Marked By The Mad King Alpha (Phoebe and Perry) novel Chapter 46

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I hadn’t wanted this. I hadn’t wanted to relive the worst parts of my life. Heat or no heat, I was awake now, every thought clear and sick with grief. I wouldn’t let him touch me like that again. I couldn’t. Not after everything that’d already broken me.

“No… please,” the sound ripped out of me before I could stop it. When Perry’s fingers closed briefly at my throat, the world narrowed to a single, familiar terror — the strangling grip I’d known from Kevin. My lungs forgot how to work.

But the way Perry watched me wasn’t the same. He felt the panic in my eyes and he stopped. Where Kevin had fed on my fear, Perry paused as if the sight hurt him. Part of him wanted to punish. Part of him couldn’t stand being the cause of my collapse.

His hands left my neck. I rolled away and gulped air until my ribs burned. My dress hung in tatters. My body shook. I tasted metal where hunger and adrenaline met. I wasn’t pretending; the panic was real and raw and it kept spilling out of me in tremors.

He shifted then, awkward and uncertain, the ruler’s mask slipping for the smallest of moments. The man who commanded armies seemed lost at the idea that someone he owned could be so broken by him. He tried to cover me with his shirt, an absurd, clumsy attempt at care that only made me flinch harder.

“Calm down. I won’t hurt you,” he said, softer than I’d ever heard him. He wrapped his arms around me and began to rock, slow and steady. At first I fought like an animal — scratches, teeth, anything to force him away. I bit him until blood warmed my mouth. I clawed his face, his throat. He never pushed me free. He only held tighter and kept rocking, waiting for my storm to pass.

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