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That was hard to do, she thought, when she’d never found who she was to begin with.
*
Dinner was grilled chicken breasts, asparagus, and mashed potatoes made with butter and cream.
Saul had been hesitant to leave his bunny long enough to put the damn meal together, but she needed to eat, and she needed comfort food and calories. The stress of her parents possibly being not of her blood would eat away what little progress she’d made over the past week, and she couldn’t afford to lose it again.
Watching her nibble at the food, pushing it around on her plate, infuriated him enough that he gave serious thought to emptying the whole lot into the blender, blitzing it into liquid, and force feeding it down her goddamn throat.
Caera was sliding back into the woman she’d been a week ago.
His own plate empty, Saul got up and moved around the table, plucking her off her chair and sitting down in her place, seating her on his lap. Stealing the fork from her limp fingers before it clattered on the floor, he did what was necessary and fed her with his own hand.
He only got two forkfuls into her mouth before she twisted her head to the side, her hand blindly groping for the plate and shoving it away. “If you refuse to eat, little rabbit, I’ll strap you down and syringe soup down your goddamn throat. I’m not letting you fade away into nothing.”
“Leave me alone.”
“No. That’s what you expect everyone to do.” Tossing the fork on the table, he hooked his arms around her before she could squirm free and bolt, resting his cheek on her hair. “Cry, Caera. Cry, scream, shout, throw shit. Use your voice instead of crawling away to hide.”
“I can’t. I’m…empty.”
Not empty, he thought. No one’s head was ever truly empty. But thoughts and emotions could be hollowed out, vacuum packed, and stored away where they couldn’t be seen or heard, only for their poison to leech into the system.
Caera was already the queen of repression—a title he was determined to strip from her, using any means at his disposal.
“Trust me, you’re not. It’s just shock and anger and fear, little rabbit.”
Her fingers scrabbled between her breasts, at the weak spot of her sternum, her nails scratching the fabric of the T-shirt she wore. “There’s a knot, right here. I don’t want to breathe around it, I can’t eat around it. My heart beats and every time it pulses, the knot throbs in response.” Voice flat, Caera masked her vocal pain far better than she did her body language. “It shouldn’t hurt this bad. They disowned me, why should I care whether I’m blood-related or just a stray fucking puppy they picked up at the pound?”
Christ, she was killing him.
“Because whether you care or not, you love them, and they didn’t reciprocate that.” Saul breathed deep, knowing he was probably going to hell for what he was about to do. “Go the bedroom, Caera. Strip off your clothes, and sit on the edge of the bed. Wait for me.”
Her fingers continued to scratch at herself, as though she could claw through skin and muscles to reach the tumor strangling her insides. “I don’t want sex.”
She was free falling, thrown into a deep, dark, endless chasm without a way to slow her fall. He could almost hear her screams, silent and terrified, through the tremors running through her body. “Good, because you’re not getting any. Do as I tell you.”
Everything in her froze for a heartbeat, two, at the sound of his Dominant voice. Strong, commanding, unwavering. When her muscles loosened, Saul lifted her off his lap and set her on her feet, pushing her gently toward the bedroom. “Now, Caera.”
She took two wavering steps, then half-turned to look at him, jungle-green eyes heavy with disinterest in life. “If not for sex, then why?”
“I’m going to break the knot,” he told her darkly. “I’m going to make you cry, bunny.”
There wasn’t a spark of intrigue, not even a quick flicker of fear. Caera just seemed to absorb that information and file it away. Shoulders sagging, she nodded once, then trudged toward the bedroom with barely enough energy to stop herself dragging her feet.
When she disappeared into the hallway, Saul scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned quietly. What came next would hurt them both, but he could only hope it would lance the abscess inside her and let the toxic pain spill out before it killed her.
Her parents had better pray they didn’t meet him, because right now, with Caera’s haunted face still hovering in his mind, they were topping the list of his most hated people, along with the assholes who’d whipped a child badly enough to scar her for life in so many ways.
Shaking it off, he walked into the living room and snagged the blanket off the back of the couch. Returning to the kitchen, he chose a random bar of chocolate from the vast supply in the cupboard and a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
He debated the consequences of his actions as he stalked down the hallway, using the interconnected doors to slip into the bathroom and then the bedroom.
He could drive her away. Show his hand too soon. Ruin everything.
He could help her. Ease her pain. Help her start healing.
Fully dressed, disobeying his orders, Caera was curled up in a ball in the middle of the mattress. Arms hugging her knees, back to the office door—presumably to him, as she knew he most often came through there to get to the bedroom—she stared vacantly at the wall.
