He didn’t pause. Didn’t give her room to argue.

Because in that moment, Phei wasn’t asking.

He was declaring a promise to her and his already Marked woman, Sierra, her daughter.

And the man who had done this to her—the monster who had turned her life into an unrelenting hell of bruises, blood, and bone-deep terror—would soon learn what true, unending, merciless fear felt like.

"Otherwise, what would be the use of saving Sierra only to watch her get consumed by darkness and guilt after she learns what’s been happening to her mother?"

Phei’s voice was low, cold, relentless. "You could die here. He doesn’t care anymore. He’ll kill you if it served his desires. What do you think Sierra would do when she finds out? That you died protecting her? That you sacrificed yourself so she could live while you suffered in silence? Let me help you. And I can."

Everything came out in a single, icy breath.

Because giving her time to think would let her rebuild the walls. Time to find reasons why she had to stay and convince herself that this endless hell was the only way to save her daughter.

He wouldn’t allow it.

Roxanne pulled out of his arms.

Phei let her go.

She sat there on the bed, covers pooled around her waist, looking at him with those glassy, shattered eyes. And he looked back.

First her eyes — hollow, red-rimmed, filled with the kind of soul-crushing exhaustion that came from years of merely surviving, not living. The eyes that said a story of who had been slowly murdered from the inside out.

Then her face.

Bruises. Dark and ugly, spreading across her cheekbone like spilled ink mixed with rot, curling around her jaw in vicious, overlapping fingerprints. Fresh ones layered brutally over fading ones — a grotesque, living timeline of violence carved directly into her skin.

Deep purple blooming into angry black, sickly yellow edges bleeding into rotting green.

Her lower lip was split wide open, crusted with dried blood that still oozed fresh crimson. One eye was swollen nearly shut, a grotesque, puffy mess of purple-black flesh that wept silently with every terrified breath.

He looked lower.

Her neck. More bruises — perfect, brutal imprints of fingers that had wrapped around her delicate throat and squeezed until she gagged and fought for air that never came. The unmistakable shape of hands that had tried to choke the life out of her more times than she could count.

Her chest. The thin silk nightie she wore was barely holding on, delicate straps slipping off her trembling shoulders, leaving her arms and upper chest exposed.

Only horror. Bruises scattered across her upper breasts and chest like someone had used her body as a punching bag for their drunken rage — dark splotches, vicious handprints, the faint imprint of knuckles that had hammered into her again and again. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Her arms. The same nightmare. Purple and yellow and black, overlapping in brutal, calculated patterns that spoke of repeated, merciless beatings.

Phei reached down and pulled the covers away from her legs.

She didn’t stop him. She couldn’t.

The nightie ended high on her thighs. And below it — more. Her calves. Her thighs. Everywhere. Some fresh and livid. Some old and fading into sickly hues. Some layered so deeply they looked like decaying flesh beneath the skin.

Her legs were a canvas of unrelenting torment.

He didn’t want to imagine what fresh horrors were hidden beneath the silk.

Because Jonathan had been careful for years. Beating her where no one would see. Torso. Thighs.

The places clothes would cover. What Phei was seeing now was what happened when the mask finally came off.

How much worse is it underneath?

Roxanne shivered violently as the air in the room began to change.

It grew colder. Sharper. The temperature plummeted like something murderous and merciless had reached in and stolen every trace of warmth, leaving only the promise of violence. Frost began to creep across the window, delicate patterns of black ice spreading outward, cracking the glass with soft, ominous sounds.

Phei’s eyes had changed.

The warm amethyst was gone, replaced by something ancient and terrible — void-black sclera swallowing the whites, glacial blue-white irises burning with frozen starlight, pupils razor-thin slits that drank the light instead of reflecting it.

"Master."

Eira’s voice cut through the cold — high, sweet, childlike.

"You’re scaring her."

He blinked.

Snapped out of it.

The cold retreated instantly, the frost on the window evaporating as though it had never existed. His eyes returned to normal.

The oppressive pressure in the room lifted like a weight being taken off her chest.

Roxanne was pressed hard against the headboard, trembling so violently her teeth chattered. She stared at him with a new kind of terror — not just the fear of expected pain, but the raw, pitiful dread of someone who had just glimpsed something vast, inhuman, and ancient wearing the face of the only person she thought might save her.

"Sorry about that," he said quietly, voice still carrying that glacial edge.

He stood up.

"Get whatever you can take. I’m asking, not ordering." He held her gaze — cold, steady, unrelenting. "I’m asking you to trust me, Roxanne. I can’t leave here without you. I can’t just choose one when I can make sure both of you survive."

"Master."

Eira’s voice again. Sharper this time.

"Jonathan is in the hallway. About to enter."

They heard the footsteps.

Heavy. Deliberate. The stride of a man who owned everything in this house — including the broken woman cowering in his bed.

Roxanne’s whole body seized with terror. A full-body convulsion that started in her spine and radiated outward, making her curl inward, making herself as small as possible, trying to disappear into the mattress itself. Her breath came in short, panicked whimpers.

Fresh tears spilled down her bruised cheeks.

"ROXANNE!"

The shout came from just outside the door — ugly, drunken, full of cruel expectation and the promise of fresh pain.

Then the door slammed open.

Jonathan Montgomery stood in the doorway, mouth already forming whatever vicious thing he’d planned to say—

And found Phei standing beside the bed, holding his wife’s trembling, broken hand protectively.