Chapter 16
Aurora POV
The world feels hazy, blurred at the edges like I’m trapped in some kind of dream I can’t quite wake up from. Nothing makes sense, nor does anything feel real. I’m floating with no real bounds to touch, just an endless void that seems to stretch on for miles all around me.
There are disembodied words whispered close to me—ones I can’t exactly make out no matter how hard I try to concentrate on them. Something touches my arm, a barely there caress that doesn’t feel friendly at all.
Another touches my leg, working up to my inner thigh. A disgusted pit forms in my stomach, then, curling tight enough to make me sick.
Looking down at myself though, I see nothing.
What is happening?
“Theo.” The name is growled through teeth, anger woven through the syllables. “What do you think you’re doing.”
That voice sounds familiar.
My body is heavy, sluggish, but then… my mind—my mind remembers.
Theo.
His watchful eyes as I’d left to go back to my room. Drinking that glass of water one of the butlers brought up to me and finding it weirdly sweet tasting. Climbing into bed as the room began to spin. And then the sound of my door slowly opening.
Oh, god. He drugged me.
Those touches, the heavy panting on my neck as he’d leaned over my frozen body. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could do nothing but lay there and wait for it to happen.
“I—I wasn’t…” He stutters.
Around me, the world grows quiet. But it’s only for a moment. A single flash in time before the sound of a man being beaten fills my ears.
It’s savage and unrelenting, not slowing for a second even as the tortured voice of the one being hit begs for mercy. There is none to give, no retribution to be had at the hands of a man willing to kill anyone who touches what he thinks is his.
I would never delude myself into thinking I belong to Dominic in any way other than through our shaky agreement. And even that is because I’ve been blackmailed. However… lately it’s been hard not to read into the way he’s been treating me.
Seeing what I want to, believing that there is more to him than the monster he wants me to see him as. That there’s more than his hatred of his father, and his hatred of my family.
Dominic had never had to protect me. What difference would it make in the grand scheme of things if Theo fucked me while I was half-unconscious if he meant he still got his revenge in the end?
He didn’t need to step in and keep me safe. He’s never needed to.
But he does anyway.
Why?
What’s the point?
“Aurora,” a soft voice murmurs, the edge of my bed dipping.
Something drags gently over my cheek, a small sigh accompanying it.
“You sure know how to get yourself into trouble.” The voice says.
Dominic.
Arms lift me and curl me into a firm chest. I feel warmth. A solid unyielding safety. For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel so alone. Moments like this I felt had been lost after the death of my mother—the one person in this world who would do anything to protect me.
But here and now, that same blanket of safety is wrapped around me, cradling me with a gentle kind of care I haven’t been used to for so long.
The moment I try to shift, my head lolls slightly.
His low voice rumbles through my bones. “Don’t move yet.”
I try to blink the heaviness away, my body betraying me as I sink back against him. I barely recognize my own voice when I speak.
“Why…?” I mumble. “Why did you help me?”
His silence is long, stretching through the dimly lit room. “I don’t know.”
I don’t believe that.
I want to push him further, to demand why, understand what he really feels beneath all that controlled indifference but instead, something breaks open inside me.
I can’t stop the words that spill out next. They claw at me from the inside, fighting to get out before I can clamp my mouth shut and stop them.
“I don’t feel safe anywhere,” I whisper, my fingers clenching weakly at his shirt. “Not with my family. Not even with myself.”
Dominic doesn’t move.
He doesn’t comfort me, doesn’t say anything to fill the silence—but he listens.
“My mother was the only person who ever made me feel like I mattered,” I continue, my voice hoarse. Raw. “When she died… I think a part of me died with her.”
For so long, I’ve kept these things locked away, buried beneath layers of silence because that’s all I’ve ever known. I’d been raised to be a shadow, unassuming and quiet, while the rest of the people in my family continued to live their lives to the fullest.
But tonight, drugged, exhausted, and still with my dignity intact, I let those walls crack.
A muscle in Dominic’s jaw tightens, but he still says nothing.
Just holds me close as I drift off to sleep again.
I barely register the words of another man when I come to again, only half aware of the conversation happening above me.
“…The drug in her system wasn’t too strong. She’ll recover fully with some rest.”
“Are you sure?” Dominic asks.
“Yes. Though, I can have the glass she drank from sent to the lab for further testing.”
“I want a full report of what you find.”
“Of course, sir.”
At the sound of the door being closed, my eyes flutter open. Sunlight filters through the blinds, golden and warm, but it does nothing to ease the weight pressing against my chest or the gentle pulse of a headache blooming behind my eyes.
Sitting up slowly, I can’t help but let out a soft groan.
Despite my sluggish movements, my body still remembers the way Dominic’s arms felt around me, the way his voice sounded when he caught Theo in the act, the way his hands lingered just a little too long when he pulled me back from the brink of something horrible.
What did any of that mean?
To my surprise, my door opens again. Looking over, I spot Dominic standing in the doorway, a fresh glass of water held in his hand. His eyes lock onto me as he steps in, slowly swinging the door shut behind him once more.
He holds my gaze steady while he moves, his hand outstretching to me once he gets close enough, with the glass.
My eyes dart down to look at it.
It looks slightly cloudy, not at all clear like something from the tap or a filter is supposed to look like. It occurs to me then that I’m more of a fool than I realize, thinking he would be any better than Theo with drugging me.
Just because he beat the man half to death the night before didn’t mean Dominic had suddenly turned over a new leaf. He didn’t actually care about me. Perhaps he was only angry he hadn’t thought of drugging me himself.
“Aurora.”
My eyes snap up to meet his again.
“Drink it. The doctor put in a tablet for electrolytes. That’s why it looks like that.”
I inhale slowly, gathering my thoughts. I don’t know what last night meant or if he’s at all telling the truth. He has nothing to gain from drugging me outside of making sure I don’t wander where I’m not supposed to again like I did last night and overhearing things I shouldn’t.
But if he wanted that, he could skip this and simply drill a lock to the outside of my door.
“Aurora.”
I swallow. “You drink it first.”
He rolls his eyes.
To my surprise, he tips the glass back and drains a quarter of it before shoving it back in my face. “Now drink it. Unless you’re comfortable with feeling like shit for the rest of the day.”
Slowly, I lift my hands to accept it. He watches me until I bring it up to my lips and drink some of it myself. A firm nod is all I get before he turns and heads back for the door.
Last night, what I overheard, I can’t get it out of my head. There are so many things about him that I thought I knew, the image I’d created of him in my head, now completely shattered. I never expected him to hold such a grudge against his own father and for good reason.
Honestly, I never expected him to care at all for anything outside of his own goals of taking power. But I’d been dead wrong.
“Dominic.”
He stops instantly, freezing right in front of the door.
My hand tightens around the glass. “Did… you want to kill Leonardo at our wedding because of your mother?”
After a long pause, he exhales. “And what if I did?”
“Do you think that’s wise?” The particles in my glass float slowly down to the bottom like flecks of glitter. I follow them, letting them soothe me. “It might… It could start an internal war.”
“You aren’t exactly in a position to barter with me about my decisions.” His voice is cold, his guard back up, the mask fully in place again. Whatever care he’d shown me last night is gone now.
I sigh.
But before I can say anything else, there’s a knock at the door.
