King's Sword

The Hunt

ADELAIDE

I lost count of how many men I shot down before reaching the front door. Blinded by my anger, I dart out into the snowy evening air and hiss when my warm blood soaked feet hit the freezing ground. I make it a step past the front door before someone wraps their arms around me and drags me back inside.

"What have you done?" Callahan says as I pull the gun up to shoot him, but when it clicks empty, I swing it at his face angrily. "Ow, give it up!" He yanks the gun out of my hand and throws it to the side as he manhandles me all the way back to the room. I kick and scream, but the sound just bounces off the walls mockingly.

When he throws me inside the room and shuts the door behind him, I push myself back against the bed frame and watch him stalk to me as I shake uncontrollably. My eyes dart between him and the dead bodies inside the room as I try to frantically figure something out.

"Chains weren't enough, huh?" Callahan says before coming to crouch in front of me with a glare. "Why resist? I provide you shelter and peace, you'll never work a day in your life."

"You call this peace?" I scoff nervously, shrinking against the wooden bed frame for stability. "You...you violated me!" I scream at him through shaky breaths and his eyes shift from annoyance to confusion.

"You're my wife!" He yells at me, making me flinch.

"Even if I was—"

"You are!"

"It doesn't take away from the fact that you raped me!" I scream at him so loud and painfully that I also don't register his hand coming up to strike me across the face.

I could never bring myself to say that word out loud. It made me feel filthy and damaged, as if I really was covered in their saliva after all these years and I couldn't scrub hard enough to get myself clean. As if I was literally missing a rib or a tooth, purged of a vital organ, but left to live in a comatose hell.

I swallow the blood and look up at him from the curtains of my hair, glaring as I take in the bruising on his jaw and the wrinkles on his collar.

"He found you." I whisper humorously through aching lips and he springs up to pace the room.

"He thinks you're dead." Callahan says with his head cocked to the side plainly. I frown and push myself up with some effort. "He should be at the morgue right now identifying your body."

Vance would know it's not me. He's run his hands and mouth over every inch, he would not be so easily fooled by whatever this asshole comes up with.

"And when he asks to feel my cervix and it doesn't feel the same?" I ask tauntingly, making him turn around furiously to glare at me as I shrug. Callahan shakes his head and looks around at the bodies in the room with disgust.

"You are sick." He says quietly while coming to me and taking a hold of my hair as he guides me out of the room.

"I'm the sick one?" I ask, but he yanks on my hair and I groan while pressing my lips tightly shut.

"You did this to yourself, darling." He groans while opening a door and pushing me inside swiftly. I hit my head on a bar before he shuts the door behind me and I'm left in the dark. The key locks on the other side as I search for a light switch in frustration.

"You locked me in a fucking closet?" I groan at Callahan through the door, but I can hear him walking away so I turn to feel for other things in the darkness. There's a few fur coats and a box full of rattling trinkets, along with what I think is a hockey stick? Or maybe a pair of skis?