I was folded inward, curled tight on my side with my knees pulled up to my chest like a newborn trying to hide from the cold. My head throbbed with a dull, heavy violence, pulsing behind my temples with every slow beat of my heart. But the pain in my head was nothing compared to the raw, burning ache across my face. My skin felt stretched thin, chapped and tender from hours of weeping. My eyes were swollen almost shut, glued together by dried tears.
For a few fleeting seconds, the weight of sleep held the horror at bay. Then, the haze cleared, and the memories came crashing back in a tidal wave of blood, screaming, and metallic terror.
I gasped, my breath catching in my throat as I forced my eyes open.
A shadow moved beside the bed.
The silhouette of a man loomed over me, and absolute, frantic terror seized my chest. My instincts took over before my brain could process anything else. A blood-curling scream tore from my raw throat. I scrambled backward on the mattress, kicking my legs wildly, trying to put distance between myself and the threat. The tears started all over again, spilling hot and fast down my sore cheeks as I trapped myself against the headboard, sobbing hysterically, shielding my face with my trembling hands.
"Don't touch me! Don't look at me!" I shrieked, my voice cracking, suffocated by panic.
"Arora. Look at me. I'm not touching you."
The voice was low, deep, and steady. It grounded the chaotic air in the room.
I slowly pulled my hands away from my face, my vision blurred through a thick veil of tears. He wasn't reaching for me. He stood a few feet back, his hands held up where I could clearly see them, palms forward, giving me every inch of space I needed. He didn't rush me. He didn't make a sudden move. He just stood there, anchored like a rock in the middle of my storm, his dark eyes watching me with a profound, quiet gravity.
Rayn.
It was Rayn.
My chest heaved as the realization settled into my panicked mind. The breath left me in a ragged, shivering sigh. The terror didn't fully disappear. Terror never truly leaves a body that has been broken; but the immediate urge to fight for my life ebbed away. He handled the sight of my breakdown without pity or frustration; he simply existed as a safe barrier between me and the rest of the world.
I couldn't speak. I had no words to give him, no strength to offer a single thank you or explanation. I just locked eyes with him for a fraction of a second, pulled myself off the edge of the bed, and walked past him into the adjoining washroom.
I shut the door behind me. I didn't lock it. I didn't have the energy to turn the deadbolt.
The washroom was cold and sterile. I walked slowly toward the large mirror above the sink, keeping my eyes down until I was standing directly in front of the glass. Slowly, reluctantly, I lifted my head and looked at my reflection.
The woman staring back at me looked like a ghost. Dark violet bruises shadowed the underside of my swollen eyes. My lips were cracked, my skin pale and lifeless. But as my eyes drifted down, I froze.
Wrapped around my shoulders, swallowing my frame, was Rayn's heavy dark coat. It was draped over my bare skin, smelling faintly of cedar, rain, and him.
And there was no blood.
My hands shook as I touched the hem of the coat. Last night, I had been covered in it. It had been on my skin, under my fingernails, soaked into my clothes. The metallic stench had filled my lungs until I choked on it. But now, my skin was clean. My hands were pristine.
He washed it all, the thought echoed softly in my mind. He took it away while I was out. He wiped the blood from my skin so I wouldn't have to wake up in it.
I kept staring at myself, the silence of the room ringing in my ears. The cleanliness felt wrong. It felt like a lie.
With numb, heavy fingers, I unbuttoned the top button of the coat. Then the next. I pulled the heavy fabric off my shoulders and let it pool onto the cold tile floor at my feet.
Staring back at me in the glass was the true record of my life.
My bare body was a map of old cruelties. Faded, silver scars crisscrossed my torso, jagged white lines etched into my thighs, small round burn marks near my collarbone. Childhood marks. The permanent ink of a past that had carved itself into my bones before I even knew what freedom meant.
The traumas I thought I had buried beneath years of silence, distance, and desperate survival suddenly surged to the surface. They had never left me. They were just waiting underneath the skin, sleeping like wild beasts, waiting for someone like Moritz to wake them up.
A sudden, overwhelming wave of disgust rushed through my veins. I felt dirty. I felt infected. The skin felt like it didn't belong to me anymore; it belonged to the men who had hurt me, to the ghosts that hunted me.
"Get it off," I whispered to the quiet room.
I brought my hand to my shoulder and dragged my fingernails across the old scar. Hard.
"Get it off!"
I began to scratch at my skin violently, digging my nails into my shoulders, my chest, my arms, desperate to scrape away the memory of every touch, every tear, every drop of blood. Red welt marks immediately flared across my pale skin as I tore at myself, sobbing blindly at the mirror, trying to destroy the vessel that kept keeping track of my pain.
"Arora! Stop!"
The washroom door swung open. Rayn was there in an instant. He saw my nails digging into my chest and closed the distance between us before I could scrape another inch of skin.
He didn't grab my wrists roughly. Instead, he wrapped his massive arms entirely around me, trapping my arms against my sides, encasing my shivering body within his own.
"Stop, Arora. Don't do this to yourself," he commanded softly, his voice tight with an emotion I couldn't quite name.
I fought him. I twisted and squirmed in his grip, screaming into his chest, trying to free my hands to keep tearing at myself. "Let me go! Let me go! It's still on me! It won't come off!"
"It's gone," he breathed, his grip immovable, holding me tight enough to anchor my soul back into my frame, but gentle enough not to bruise my fragile skin. "You're clean, Arora. Look at me, it's gone."
