Page 93 of The Gift
“PRESENT!” Henley roars.
His voice slams into me, and I stumble forward, nearly falling flat on my face, but his huge hands dig into my body making me dangle from them. And then he’s on me like a raging beast, his body wrapped around mine.
Me? I’m kicking and punching, trying to find enough purchase in my step to run as an echo of a voice tells me to fight. Panic and anger punctuate my movements, it makes my thoughts scatter, while a press in my subconscious is a reminder of how wrong this alpha’s touch is.
My head is an instant and stormy mess from the pressure of Henley’s will pushing on mine, but years of necessary instinct make me lash as memories thrash. As loud as Henley yells, another voice in my head calls out louder, telling me how unsafe I am while my own insistently reminds me of why I have been hidden for so long and to trust neither of them.
My panic catches Henley on the shoulder, my nails like that of a hissing cat, but instead of retaliating he releases more of his power. It crushes against me.
Twisting, I nearly climb to my feet as my vision fills with fragments of things that happened long before the A-team swept me off my feet. His hands are in my hair, stopping my escape, and it hurts. I pull against it more, relishing the burning pain, but once he sees what I’m doing his hold changes, and his arms band around me. His skin searing hot to touch, burning away fragments of shit intentions installed by psychotic scientists.
A flash of a cage. Spinning tops and blurry thoughts, words replacing my own. Coffee blasts inside the nest, the smell so strong I hear myself scream in terror. A fear like I’ve never felt shakes me to my foundations as I am swamped by fractured memories. Needles in my skin. My body becoming not mine. A vision of sightless eyes, thrashing violently, trying to break themselves free from different coloured hands holding them down. Control torn from my desperate hands. So many memories stack on top of each other, layering higher and higher, feeding each terror over and over.
I struggle, fighting him, fighting me, and fighting Henley. But as much as I fight, Henley does too. Even deranged and freaking out, I get a sense he’s helping however he can. My emotions are so visceral I feel them with every cell in my body, my thoughts are mostly my own, but there is an influence inside me that is neither mine nor Henley’s that keeps pushing me to act against the alpha I desperately want to call my own.
Amongst the swirling chaos of a darkness so deep it crushes, intermittent flashes of light sear the smallest holes in the cloak holding me prisoner. Flickering like a lighthouse in the bleakest, longest storm, those itty-bitty breaks in the veil of yesterday tease me with hope. Four beacons to guide me back to today, but my suspicious mind is a vicious, deceitful beast. As soon as I catch sight of a better horizon, it’s stolen from me.
Beady eyes, full of calculation and intent steal my attention. Broken fragments of times that might have happened, or I might have imagined lead me backwards as far away from hope as possible.
Cloying astringent chemicals trigger new memories, while a piercing scream hurts my ears. Something burns my skin while something else holds me wide open. There is nothing physical to feel, but I can barely breathe as I am swamped and flooded with raw feelings and terror.
Every door in my mind that I have locked and left forgotten feels ready to burst open. I whine in preparation of the terror and hurt sure to come and steal me away again. For once I don’t even have the energy to try to be someone other than the truly broken, ruined person I am. I listen to a constant command beating in my thoughts telling me stop fighting and simply let what will be, be. And it’s sadly the easiest thing to do.
In the acceptance, the darkness is quieter and I sink further away, knowing in a sense that the fear is real but it is what it is. And I relax, if that’s what this is, while the clawing changes from an urgent need to fight as I succumb to what will always be.
Finding a dark corner to hide, I settle in but an unexpected explosion of light and noise blows the darkness to pieces, and my fight reignites. Arms squeeze around me, a deeper, smoother voice barks. “Bailey, fucking present for me. For me! For ME!”
Knowing the voice is the strangest thing of all. But I do. And with that realisation, my fear rises up and my survival instincts returning with a vengeance.
I swing around and clock my fist in Henley’s jaw. My hand screaming in pain, but it gives me another break from the barely understood fragments that keep trying to tie me down. I take the pain as a reminder I’m alive, climbing again to my feet, sprinting in mid-air. Of course, he hasn’t let me go.
Around me the air whips and bites against my skin, the black I was being held hostage in is replaced. A different dream, or a replaced reality, either way I’m standing in the middle of a bright light windstorm with shards of glass slashing, hitting, constantly trying to shatter my defences.
The pain keeps me from sinking away again.
This continual battle of wills is draining. One part feeds me vicious lies about how wrong this pack is. Another keeps demanding my submission. But isn’t submission the bitterest pill of all? If I’d been stronger to start with, able to not submit, none of this would have happened.
Tears fill my eyes, I can feel them spilling down my face, and there comes a point where I realise my throat is sore from wailing. But I want to escape. I need to. The noise in my head clashes so loud the hurt in my ears won’t stop, but it won’t let other things start either.
“Trust us, Bails,” Koda whispers, his hands wrapped around my face as Henley clamps his teeth into the junction of my shoulder. His hands on me adjusting, hurting, but telling me in his touch that he’s here, that he’s dependable, that he’s strong enough. He is such a good fucking person, reading me so well.
Ashton’s scent of summer rain, that screams new life and rebirth, chases away the stinging, astringent scents of coffee that straddles bad memories with the promise of good ones. The warmth of Reno’s hand splayed over the middle of my chest like he’s stopping the wild race of my heart from breaking free replaces the coldness of my fear.
We are chaotic. Frantic and panicked. In thought, feeling, intention and reality. It’s a mess of noise, movement and emotion that sweeps through us all. And there comes a point when I wonder if it will finish or if I’ll be taken away from them.
When I thrash, they hold me safe. When I feel that other false hold tightening, they somehow hold me even tighter. Every action that pushes me to run, they return tenfold, as they refocus with promises of holding me together. Saving me when I can’t save myself. Trusting me when I can’t trust myself.
“Present, Bailey,” Henley snaps aggressively again. The words crashing against the barriers holding me back. He’s still angry, so very angry, but desperate too. I feel his body shaking as much as mine is.
My body trembles so hard that if he wasn’t holding me up, I’d be unable to sit, to stand or to lie. I’m so very close to them. I see them in front of me, I can feel them in my mind and it helps, but they are so fucking far away. It hurts, it really fucking does.
“NOW BAILEY. FUCKING NOW!” He screams from behind me and this time he really does make me submit, his power fighting and strangling against the ghosts in my mind, the terror I feel burning through all the chemicals I have employed but more importantly Henley’s demand does something to the other claim, cracking its hold on me; or it might be me that’s cracking.
I continue to struggle, pushing them all away, desperately trying to hold on to them at the same time. Henley pushes me face first into the floor, his massive hand holding me down, my ass so far in the sky.
“Please, please, please,” I whimper, so fucking keen to not be that person anymore. I want this, I want them. To suffer this last fight my subconscious refuses to let go will be such a victory, for me and for us.
He stills and I guess he straddles the same shitty line of right and wrong as I do, questioning the method but not our reason. But becoming pack is about submission and someone stole mine without my consent years ago. Here and now is a leap of trust I never thought I’d experience but desperately wanted to.
