EVELYN
I laid on my bed numb to the world around me, like a noose threatening to strangle me. I could see the curtains swaying with the wind but I barely felt its effect. I couldn’t feel anything but the ache splitting my chest in half.
Caleb’s voice kept echoing in my head, two words ripping through me again and again like claws.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
What the hell was he sorry for? For abandoning me in this nightmare? For breaking his promise to not let me do this on my own? For leaving me to face a monster alone?
I’d waited for him. I had believed in him. And now, here I was… claimed, locked away in a foreign packhouse, wearing a title I didn’t want and dreading the weight of what it meant.
He left me here. Even when I had begged, pleaded, laid myself bare to him. I told him I lo
