Page 141 of The Rust in Her Hair

"You’re safe now," Adrian caresses my cheek, but Nico has gone completely still.

I watch the pack alpha put it together, the marks on my wrists a month ago, the blood and the terror. His face doesn't change. But something goes flat and lethal behind his eyes, and I understand that if I said it out loud, Crispin Maleth would not survive the night.

So I don't say it, because the last thing I need is for any of my packmates to get hurt.

Instead, I turn and breathe.

"I just need to settle my nerves," I say to the room. "Then we can go."

"Take your time," Adrian says, and he sounds like he means it. It probably helps that Crispin has stopped banging on the door.

My hands shake as I look around at my father's enormous desk where I was forced to sign my life away. At the oil paintings of dead alphas judging me from the walls. At the leather-bound books nobody has ever read, and then at that fucking couch.

It’s where Crispin put his hands on me and took what wasn't his while my mother's command held me frozen.

She took away my ability to choose.

And then Crispin took everything else from me.

In that moment, I was nothing but an object for the alphas in this house to abuse and control.

"I wish Mack had burned this room," I say quietly as my hands curl into fists. "This whole room. I wish he'd started right here."

Rage comes up out of nowhere.

It floods through me, hot and total, filling every space the fear left behind, and my hands start to shake for a new reason.

I’ve spent my entire life making myself smaller, quieter, swallowing down their rage and taking their abuse, and I’m not fucking doing it anymore.

My eyes land on the desk. On the heavy silver letter opener sitting beside my father's blotter. I swear it’s as long as my freaking forearm and pointed at the end.

I'm across the room in a blink of an eye.

My hand closes around the handle, and it's heavier than I expected, cold and solid. The weight of it settles into my palm as the blade catches the lamplight, thin and bright and wickedly pointed. My grip tightens until my knuckles ache.

Then I turn and march straight for the couch.

"Lyra?" Adrian steps toward me.

I bring the letter opener high above my head, then I slice down into the couch cushion with everything I have.

The blade tears through the velvet with a sound like a gasp, and something breaks loose inside me. I pull it out and drive it in again. And again. And again.

Dropping to my knees, I stab the couch where his weight pinned me down, where his hands held my wrists, where my body went slack and gave up because that was the only way to survive him.

"Fuck you," I snarl at shredded fabric, ripping the blade sideways, tearing a long gash across the seat. Stuffing spills out, catching on my nails. "You piece of shit!"

I drop the letter opener and use my hands.

I tear at the gash I've opened, dragging fistfuls of stuffing out and flinging them all around me. I beat the cushions with my fists, growling low in my throat like an animal. Tears are running down my face, but they're not sad tears, they're furious. They're a whole lifetime of terror finally turning into rage.

And no one stops me.

Adrian and Nico just stand somewhere behind me, and let me destroy it. They let me tear the fucking couch apart with my bare hands until my arms ache and my knuckles sting and my breath saws in and out of me.

When I finally stop, I'm shaking.

The couch is gutted, ruined, its insides scattered across my father's Persian rug.