small as possible, trying to disappear into the mattress itself. Her breath ca in short, panicked whimpers.
Fresh tears spilled down her bruised cheeks.
"ROXANNE!"
The shout ca from just outside the door — ugly, drunken, full of cruel expectation and the promise of fresh pain.
Then the door slamd open.
Jonathan Montgory stood in the doorway, mouth already forming whatever vicious thing he’d planned to say—
And found Phei standing beside the bed, holding his wife’s trembling, broken hand protectively.
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