Auto

16

Auto woke with a start. Damn. Not that night again. That woman scarred him for life. Damn it, that night was as permanent as the ink on his skin.

His heart ached. It was like she was a song, stuck on repeat in his head. Her laugh, her smile, her moans. Her voice, her attitude. She was... ineffable.

Almost inescapable, classy, no nonsense, gentle, strong, and yet so sensitive.

Mysterious. Intuitive. Gorgeous. Sexy. Tempting. Scary. Motherly.

What wasn't she? Except out of his head, and in his life? Whose fault was that exactly?

Auto sighed heavily. His sons. They were almost a month old. A month of their life, gone, with him absent. A month he would never get back. A month the mother of his children fended for herself, took care of his babies alone.

Was is it better this way?

That was the true question. After all, was it a guarantee that no one would find her. Her and the babies. Restless, Auto took out his phone.

He searched for one month mile stones, just to see. He figured, at one month, he hadn't missed much.

He was wrong. It was at the time when the baby was starting to recognize his parents.

His boys...

He would be a stranger to them. He didn't want that. What the hell was he gonna do?

***

Grim groaned in pain. His wounds were healing, but ever so slowly. Damn, the Bellas did a number on him. How the hell did he manage to get captured anyway?

He was fuckin' Grim. No one captured Grim. The wild man growled. He was angry, horny, and damn it, still just a bit high. Becks wasn't fuckin' around when she said the antidote was as strong as the drug itself.

“Fuckin' hell," Grim cursed, as he changed the dressing of his wound, drifting in and out of space.

The antidote came with am unfortunate side effects: While Pain, the side of Grim created by the drug, fought to stay alive and in his system, he was forced to undergo waves of memories.

Not as Grim.

Oh no. Pain was living up to his name.

Tonya's eyes were red and watery, her gaze fixed on the ceiling as he violated her. Grim cringed. It was as if he were watching from outside his body, watching an identical stranger do unspeakable things to the woman his cared for.

“No no no no no wait please!”

Grim inhaled sharply, feeling as if he had been drowning. His lungs desperately filled themselves with air, a nauseous feeling bubbling up in his belly.

How many times had he been violated in the same way. Almost the exact same way? He couldn't accept it. That a drug, no matter how powerful, could allow him to do that to someone—anyone.

Let alone his little tiger.

He felt filthy. His skin crawled, his soul wanting to escape from the binds of scarred flesh that kept him together.

God, what had he done?

He needed to be punished. Solemnly, he raised his calloused hands, inspecting them. Seeing the filth, the sin that covered them. He just kept staring at his hands.

The hands that hurt a woman—his woman. Defiled her. Drug? No. Disgust for himself welled up.

No, it wasn't a drug. It was the cesspool of genes passed onto him from his father. It was who he was.

Who he would've been. Could've been. Perhaps, should've been.

And now—now, it was who he was.

All those years, fighting so hard, for what? To become what he loathed. Self-loathing pulsed through his veins, sickening him.

He needed to be free of the blood that tainted him. So he took his switchblade, yo his wrists, reveling in the sting as a strip of skin was peeled away, blood welling in it's place.

Monstrous, abominable, despicable blood that tortuously ran through him. Fueled him. Powered him.

“What have I become?" he rasped to himself.

But then again, he already knew.