Torn between mates

27. Broken

*Trigger alert: this chapter and the next one contain kidnapping and mention to s*xual abuse. 

3rd Person POV

Lea was so hurt that her mate, her own mate, was doing that to her. But besides being broken by such brutality, she was broken by the fact that by taking her forcefully, Alexus would sever all the three mate bonds. Her bonds with Valentin and Richard. He won’t only take her innocence and violate her body. He will deprive her of her bonds, her mates. 

That pained her even deeply, pierced a hole in her soul. She still couldn’t feel the pull in its full force, but she feels a pull and she grew to love the two of them. Her Richard and her Valentin. Now, that would be lost forever. 

Lea wonders what else Alexus wants from her if he would let her go after he … “You are planning to keep me here until…?” 

“Until I get sick of your blood and your little ass.” 

She gasps at his crude answer. Further realising that for him, she was only something to be used. 

Broadrick mutters, “You can’t ever get sick of her blood. It tastes so good and her ass is…”

Alexus stares at him with an ice-cold glare, making him shut up. 

Alexus is quite possessive of Lea’s blood and also of her body. He couldn’t ever share her with anyone else, this way he could have everything he wanted, breaking the mate bond and avoiding that its magic diminishes his darkness that he is so fond of, and having Lea just for himself.  

Using his super-speed, the Vampire King pulls Lea to stand on her feet. 

“You are going to do what I say”. He looks fixedly into her eyes, trying to compel her. But she just looks back at him. Her eyes don’t go numb and cloudy like they are supposed to when someone is falling into the effects of compelling. 

“Take your clothes off,” Alexus says commanding. However, she remains immovable and doesn’t take her eyes off his. 

“It won’t work. She’s to be your mate. You won’t be able to compel her.” Broadrick chimes in.  

“After the bond is broken, it will work,” Alexus mutters. 

Lea flinches at these words but recomposes herself fast. 

“Soon you’ll be my doll” Alexus whispers in her ear, making her tremble. He places a firm hold on her shoulders to keep her still, but she squirms, trying to escape his grip. “Now be a good girl, and undress for me” 

Lea slaps him across the face. He grabs her chin and stares at her with one of his polar and emotionless glares.  

“Look who is putting up a fight.” The Vampire King smirks. “I’ll need to do it myself. Broadrick, hold her down.” 

Broadrick pulls her closer to him by wrapping a hand around her arm. But Lea pushes him away with all her might, managing to free herself from his grasp, she runs towards the door. In the next second, Broadrick reaches her using his vampire speed and holds her arms behind her back with a painful firm grasp. He brings Lea closer to Alexus once again.

“It’s funny that she thinks it’s so easy” Broadrick chuckles. “She thinks she can escape you.” 

“She will learn well that she can’t, soon enough,” Alexus utters calmly, impassively. 

“Are you sad because you are a greedy little witch and want 3 c***s, but you will only get mine?” the Vampire King asks with a glacial grin, as he runs the back of his finger across her cheek gently. 

Lea flinches at his tone and his words. “Alexus, you don’t need to do it,” she says looking into his eyes. A part of Lea still hoped she could convince him not to do it. 

“Call me King, little Lea. I’m not Alexus to you. And maybe I don’t need to, but I want to.” 

“But why? Why are you just throwing away our mate bond like that? That makes no sense. It could help you to diminish your inner darkness.” Lea tries to argue.

“I don’t want a mate; you are weak and only a weakness. My darkness is my strength.” His voice sounds like a cold lash. Alexus knows no feelings, Just the overwhelming urgency to have her.

She wriggles under Broadrick's hold. His touch disgusts her, makes her stomach revolve. Broadrick only tightens his hold on her squirming form and chuckles. “There is no use in struggling. You are a caught prey, witchy.” 

Alexus starts undressing her, while she keeps moving and trying to kick him, but he always dodges her attacks using his super speed. 

“Who would say she has fight in her? The meek bimbo is full of surprises” Alexus says.

“You bet!” She retorts defiantly. 

That only makes Broadrick snicker “It makes the game more exciting. Who likes an easy hunt? Your resistance will only make your blood tastier, witch.” 

After undressing her completely, Alexus stares at Lea’s bare body, from head to toe, his eyes linger on her full breasts and hip’s curve. 

“Not bad.” He smirks, placing his hand under his chin, while his eyes are still deprived of any emotion. 

