My Two Alphas
Chapter 51

Lucy POV

My head was pounding when I woke up, I wished I didn’t wake up at all, the numbness worn away leaving fear and humiliation. The moment I did everything smashed into me like a tonne of bricks threatening to suffocate me, restricting my ability to breathe. I was never going to escape him, even now when he can't get to me he still haunts me, still lingers at the edge of my mind. Opening my eyes, I find myself lying beside my mother who is asleep beside me on a bed that resembles my old one. It even has the same matching comforter I had before my room was destroyed. I sit up on one elbow and look around and realize I am in my old room. Everything back to the way it was before I left for school in Avalon City.

It was like I stepped back in time before everything went to shit, a glimpse into my old life, a glimpse of the person I once was. Now though I see my old life differently. Find the darkest parts of it looming over me and I realize how naive and young I truly was nearly a year ago. Pictures of me having fun with Mitchell when we went to the beach, and bowling hung on the walls. Mum had blown those up and framed them. Photos of Rayan and I. Some of Ace and Tyson, it all seemed like a lifetime ago as I spotted each one on the walls.

It's funny how it only takes one thing to ruin your essence. One thing to burn the light out of your soul and dim the spark of life within you. Spending my early childhood in the facility was tough, horrific and a brutal place to grow up in. But once I was freed, I thought that was the end of the suffering. I had hopes and plans and was excited for my future and to experience the world to its fullest. The pictures held hope while I now felt nothing but hopeless and exposed.

Growing up in that place was solitude, loneliness, and hopelessness stepping out was experiencing everything for the first time. The way fresh air smelt, how the breeze felt on my skin, the feel of the earth under your bare feet was all new to me and I was ecstatic at my newfound freedom. Sure that place sometimes haunts me still, the memories forever ingrained in my head yet I was able to disassociate them from the life I had outside that place, separate it from me and allow myself to feel safe for once.

But Mr Tanner ruined that sense of safety. It took years of counselling and years of occupational therapy during the first few years of my freedom. Even just learning to adjust, that place made me institutionalised and I struggled without the constant routine, always looking over my shoulder and on edge waiting for the doctors to come in and poke and prod us. Then everything went down the drain again, all that time gone and I was finally free and happy within myself and I felt safe.

Only to have blindfold ripped off and be shown that even out here monsters exist. Showed me that they are lurking in the shadows only now I am older and the horrors more real because I knew how dangerous they were. I was at the age where I should be able to understand and pick up the signs of what a monster looked like. How could I be wrong and blind to it when I was raised in a facility full of them torturing us.

You would think I would be able to recognise them instantly. Yet no one tells you the biggest monsters are those we put our trust in, those we blindly trust because they swore to protect and teach us. Now looking back, the signs were there. I just missed them. But now they were startlingly clear. And I feared I would never be able to go back to the comfortable bliss I lived in before he tried to destroy me.

The way he used to hang around us students, us girls in particular. The way he would help us get away with things and bail us out. I thought he was just one of the good teachers, a friend even. An adult that saw us for who we were instead of just pitying the mutated freaks. But I learned everything comes with a price, I just didn’t see it then.

So does it make it my fault because I missed the warning signs. Even when he asked me to pull the blind down, something was screaming at me that something was off, yet I shoved it aside stupidly trusting the devil in disguise. So now I find myself questioning everyone's intentions, looking for anything to warn me away. I missed how before it all, I was carefree, invincible and free of my own tormented mind.

I missed my innocence when the world looked colourful and beautiful. Now I only see the darkness in everything, the things that could go wrong. Now I worry about how I dress, how I talk, how much of myself do I put on display. That worries me, along with, can they all tell? Can they see how disgusting I am? Can they see how much I hated what he tried to do, how much I hate myself for almost letting him succeed in doing it? But the biggest burning question is, do they blame me the same way I blame myself for not seeing the warning signs. Did I ask for it and is it my fault?

Looking at my mother, I truly see her for the first time. See why Amanda snapped. I was the nightmare Amanda kept living, the memory ingrained in her mind like he is in mine. Tragically broken and left with only the broken pieces and no matter how much glue, how much force and strength you used to hold those pieces together it only takes one trigger to shatter them all over again and dissolve the little safety you felt.

Hearing movement, I look down between us and find Ryden stirring before feeling movement behind me making me look over my shoulder to see Rayan curled up and jammed in my back as he snuggled against me. Turning back to face my mother, I find her eyes open, staring back at me.00000000

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