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Cadmus pulls out of me and backs himself to the wall of the truck, drawing his knees up. He strokes his skull back and forth, and I realize, he’s not okay. In spite of the drugs, something bigger and darker has taken over him. Something more powerful.

The only thing that can possibly distract me from my own self-loathing right now.

“Cadmus?”

Brows furrowed, he stares off, as if he’s lost in another world again.

The ache in my chest is almost worse than the one that moved through my womb, as I watch him break, too. “I’m sorry for … putting you through this.”

“You’re not the one who did this.” His eye twitches, and he rolls his shoulder. “This is my atonement, for all the wrongs I’ve committed. This is how God punishes me. By reminding me that I’m smaller. Weak.”

“You’re not weak. You’re one of the strongest men I’ve ever known.”

“You asked about my scars. Back at the waterfall.” He swipes his wrist against his eyes and sniffs. “Szolen didn’t give me those scars. I did it to myself.”

“Why would you do that?”

“They wanted to send me back down into the tunnels, but I refused. So they put me in isolation.” Hand rubbing the back of his neck, he shakes his head. “They know things. Things I’ve never spoken of. I don’t know how, but they know.”

This is where he tells me the truth. The mystery of what happened to him, and a part of me isn’t ready. Not after what we just did, but I have to know. I have to know what happened to him. How they could turn such a strong and unrivaled Alpha into a broken husk of a man. “What kinds of things do they know?”

With a frown, he stares off, and for a moment, I think he’ll blow it off again. Seal up the vault so I’ll never be privy to those dark clouds that constantly shadow his bright eyes. Tiny fissures of his suffering bleed through in the twitching of his face, as though he’s desperate to hold back the emotions. “Back in my hive, when I was about thirteen years old, I liked a girl. She was maybe fifteen, or sixteen.” A tearful smile sheds a small measure of light onto the darkness of his expression. “She liked me, too. But my old man was a rotten prick. He had his eye on her, too.” Leg still bent in front of him, he sits naked and vulnerable, splitting himself open to me. “So one night, we snuck out, and met up under the stars. She taught me things about the sky and the constellations. And how to kiss.” Lowering his gaze, he picks at his fingers, as if he’s nervous. “My old man found us. Him and a couple of buddies. He said I was too small and scrawny for a woman like her.” Lips twitching, he lifts his gaze enough to show the disgust coloring his face. “They raped her in front of me. I couldn’t help her. All I could do was listen to her screams as every one of those fucks had a turn with her. And when my old man was done, he told me she was weak enough for me to have her.” A tear breaks from his eyes, glistening down his cheek. “I laid with her all night under those stars, holding her as she cried against me. And in the morning, I found her lying beside a desert thornapple. White petals broken beside her. She’d committed suicide by eating the plant.” A long pause follows, and while I should say something to him, to fill this empty space with words of comfort, I can’t. There isn’t anything I can say to him. He stares off at nothing in particular. “I must’ve been the only kid at Calico who had nothing better outside those walls.”

My heart breaks for Cadmus, as I watch him unravel before my eyes.

“When they put me in isolation …” Eyes screwed shut, it’s as if he’s seeing it all over again in his mind. “I had visions of being my father. Raping her. Over and over and over,” he says through clenched teeth. “Every time I closed my eyes, I heard her screaming my name. I felt her struggle beneath me. And every fucking time I opened my eyes, the girl was you. Staring up at me. Begging me to stop. Your face pale as those flowers.”

Tears well in my eyes as his broken pieces finally begin to come together into a picture that explains his equally broken mind. It’s not what they knew about his past, but how they manipulated his mind, twisting his most traumatic memories into a nightmarish reality. “You’ve never hurt me. Not once.”

“You were the only light for me. They stole that away, too, and threw me into blackness. Things I can’t stop seeing, whether my eyes are opened, or closed.” Eyes filling with tears, he presses his fist to his temples, and a harsh breath expels from his nose as he fights to hold back. “They didn’t have to put those scars on my body. They were already inside my head.”

On hands and knees, I crawl toward him and push his massive arms aside, wedging myself between his bent legs. Head pressed to his chest, I feel his muscles spasm beneath me as he sobs, and his arms wrap around me.

“I’m sorry I did this to you,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, Cadmus.”

Chapter 6

Wren

The fire crackles beside me. My hands tremble, as I reach down between my thighs, to where a wet sensation woke me from dreams, and I gather the moisture onto my fingers, lifting it to the light.

Blood.

Thick and red, it coats my fingers entirely. The last time blood leaked out of me during pregnancy, I lost the baby and woke to Ragers feeding on it.

As the ache in my belly flares to life again, I grunt, curling myself into the pain.

“Wren? What is it?”

I don’t answer Six, for fear that he’ll blame himself for this, but I suspect, with this being my second, my body just isn’t made for pregnancy. Instead, I quietly sob to myself, trembling as the agony takes over me.

“Wren!” He’s undoubtedly found the blood. “Fuck!” With a shaky, but gentle hand, he cups my cheek, guiding my face to his.

I don’t want to look at him. I can’t. And I’m grateful for the tears that blur his face.

“I’m going to get the midwife. I’ll be right back.”

I only catch his backside, before he wraps a blanket around his lower half and plows through the woven door, calling out for Haseya, an older woman who’s delivered a few babies for the women in our hive. She’s known to be very skilled in these matters, but if this follows the last time I was pregnant, I’m afraid not even she can help me.