Lea squirms violently, she can feel the warm waves of embarrassment creeping up her collarbone and neck, and she knows for a fact that she is tomato-red now. She feels exposed, violated. 

Alexus directs his cold gaze to Broadrick. “Broadrick, you’re not needed here anymore”

“But...” he mutters, looking frustrated. 

“Leave!” Alexus commands. “Now!” he adds in the same imperious manner. 

“Yes, your majesty” he bows his head slightly and lets Lea out of his grip abruptly, which makes Lea lose her balance and fall down to the floor face first, she presses her palms against the ground, breaking her own fall, and sits up slowly. 

Broadrick leaves the room swiftly. 

Lea closes her eyes, trying again to reach for her father, but she couldn’t. She sighs deeply, and looks up, only to see Alexus getting closer and closer to her at a slow and torturing speed. She clenches her eyes shut. 

It’s over. 

She will lose her mates, her chance to love and be loved by the other parts of her soul, her innocence, her freedom, herself. She will lose everything. Lea clutches her eyes again. She can’t take it anymore. 

She was still under the effects of the sleeping potion they injected in her before the abduction. Thus, staying awake for a long time, especially under great stress, was very hard for her body.

The last thing she hears is Alexus's voice filled with disgust, “You are pathetic!” Then the darkness engulfs her. 

She can’t see, nor hear anything. She’s just surrounded by darkness and an agonizing silence. She tries to move, but she can’t as if she were stuck in a nightmare. She screams, but no voice leaves her throat. Should I just give up and accept my destiny? What other choice do I have? Fighting seems not helpful at all. She thinks.

Lea feels herself fall, fall deep into a hole, and she lets herself go, embraces her fall and the darkness. 

There is no escape.

~ * ~

Lea

I open my eyes into the darkness, I feel so cold. I breathe deeply. I decided to try once more, for myself, for my mates, and my family. 

I can’t give up yet. 

I try to push the hurt of my mate’s coldness and monstrousness, of his betrayal, to the corner of my mind. 

Even if the worst happens, even if he keeps me here in his castle and I lose my mate bonds, I won’t, I can’t let him take me from myself.

I will still hold on to my inner peace and to the knowledge that I am more than anything that can happen to me. I’m also my memories, my feelings, and choices. And now I choose to put all I have on it. I close my mind’s eyes in the dark, trying to call for my father, as I think about his face with all my might, I can almost see him among the darkness. 

But then his face fades away, dissolves as if it was a fleeing blow of smoke, and I only see myself. But in this vision, I’m a little girl, maybe only a bit older than a toddler. And this little girl, me, is been hold tied by golden thin ropes. The girl looks like me but not completely, her eyes are brighter and her facial features slightly different. 

I look at myself. 

The little girl looks at me with pleading and wondering eyes. “I’m waiting.” 

“What are you waiting for?” I ask. 

“For someone to save me,” the girl says as she looks behind me as if she was looking for something, for someone. I look over my shoulder to check if someone is coming, there is no one here. Just the darkness and my two weak and lost selves. 

I can’t be weak. I don’t have the time, nor the option to be weak. I need to save myself, from the fear that darkens me, from the ropes that tie me, from my thought of giving up. I can’t! I owe that little girl more than that, I owe myself more than that. 

I may not be strong like Liv. But I’m strong like myself, I can’t cower inside my mind anymore. I scream. I scream my father’s name, I scream my own name piercing the darkness with the sound of my voice. 

The little girl looks at me astonished and I look back at her. I get closer to her and try to untangle the ropes and set her, set myself, free. But the ropes are made of a hard and impenetrable material, and the knots are only tightening as my fingers work on them. I sigh.

I look into the girl’s eyes, my own eyes. “Lea, try to untangle the knots yourself.” 

“I can’t,” she replies in a whining voice. 

“Try,” I say softly. 

“But I’m alone... I can’t do it alone”

“You are not alone, I’m with you.” I beamed her a reassuring smile. 

“You?” The girl asks surprised. 

“Yes... why don’t we try to do it together?” I ask. 

The little girl nods her head and we both work on untangling the knots. After some time, the first knot is gone, and the girl smiles at me. 

I caress the child’s dark hair, noticing for the first time her slightly pointy ears. 

The girl motions to give me the now totally untangled rope with a toothy smile and says with a happy gasp. “The knots, they were never there.”

