Wolf Bound

10 - Her truth

Damian

“As soon as I got to the clinic and those doors closed, I knew I’d just stepped into the worst kind of hell.” River continues. “It was worse than anything I could have imagined, Damian,”

River looks at me, and all I want to do is take all the pain away. I could with my vampiric abilities, but I also know River needs to heal herself. It’s the only way for my mate to move forward from the pain.

“The torture started instantly: electric shock treatment, drugs injected into my veins, starvation, and humiliation. I was there a week before Marta wanted to operate on me. She was the worst type of person, Damian. All she did from the moment I arrived was bully me. She loved to call me names and mock me about looking feminine when I was a man.

“I yelled at her the first time she said that. I wanted her to understand that I am female, born in the wrong body, and she should have some respect. Marta laughed and told me that Selene would be most angry at me for saying such things. The Goddess makes no mistakes, after all.

“Marta then smirked and told me that she could turn me into a real girl. I shook my head because I didn’t want her to do anything to me. I had come to terms with my body and never being able to change it; I am who I am. But she injected me with a paralyzing agent. She then had me strapped down, and I could feel everything they did to me, Damian.”

My nostrils flare in anger.

What kind of sick fuc.k would do that?

“All the while, Marta told me that I had nothing to worry about because she wouldn’t be giving me massive breasts. I would heal the moment she inserted the implants and removed the clamps. I did heal fast, but I was disgusted with myself. I was now the freak everyone saw me as. Marta just laughed and told me that she wouldn’t put me through cutting my dic.k off, her words,” River smiles slightly. “She said I’d heal way too quickly, and others had plans for what was down there anyway.”

River sighs, and my heart is pounding hard and fast. I feel sick! Not because of my mate, but because of what those monsters put her through.

“Angrily, I asked Marta what the hell they planned to tell my parents. After all, they were bound to notice I’d gained breasts in my time at that place. Marta shook her head and told me that I’d never be leaving the facility, so I had nothing to worry about. I tried to fight, but she had her guards beat me unconscious.”

I close my eyes momentarily and shake my head. Goddess, they mutilated my mate! Okay, her breasts are fabulous. But it should have been River’s choice whether or not she had them implanted!

“The torture never ended, Damian. When I thought there couldn’t be anything worse to come, the doctors found new ways to hurt me. They would beat me to a bloody pulp, and even worse when Saltan took over. It didn’t matter how quickly I healed; they would hurt me worse to keep me down.

“They experimented on me, telling me that if I was good, they’d find a way to remove my peni.s and create a vagin.a, turning me into a real girl. They acted like it was some big joke! They didn’t care how I felt. They simply told me to do as I was told or they’d kill me. They would tell my parents that I couldn’t handle the treatment and that I had killed myself. That broke me because I knew they meant it. Those people treated me like a freak for just being me! I’m not a freak; being this way doesn’t make me so. Does it?”

“No,” I shake my head. “You are perfect, River. The Goddess knows that you are perfect to me. They were the freaks!”

She smiles at me.

“I knew they’d never be able to give me the gender reassignment surgery. There’s just no way for us shifters to transition when we heal too quickly. Everyone knows that! When I pointed this out, Doctor Dever laughed in my face, then he told me that I was right, so he guessed I’d have to stay a freak forever.

“He let many people torture me just for fun, filled with glee at how I could stay human for mere days, then a Wolf for months. Saltan lived in a cage, and when I managed to shift, I was kept tied to a bed so I couldn’t run away.

“I wondered why my parents never came to visit like they said they would. I hoped they’d come, and they’d get me out of there, but they didn’t. I began to think Marta was right. I would never leave that place, and I would never see my parents again.

“Dever told me, while laughing in my face, that he’d spoken to my father and told him the treatment was coming along nicely. I was reacting to treatment just as he’d hoped. However, he thought it would be best if my family didn’t visit just yet to avoid derailing my recovery. Then he told me that he’d let my parents know in a month or two that I’d died.” River gulps back a sob.

I cannot believe what I’m hearing!

Did those bastards honestly think they’d get away with what they’d done?

What did they plan to do with River’s body?

Because her parents would have wanted to see her.

Did they plan to put her into a death-like sleep so they could fool her parents?

What then?

Because her parents would have wanted to take her body with them.

Where those doctors really so stupid as to believe they could pull off something so ridiculous?

“I didn’t know what to do, Damian. I wanted to go home so badly, yet I also wanted to find you at the same time. I wanted to know what it was like to be held by the man of my dreams. But I realized I couldn’t let you see me like that. I didn’t want to hurt you. The reason you stopped seeing me in your dreams,” River closes her eyes for a moment.

“River?”

My mate stares ahead, not wanting to look me in the eye when she continues.

“I blocked you because I couldn’t face what happened in those months before I broke free. It had been a long day being tortured, and Saltan couldn’t take any more. I’d shifted back, and I was in agony, even more so because they strapped me down on this gurney, naked and wishing I were dead.

“One of the doctors, a woman named Norma, took pleasure in breaking my bones just to watch them heal. She would cut me and drink my blood, hoping she’d gain some of my abilities.”

Oh, Goddess, what the fuc.k?!

My Wolf is growling inside my head, and I’m fighting the urge not to run out of here and kill the first thing I see! But I can’t. River needs me, and I will not let her down.

“Then three days later, while I was delirious from blood loss and a round of electric shock treatment, she injected me with a drug that forced an erectio.n.”

I think I’m going to throw up! I have a bad feeling River is going to tell me something that will make me lose my mind.

“Norma told me that her fantasy was always to fuc.k a woman with male parts. The fact that I now had breasts but still had my peni.s meant I was everything she wanted. I was so scared, and I begged her to leave me alone, because I was saving myself for my mate. But she didn’t care. She took off her clothes and she... She climbed on top of me,”

River sobs.

“I couldn’t stop her, Damian. I was tied down, filled with a paralyzing agent, and I couldn’t move. While Norma violated me! She kept telling me that I had to knot with her, but I didn’t want to; I couldn’t. I may have male anatomy, but I’m female in here,” River points to her head, and then her heart. “And here.”

It breaks my heart that someone would take advantage of River like that. Some sick bitc.h who got her kicks out of River being so scared. I want the cunt dead! I’ll find every last person who hurt my mate, and when I do, I’ll make them suffer!

“Never let anyone tell you different, River. You are a beautiful woman, my woman, and nothing in the world will ever change that.”

River smiles without looking at me. “I feel it when I’m with you, Damian. You make me feel all woman, and more beautiful than I ever have. I love you more than anything, but I feel as though I’ve cheated on you.” She sobs a little.

“No, baby. What happened wasn’t your fault. You have to know that, River.”

She swallows hard before continuing her story as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Norma got angry and injected me with something that burned my veins, made me scream, and I couldn’t stop what happened. I knotted, and I had never felt so sick in all my life.”

My heart splinters, I can feel the shards of it in my chest. My poor mate!

What the fuc.k kind of evil bitc.h rapes another woman?

I suppose women rape just as men do. I’ve just never met a woman who raped another in real life.

But that’s precisely what that woman did: she raped River. No wonder my mate is so fucke.d up, she’s been carrying this around for I don’t even know how long.

My heart breaks for my mate, and I have no clue how I will ever be able to make this better for her.