Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder by Alice Knightsky
Chapter 165 Prisoner Again
He was so strong, so powerful, that a direct blow from him to my head would certainly crush my skull. When he swung his fist at me, I knew then, I was a dead woman.
So, I waited, with my eyes closed, for the impact, assuming my world would fade away soon. Rowan’s sweet face was all I saw before my eyes.
But rather than feeling the direct impact of Ethan’s fist to my head, instead, I felt a rain of debris—bark, leaves, small twigs—as Ethan instead made contact with a large elm tree I was standing next to.
His rageful battle cry rang out around me as the splintered wood hit me in the face and shoulder. I raised my arms to shield my face and waited for the storm to pass.
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When I opened my eyes again, the tree was demolished. A large chunk of it was missing on the far side, and the trunk was bent backward like it would topple over any second.
My eyes then went to Ethan. Blood was pouring from his hand, the skin mangled and shredded from where the bark had bitten into his flesh. However, he didn’t stop. He continued to punch the tree over and over again until his fists were coated in so much blood and cuts that I could barely tell their original shapes.
When he was finally done, he left his fists half buried in the tree trunk and he was still panting heavily from the exertion of trying to keep from hitting me. The blood trickled down from his fingers along the tree trunk, forming a small puddle on the ground.
Eyes wide, mouth agape, I stared at him, not knowing what to say. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Had he really just punched a tree instead of me? Nearly destroying a sixty foot elm rather than my face?
He didn’t spare a look at me, and his eyes were red and moist. For a second, I thought, if he were to cry, he would cry blood instead of tears. At seeing the wounds on his hands, my gut instinct was to offer to help, to try to fix it. Standing there in obvious pain, even though he wasn’t so much as gritting his teeth, I knew that Ethan was more vulnerable in that very moment than he had ever been before, even when we were making love, even when he confessed to me about his broken heart, even when he’d told me that he loved me for the first time.
But then I remembered—there’s no fixing Ethan. After all of this time of me trying to correct his erratic, unacceptable behavior, perhaps that lesson had finally sunk into my skull, even if his fist didn’t.
He might be vulnerable at the moment, but in a matter of seconds, his countenance would change. He’d bottle that emotion right back up, and he would go from the emotionally available, open person I saw standing before me now back to the heartless monster I’d come to know of late.
Even as I watched him, I could see his countenance change. His eyes were narrowing again, and his face crumpled into a scowl, not because of the pain but because of the anger.
Punching the tree hadn’t made him feel any better. It had only messed up his hands—and the tree.
Knowing that Seraphine and Soren had to have gotten away by now, I resigned myself to the fact that I was Ethan’s prisoner again. Running would do me no good. Even with injured hands, he’d catch me.
Besides, all of the fight was out of me. Not only did Ethan’s outrage let me know he’d completely lost his mind now, but it also resigned me to the fact that I was a lost cause.
I was never going to break free of him…. Now, I may never even see my son again.
Once he had caught his breath, he said, “Let’s go, Rosalie.”
A moment later a few of his guards arrived, and I knew I’d better start walking. But before I turned to go, I said, “Just remember what I told you, Ethan. I may be here in the flesh and blood, but you will never capture my soul. I don’t belong to you.”
He didn’t say anything in return, only stared at me, his red eyes seemingly dead to the world.
The guards surrounded me, all of them bloodied and battered from the battle, which I was assuming was over since I no longer heard wolves fighting in the distance. Otherwise, they likely wouldn’t have come to investigate the situation.
I doubted Ethan had actually called for their assistance using the mind-link. He was still under the impression he could handle me himself. While that proved to still be true physically, he couldn’t handle me emotionally, obviously.
Ethan came with us. He insisted on haunting me, stalking alongside me like a phantom, hellbent on staying a menace that simply would not go away. I thought I’d feel better after saying all I wanted to Ethan, however, I didn’t feel relieved or happy letting my emotion out. In fact, seeing him hurt made me more upset than I could understand.
I shook my head and seriously thought there was something wrong with me.
When we got back to the camp, I saw that much of it was in shambles. People were trying to right the tents and put things back where they belonged. Luckily for me, my prison tent was unharmed. Vicky was in her human form, working alongside a man I had to assume was Paul to help a few injured wolves. When she saw me, her eyes lit up, and she came running over to me. “Rosalie!” she said.
Vicky only got about ten feet from me when Ethan stopped her. “No!” he shouted.
“You are no longer allowed to see Rosalie! No one is!” Vicky’s face fell, and I watched her puzzle over what might’ve happened. It was clear she wanted to reason with Ethan, but she knew better than to do that. Instead, she asked him, “What happened to your hands?”
“Leave me the f*ck alone,” was his impolite response, and once again, I saw the emotion in her face shift. She lowered her head, but glanced at me. I could tell she was sincerely concerned for her Alpha.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry and thank her for her friendship, but at the moment, all I could do was keep walking. “Where’s the baby?” Vicky called after us, and Ethan swirled around and came after her. Thankfully, by then, Paul was there. He took Vicky by the arm and tugged her away, making small bowing gestures as he went, as if to silently apologize to Ethan so that he didn’t destroy both of them.
“Stop being a jerk!” I muttered, not caring if he heard me or not. I knew he wasn’t going to hit me now, so I wasn’t afraid of him. But the defeated spirit I felt was weighing down my soul sat like a heavy boulder in my chest. Especially when I arrived back at my tent.
Inside, everything was nearly the same.
Except for the fact that my baby was gone. His bassinet, the one Ethan had made for him, sat there empty. All of his things were gone for the most part. There was just the cot with the dirty blankets on it and a few other items I’d been brought over the time I’d been held here.
I would go back to my previous disposition soon enough—not eating, not drinking any water, not talking to anyone. If he wanted to hold me here, he’d have to be satisfied with a shell of me because that’s all he was going to get.
“You will stay here,” Ethan said to me. I didn’t turn around to look at him. “No more visitors. Only you in here… as my prisoner.” Without turning around, I reminded him of what I’d already told him.
“You may have my body, but you’ll never have me, Ethan. If you ever regain your soul, you’ll realize what a horrible person you’ve become! I don’t want to see your face. Ever again.” He growled at me, but he didn’t say anything. What was there to say? I was the prisoner, he was the master…. If he expected me to like that, he had another thing coming.
Ethan stepped out of my tent, closing it up behind him, and I heard him telling the guards to stay there and not to go anywhere for any reason. A sigh of exhaustion left my lips as I melted onto the cot, sitting with my back against the tent wall again, my knees folded up into my chest. I had done this before; I could do it again.
But this time… there was a hopelessness around me that I hadn’t felt before. My son was gone. I had no chance of getting to see my friends. Just me. I wished that I could become a spirit and just float through the tent walls, that I could fly away, over the forest, to find my baby, and then re solidify next to him, snatching him up in my arms.
For however long Ethan kept me here this time, I would spend every moment thinking of Rowan and praying that he was safe. When Ethan first met me, I was a different woman in many ways, but one thing he failed to take into consideration was how dramatically a woman can change when she becomes a mother.
Before, I was trying to find a way to survive Ethan for myself and the welfare of someone I’d never met. Now, I was trying to survive Ethan for Rowan, my child, the most important person in the world.
That made me far stronger than Ethan could ever realize.