I was that bear.

And this naïve, belligerent girl had raided my pantry.

“The thing is...” The world flickered in and out. My grip on sanity slipping. “You owe me my life. I didn’t want it anymore. But you...you’ve gone and claimed it.”

My knees buckled, sending me crashing before her.

She gasped and tried to catch me, succeeding only in tangling our bodies together as we kneeled in earth as if we were about to be executed. And who knew, perhaps that was exactly what would happen.

Thanks to her, we would go hungry. We would be in pain. But the difference between me and that lonely bear was...I had her.

As grayness slithered over my vision, I mumbled the most honest confession of my life. “I can’t let you go because I’d rather die with you at my side than alone.”

Her arms trembled as she lowered me down, down, down.

My head hit dirt and my eyelids closed. Concussed nightmares dragged me deep, but not before I whispered, “I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I’M NOT LONELY WHILE you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Kas’s voice repeated over and over in my head, distracting me.

He was unconscious and I had a parrot inside my mind.

Focus.

Gritting my teeth, I shoved away his agonizing confession and kept my mind on urgent things. Things like getting him back into the temporary ward where I’d been treating him.

The stretcher.

I’d left the stretcher that I’d hauled Kas from the cliff almost two weeks ago intact. The ropes were still tied into a hammock, the scuffed tree trunks resting around the side of the house. Abandoned but now gratefully back in use.

It was a case of déjà vu as I rolled his unconscious form onto the stretcher, gathered power in my legs to lift, and heaved myself forward to drag him over the threshold.

He didn’t make a sound as I dragged him through the kitchen, past the lobby, and back into the library where he belonged.

Sweat rolled down my temples by the time I tucked him into the blankets, fluffed a pillow behind his head, and hauled the transporter back outside—hopefully not to be used a third time.

During the entire process of bringing him inside, tending to him, and worrying for him, I locked down my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t go over what he’d said, what he’d done, or the numerous emotions I’d read on his face.

I didn’t let myself analyze anything—not a single eyebrow quirk—until he was safe, breathing calmly, and I managed to get two painkillers past his lips when he roused a little.

“I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”

Gem...stop it.

I sat beside him, brushing back his hair, cursing the way my heart hadn’t figured out how to beat correctly in his company. How could a man make me livid one moment and then liquid the next? Why had I felt ashamed when he was the one who locked a cuff around my ankle?

The way he looked at his vegetable garden? Ugh, the guilt almost crippled me. I should’ve taken more care. Had more respect about the value of each edible plant.

Dusk fell.

I stayed beside him, contemplating my options. If only my PLB still worked. A convoy of helicopters could arrive to fly him to a doctor.

Seeing as he’s too pig-headed to go to them.

Stars came out, twinkling through the library window. My mind raced with his fury that I’d helped myself to his supplies, the loneliness in his voice when speaking of his family, and the twisted mess left of a boy who’d been stolen so many years ago.

“I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”

Enough of this.

He showed no signs of waking up, and I had to be wise. While he was asleep, I had to undo the new imprisonment he’d trapped me with. Once that unsatisfactory task was dealt with, I would figure out what to prepare for dinner. Something that wouldn’t earn his wrath.

With a final look at his slumbering face, I pushed off the floor and marched to the desk by the wall. I rifled through every drawer, looking for a key to the leather leash I currently dragged around behind me.

Come on.

It has to be here somewhere.

This room had an authority about it. I didn’t need Kas to tell me that the large throne-like chair once belonged to the man he called Storymaker. His face had screamed that loud and clear when he’d woken the first time and flinched the moment he’d seen it. He didn’t need to verbalize that this wasn’t just a library to him. It’d been the hub of all the darkness in this despicable place.

I’d wondered, on the fifth or sixth day of his unmentionable nightmares, if I should move him to a different room. It seemed the shelves with their innocuous books triggered violent memories. He stared into the past and saw things I couldn’t, witnessing his family lined up before their master, waiting for instruction, praying they wouldn’t be given to a guest that night.

Despite Kas not telling me in exact paragraphs of what’d happened to him, his face did, his body did, his every flinch and grunt did. In the midst of whatever delusions his concussion gave him, I rocked in the corner with my blanket wrapped tight around me. On the nights when he was so far gone he muttered to Nyx and Wes, Neo and Elise, I’d wiped away my silent tears and cursed my cracking heart all over again. It was no longer whole. The pieces were in pieces. And those pieces were in irreparable fragments for learning what they’d all endured.

It was because of those fragments that I was now completely messed up where Kas was concerned. The sane part of me—the business-headed millionaire and successful entrepreneur—was beside herself with scorn. But the insane part of me—the love-sick dreamer who fantasized that she could be his cure—was determinedly blind to the actual real danger of living with a deranged victim.

A victim who couldn’t even acknowledge he’d been a victim.

A boy who’d grown into a man who’d suppressed each touch, crime, and wound that had wrongly been done to him. And because of my blindness, I’d allowed him to once again trap me.

You truly are one of a kind, Gem.

And not in a good way.

I sat back on my haunches, my hands still buried in useless drawers. Nothing but dust-free neatness. A few pens and perfectly stacked schematics on plumbing, wiring, and the original blueprints of building this diabolic place.

Just like everything in this mansion, the level of tidiness bordered on obsessive.

And the only person who was around to keep this poverty palace in such pristine condition was none other than the comatose man currently twitching in his sleep across the room.

Argh.

I fell backward and lay on the carpet.

What the hell am I going to do?

No answers were forthcoming. No epiphany on how to juggle a mentally broken man and my desire for freedom. I was pulled in two directions. I wanted to stay and to go. I had no idea which was right.

You could start by trying to get that damn cuff off.

Fresh purpose slipped through my limbs. I was tired. Immensely so. It seemed just dealing with Kas, even in small doses, drained me of everything I had.

With a groan, I pushed upright and climbed to my feet. Padding around Kas, still sleeping on the floor, I paused for a moment. Moonlight shone over his face, making his skin shimmer pewter in the dark. With his eyes closed and mouth soft, I could be forgiven for thinking he was a kind, wonderful man who lavished me with love and affection. He seemed to have that quality about him. He was protective of those he loved. I’d witnessed that protection. He’d sacrificed himself over and over again for his Fable siblings, according to his numerous nightmares.