I gaze at her with wide eyes. “What do you mean?” 

I look down at the rope still in the child’s hands. There were no knots there anymore. I touch the rope and watch in awe as the golden rope becomes black and merges itself with the girl’s dark hair, becoming nothing more than a hair strand. The girl starts glowing as if the gold of the rope was now inside of her. 

She hugs me and says in a low whisper, “Thank you, now I’m free.” Before she disappears in the shining yellow light. 

~ * ~

3rd Person POV

Lea suddenly wakes up gasping deeply. She opens her eyes and blinks many times to adjust to the fainty red light that enters the room. 

She looks down at herself, she is on a large bed, totally naked, only covered by a thin sheet. Lea hears approaching steps and turns her head to the side, seeing that Broadrick is less than a meter away. The vampire smirks, as he stares at every inch of the exposed skin of her collarbone and the swell of her breasts barely covered by the piece of bed linen. 

“So, sleeping beauty decided to wake up... the King will be pleased, but we can have some fun before he arrives, huh?” He gets closer to her ear and whispers “But you can’t tell him anything... he doesn’t want to share his precious toy.”

Lea tries to sit up but notices that her arms and legs are restrained by ropes. 

“Did you touch me?” She asks in an atypical aggressive tone. He puts some distance between them and looks into her eyes. 

“No... I’m not into sleeping blood bags.” Broadrick says before he gets closer to her again and she screams as loud as she can. 

He covers his sensitive ears. “Hell, who would say that such a small thing could make so much noise?” 

She fidgets and hisses, “Get away from me you monster!” Lea yells. 

Broadrick chuckles at her reaction, he found Lea completely amusing, more than anyone else.

Attracted by Lea’s screams, Alexus gets to the room, close to the bed, using his super speed. 

“Get out Broadrick!” He orders coldly without looking at his second in command, his eyes are fixed on Lea. 

Broadrick freezes in response.  

Meanwhile, Lea starts to feel some kind of warmness, a tingling and unfamiliar sensation growing in her palms.

“Your Majesty... I didn’t do anything. The witch just started to scream out of the blue.” Broadrick says in his defence, as he takes a single step back, fearing his King’s reaction. 

Lea hisses at his lie. 

“Are you okay?” Alexus asks looking carefully at Lea. But she doesn’t answer him; she is too distracted by the jolts of warmness spreading from her palm to her fingertips.

“She’s just being hysteric” Broadrick adds. 

Broadrick is still quite close to Lea and without thinking she directs one of her restrained hands towards him as to try to push him away. A pulse of energy leaves her palm and charges towards him, which makes Broadrick fly some feet away and crash into the wall, his body slumps and falls onto the floor with a thudding noise.

Lea gasps surprised. How could she even do it? She hasn’t ever done such a thing before. That wasn’t a spell or any of her witch powers, at least none that she knew about. 

“You said the bracelet that the blasted rogue-witch gave you would work,” Alexus utters calmly, staring Broadrick a nasty look.  

“It should work. I don’t know what this wench did, how she could...” 

Alexus crosses the room with quick strides, reaching Broadrick; he holds him by his throat, lifting his feet off the ground. “I don’t tolerate mistakes, you more than anyone should know that. I’ll deal with you later. Go and get that blasted witch here now.” He says in an ice-cold but commanding tone, as he puts Broadrick down to his feet.

The vampire glares Lea a filthy look before he leaves the room using his super speed. 

While Alexus is berating Broadrick, Lea tries again to mind-link her father “Dad, can you hear me?”

She sighs frustratedly after she can’t hear any reply. 

“Dad, listen to me!” She tries again to gather all her mind power, all her determination, and will. 

“Lea? What happened?” Maximus asks warily, especially after hearing her yelling in his mind. 

“I was abducted by my mate.” She huff-sighs through the link.

“What? Who? How?” Maximus asks deeply worried and confused. 

He couldn’t understand how a mate could purposefully harm his female, it went against their very nature, their essence, and the essence of the mate bond. Not even when Maximus himself did it to his own mate many times, although in other ways.

“Alexus. He will rape me” she answers.

“What?” Maximus asks in a panicked voice. “Where are you, Lea?”

“I think somewhere in the Vampire Realm.”

“We will be there soon... try to get yourself time... try to... Lea, I don’t…”

“I will find a way, dad,” she says calmly. She knows that she has to.