Inferno: A Dragon Monster Romance (Monsters & Artifacts Book 5) by Trish Heinrich

Author:Trish Heinrich [Heinrich, Trish]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Angelica

Isoaked in the tub until the water turned cold and my skin was pruned, hoping the hot water could somehow leach the memories that assaulted me just as much as the moments they conjured.

I scrubbed my hair, as if I could somehow dig out the memory of Derek’s eyes when he’d had Trey by the throat, the sight of those black veins on his skin. It hadn’t been my son I’d seen, it had been David as Specter.

The sight was in itself a time machine, throwing me back to when I was the petrified woman with no power against the cruelty of the man that was supposed to love me most. The memories landed on me like fists, and I hurt all over with phantom bruises. Even as I told myself that it was just the trauma, that I was safe, that any pain was from the cave, the echo of his spiteful words wormed their way into my mind.

I was nothing.

I was weak.

I was useless.

I wasn’t as beautiful as I had been.

I’d let myself go.

I was used up.

I’d sucked all the potential out of him with each child I squeezed out.

I was a dead weight, not a partner.

The sting on my scalp made me stop scrubbing and I looked down at my fingernails to see blood.

“I’m strong. It wasn’t my fault…it wasn’t my fault. I am strong. I am a good person. I am worthy of love…it wasn’t my fault.”

The bite of the soap, and then the water as it flowed over the cuts on my body cut through the rising panic in my throat that the affirmations couldn’t touch.

As I dried off, I calmed myself with a to do list for the mission.

I moisturized and brushed my teeth, the familiar routine offering a place of peace.

But as I dragged a brush through my hair Derek’s face crashed into the calm I was finding, and I dropped it in a clatter to the floor.

What is wrong with him? Is it those runes? If it is, then he has to stop using them. I can’t lose him to darkness too. I won’t.

I closed my eyes against the terror that thought produced.

It was stunning how quickly these memories, that one moment in the Jeep, had managed to disarm me. All the therapy, the years of putting myself back together, of finding out who I was, and here I was ready to fall to the floor and cry myself to sleep.

I’m still me…David’s memory, all of this. None of these memories, these fears can take it away unless I let it.

I repeated the affirmations as I braided my wet hair back. By the time I was slipping into a soft bathrobe, it was all a simmering stew that I felt, but was no longer being dominated by. The more I sank into the mission, the faster all of this could go back to the vault in my mind.

I’d just come out of the bathroom when the bedroom door opened, and Trey walked in.

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