I collapsed against him. The last remaining reserve of my strength evaporated, and I began to cry like a child. It was a deep, guttural, terrifying sound, a sob that came from the darkest recess of my stomach, tearing through my chest until I couldn't catch a single breath of air. I cried so hard my body shook violently, my tears soaking right through the front of his shirt.
Without a word, Rayn slid one arm behind my knees and the other around my back, lifting my bare, shivering frame smoothly off the cold tile floor. He carried me out of the washroom, his steps steady and unhurried.
He brought me back to the bed, but he didn't lay me down. Instead, he sat back against the headboard and kept me locked in his arms, pulling the heavy blanket up over both of us to shield me from the cold.
He didn't tell me to stop. He didn't say 'shh, it's okay' or ask me to calm down. He just held me. He let his heart beat against my cheek, steady and rhythmic, a solid wall between me and the madness in my head. He held me tightly, absorbing every tremor of my frame, letting me cry until my lungs burned, until the screams turned into whimpers, and the whimpers finally faded into silent, exhausted gasps for air.
The silence returned, but this time it wasn't cold. It was heavy with the weight of what I had to say.
I pressed my forehead into the crook of his neck, my hands clutching weakly at the fabric of his shirt. My voice came out as a broken, hollow whisper.
"I'm a murderer, Rayn."
I felt his chest expand as he took a slow breath, but he didn't pull away.
"I killed a man," I choked out, the words tasting like copper on my tongue. "Last night... Moritz. But it's not just him. It's... it's the same thing. The same thing that always finds me. It always comes back."
"Arora," Rayn said softly, his voice a low rumble against my ear. "Listen to me. Moritz was a monster. He tried to take something from you, he tried to hurt you, and you defended yourself. You saved your own life. You are not a murderer."
"No... you don't understand," I sobbed, a fresh tear escaping to track down my nose. "It wasn't just self-defense. It's who I am. It's where I started."
I lifted my head slightly, forcing myself to look him in the eye, though my heart was hammering so fast I thought it might burst through my ribs. The shame was suffocating, but the truth was bleeding out of me now, and I couldn't stop it even if I wanted to.
"My father," I whispered, the word feeling dirty just leaving my mouth. "You don't know what he did to me. You see these scars?" I glanced down at my arms, then back at his face. "He gave them to me. He used to torture me. In locked rooms... for hours. For years."
Rayn's jaw clenched, a terrifying, icy stillness washing over his features, but he remained completely quiet, letting me speak.
"He was supposed to protect me," I gasped, my chest heaving. "He was my father... but he was the first man who ever put his hands on me. He was the first man who raped me."
A low, dangerous breath escaped Rayn's nose, his arms tightening around me almost instinctively, pulling me closer.
"I couldn't take it anymore," I confessed, my voice shaking uncontrollably. "I was just a girl, Rayn. But one night... I ended it. He was the first man I killed. My own father."
The admission hung in the air between us, heavy and damning. I looked into Rayn's eyes, desperately searching for the horror, the disgust, the realization that he was holding a monster in his arms. Panic clawed its way back into my throat.
"And now... now Moritz," I babbled, the panic taking over as I reached up to grab the sides of his face, my eyes wide and pleading. "Please... please, Rayn, you have to trust me! Please believe me! I didn't do this knowingly! I didn't want to be a killer! I didn't want the blood back on my hands! I just... I panicked, he was on top of me and I saw him—I saw my father's eyes in Moritz's face, and I couldn't go back to that room! Please, Rayn, say you trust me, please don't look at me like that—"
"Arora! Stop. Breath," Rayn snapped gently, wrapping his warm hand over mine where it rested frantically on his cheek.
He didn't recoil. He didn't look at me with disgust. His eyes were burning, but not with anger at me; with a dark, consuming fiercely protective fury directed at the ghosts that haunted me.
"Look at me," Rayn commanded softly, leaning down until his forehead rested against mine. "Look at me, Arora."
I forced my tear-filled eyes to stay locked onto his.
"You listen to me very carefully," he said, his voice dropping into a deep, absolute tone that allowed no room for doubt. "You did nothing wrong. Do you hear me? Not last night. And not back then."
A soft sob escaped my lips, but he kept speaking, his words cutting right through the shame in my head.
"A man who abuses a child-a father who inflicts that kind of horror on his own flesh and blood-is not a father. He was a monster. You didn't murder him, Arora. You survived him. You did what you had to do to stay alive, and there is no sin in surviving."
He shifted his hand to the back of my head, weaving his fingers into my tangled hair, pressing my face back into the warm crook of his neck.
"And Moritz?" Rayn sneered the name with pure hatred. "Moritz was a heinous piece of garbage who got exactly what he deserved the moment he touched you. You didn't do anything wrong, Arora. Never let your mind convince you that you are the villain for surviving the hell people built for you."
His words settled over my bruised soul like a shield. For the first time in as long as I could remember, the crushing weight on my chest began to lift, just a little. He knew the absolute worst of me now. He knew the blood on my hands, the dark, stained history of my origins-and he was still holding me. He wasn't pulling away.
The relief was so profound it made me feel faint. I buried my face deeper into his skin, inhaling the scent of cedar and rain, wrapping my arms tightly around his broad waist.
"Don't leave me," I begged softly into his skin, my voice tiny and vulnerable. "Please... just don't leave me for a little while. Please."
Rayn didn't answer with words. Instead, his arms tightened around me with a powerful, unyielding force, pulling me so close against his chest that there was no space left between us. He shifted us back into the pillows, holding me completely, wrapping himself around me like a fortress against the rest of the world.
And there, locked in his arms, anchored by a man who saw all my darkness and refused to walk away, I finally closed my eyes and let myself breathe.