But not long after I was discharged, the "accidents" began.
The first time, I was dragged into the mountains.
I was thrown into a cellar like a piece of garbage. A man named Laurence Lawrence clamped handcuffs around my wrists and shackles around my ankles.
"Behave!" He slapped me hard across the face once the locks clicked shut. "From now on, you're staying here to breed for me!"
I'd been sheltered my whole life, protected by my three older brothers since the day I was born.
Nothing could have prepared me for this. I screamed until my throat tore, begging him to stop.
But that man was no human. He was a monster.
He ripped my clothes off and brutalized me through the night. Over and over and over again.
A month later.
When I found out I was carrying his child, the shock and the crushing weight of it all shattered something inside me. I collapsed.
When I woke, another two months had passed.
I found myself in a hospital bed. My brothers had rescued me.
After I came to, they acted no different than before. Still loving. Still caring.
But the very next day, I was kidnapped again.
This time, the abductors threw me into a pool teeming with starving piranhas.
"No!" The water churned with them, hundreds of them, their dark bodies writhing over one another. My mind nearly split apart.
They were crazed with hunger. They latched onto me and wouldn't stop biting.
Tearing away flesh.
My blood turned the entire pool red.
The terror consumed me whole, and I blacked out again.
When I woke, another two months had slipped away.
That very night, the third accident happened. I was dragged into a psychiatric ward, where electric batons and beatings were routine.
And then came now.
The more I thought about it, the more my heart felt like it was being carved out of my chest, slice by slow slice, until I couldn't breathe.
"Miss Harding? Why are you sitting on the floor?"
A maid appeared out of nowhere, her voice cutting through the hall. The three men in the living room fell silent at once, their gazes snapping toward me.
I met their eyes and smiled. A wretched, hollow smile.
Before any of them could react, I vaulted over the third-floor railing and jumped.
"Lorna!"
All three of them lunged from the couch, screaming.
I closed my eyes. The pain I'd braced for never came. Neither did the relief.
Instead, I crashed into a trembling pair of arms, and we both tumbled hard to one side.
Cole had thrown himself beneath me. He didn't even pause to register his own pain before scrambling to my side, his voice shaking with barely contained shock.
"Have you lost your mind?!"
Finn saw that I was unharmed and let out a heavy breath. The panic drained from his face in an instant.
What replaced it was pure, undisguised irritation.
"We went through hell getting you out of that psychiatric ward, and this is what you do?!"
I sat crumpled on the floor, my skirt pooling over an ankle that had snapped on impact.
"Getting me out?"
My gaze drifted up to Finn's eyes, mocking and miserable all at once. "Is that really what you'd call it, Finn?"
All three of their expressions locked up at the same time.
They exchanged a glance. A flicker of alarm, barely perceptible, passed between them.
"Of course we rescued you!" Malcolm frowned and pulled me to my feet. "Lorna, what's gotten into you?"
Cole followed up, his tone careful, probing.
"Did you hear something at the ward?"
I didn't answer. I just kept smiling, and the longer I smiled, the darker their faces grew.
"Are you done?!"
Cole's composure finally cracked. The mask fell away, and so did his patience.
"The three of us have empires to run. We don't have time to stand here and indulge your breakdown!"
He let out a cold scoff and stormed off.
Finn shook his head and followed right behind.
Malcolm, my twin, reached out and patted my head. The gesture was impossibly gentle. His words were not.
"Stop acting crazy. Got it?"
The hall fell quiet. I sat there, turning Malcolm's words over in my mind.
Was he worried about me, or was he worried the transmigrator would never come back?
The answer was obvious enough.
