Page 245 of Safe Word

No…

The realisation hit harder than the blows. My stomach lurched, throat locked, but no sound came out. The room pulsed, fading in and out.

Maybe this was a dream. Maybe I was already gone.

My body convulsed in pure horror, the chains cutting deeper as I yanked against them until my shoulders screamed.

In the split second he freed himself, something cracked inside me. Could have been the cultivating madness, could have been the terror. And as he lunged at me, the years of him stealing breath and light out of my life came out as a scream. A raw, searing sound that didn’t feel like mine.

In the instant it left me—

Something tore through the dark.

Travis spun just as a shadow slammed into him in full force. The impact rattled the walls – steel against bone, a roar that wasn’t mine echoing through the basement.

Cain.

They crashed into each other, a blur of flesh and blood I could barely track. Each impact echoed through the space like thunder. Travis’ snarl split the air, but Cain stayed silent – and that silence was worse. It was the kind that made a stomach twist before the agony came.

His movements blurred, bone-jarring, feral – a violence that wasn’t about stopping Travis yet erasing him entirely.

Travis swung, missed. Cain’s next two hits landed hard – jaw, temple. Blood arced across the wall in dark ribbons.

His face…

Bruised. Bleeding. One eye already swelling shut, blood crawling down his temple. He was unrecognisable. Half ruin, half vengeance.

I whipped my head left and right, hoping to see something that would aid him. Suddenly, I zeroed in on a small red dot beneath a beam that spanned the tall ceiling.

Oh God… Travis recorded this?

The chains above me clinked with every shallow breath I took. My body trembled.

I stared at my past and my present fighting. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them – from him.

Cain was a hurricane made flesh.

He kept going, each motion a wordless scream in me.

And I saw it in his eyes. The man I tethered myself to, body and heart, was still in there. But so was something else. Something vicious. Not human.

I winced, the rattle making my muscles scream in pain.

He didn’t look like Cain… He looked like Ghost.

Unrelenting and brutal. Deadly.

A punch to Travis’ gut folded him over, Cain’s knife dropped to the ground as he grabbed him by the hair. He brought his knee up like a hammer to his face. Travis flew backwards and met the floor with a loud crash – barely conscious.

Cain raised his fist again. Took a step towards him.

‘Cain,’ I croaked out – but it wasn’t loud enough. My ribcage hurt from the damage. My lungs wouldn’t squeeze out the breath I needed to call him.

But he heard me. Because just before he picked up his knife, he glanced towards me.

Travis scrambled back, slipping in his own blood. His shoulder hit the doorframe. Then he bolted, stumbling up the stairs, one hand dragging against the wall like a half-crushed spider.

The knife hit the ground with a dull clatter as Cain rushed to me, chest heaving, fists shaking, dripping blood.