Page 16 of Shattered Trinket
It was embarrassing the first time something triggered me after leaving the hospital, sending me reeling and falling back on everything I’d been taught, right in the dining room before dinner. To make my humiliation worse, the dads were there to witness some of what I’d been taught for the first time with their own eyes, something I’d hoped only Ripley or Mama Valley would ever be witness to. The alphas, seeing how truly shattered I am firsthand proved to me just how wrong Victor was. Their reactions told me if Victor wasn’t already dead, they’d have hunted him down and given him the same treatment I received at his hands tenfold.
I drop to my knees with my head bowed and my hands clutched behind my back at the head of the table when Aeon calls for everyone to come eat. Almost a week has gone by since moving in, and I’d been helping him set the table, slowly getting myself comfortable enough to be alone with each of them. And things had been going okay until this point.
Despite the first few days being normal with nothing much happening, something about his tone today flips that switch back on in me. It’s not until I hear Mama Valley’s choked cry as she walks in that I feel brave enough to lift my eyes just enough to see her and the alphas sat at the table.
Aeon, Shep, and Damien sit stock still in their seats, almost like they’re afraid to make any sudden movements. Their wide eyes are focused on my bowed form, their bodies strung tight with anger as their hands remain on the table where they can be seen, clenched as if to hold themselves back.
Mama Valley rushes to me, falling to her knees in front of me and lifting my head high as she clutches my cheeks withtrembling hands. Tears flow from her deep green eyes, and I can see a deep-seated hatred hiding in the dark depths behind the love she feels for me.
“You do not ever get on your knees like this for anyone again. You hear me?”
Her tone is firm, but gentle as she makes sure she gets her point across while also making sure I understand she isn’t angry with me.
“Oh, my daughter, you will hold your head up high like the powerful, strong omega you are from this day forward, and don’t you ever let another alpha push you around or make you feel small or beneath them. You do not bow your head to them when that is their place and something they should and will graciously accept. You hold all the power over the right alphas, sweetheart. Remember that.”
She grips my chin when my lips wobble and my eyes burn, forewarning impending tears, and all I can think is how tired I am of crying.
“There’s no danger here as long as you’re with us, no one that’s going to hurt you ever again unless they want to see just how feral an omega can get when her cubs have been threatened. Understand?”
I can’t speak, my throat tight as I work to force the tears away, so I just nod.
“And from now on the boys will be careful with their tones,” she says as she whips her head around to glare at her mates, making them bow their heads in shame, before helping me off the floor and into the seat at the head of the table.
Her seat.
I shake my head slightly to clear that day away and glance over at Micah. He waits patiently for me to keep going, and I clear my throat awkwardly because I don’t know how long I was lost in thought.
The memory—though embarrassing—is what helps me decide to stop hiding from his gaze while I tell him the rest. I face him fully, shifting in my seat as Mama Valley’s voice echoes in the back of my head, fortifying me—if only a little.
Hold your head high, my daughter.
Never bow to anyone again.
You hold the power.
Trying to hold on to her words of me holding the power, I pick back up, grimacing as I prepare to recount what’s next. The early days where most of my humiliation lies, when he took things I didn’t want to give with force. When he did unspeakable things to my body that left me feeling disgusted and ashamed. When he was still training me and every misstep meant punishment.
I’m about to expose a part of my soul that I would rather forget more than anything. Something I haven’t spoken about out loud to anyone, even the doctors and nurses when I first came into the hospital. But they knew. I could see it in their eyes every time they looked at me after they’d had to examine every inch of me.
I take a deep breath, hoping I don’t see the same pity reflected at me in Micah’s eyes after this confession.
“I hadn’t had more than a kiss or experienced my first heat when Victor came into the picture, and he knew that. The first night he…forcedhimself on me, he’d taken pleasure in my pleas for him to stop as he stripped me of my clothes, in how I’d kicked and screamed and… clawedat him to get away. I still see the manic look in his eyes he’d gotten after I’d scratched him so deeply across his face that I’d drawn blood in my nightmares, still dream about how hard it was to breathe when he’d… he’d… flipped me on my stomach and h-he—” I stop, closing my eyes asI struggle to use that dreaded word and try to breathe, try to tell myself that I can do this.
I can get through this.
I have to, because I can’t keep holding everything inside anymore.
“Cozy, you don’t have to—” Micah starts carefully, but I open my eyes again and stop him from giving me permission to quit with a quick shake of my head.
“He bit into the side of my throat at the same time he… forced himself inside of me without warning, trying to put a bond in place right then. But without my bite, it was never fully complete and couldn’t ever truly heal the way it should have. I hated that I could feel just how dark and twisted he was in my soul.”
Deep breaths.
In.
Out.
In.