Bad Love: An Alpha's Regret (Leah and Aaron) novel Chapter 336

Axel drags me back to the mansion, which is the last place I want to go right now, but it’s not like I’ve got much of a choice.

I assume he’s going to lock me into my room again.

What else is he going to do with me when it’s the middle of the day and he’s got pack business to attend to as acting Alpha on behalf of my brother?

However, when we go inside the mansion, he doesn’t take me upstairs.

Instead, he opens the door that goes down to the basement-slash-cellar.

As soon as he opens that door, all common sense leaves me as pure panic takes over.

I turn to run, but Axel wraps his arms around my waist.

I haven’t been down to the cellar since I returned to the Rathborn mansion.

It’s mostly used to store stuff, as well as an extensive and expensive collection of wine, but I’ve always managed to find someone else to go down for me if I’ve needed anything.

I think Jessica has figured out I’m avoiding it on purpose, but no one else has.

At the house I spent ten years locked away in, there was a small storm cellar beneath the kitchen.

When the old Roberts Alpha really wanted to punish me—whether I had done something to annoy him, or he was just having a bad day, or he’d gotten some news about Leah that he didn’t like—he would throw me down in that storm cellar with no light or lamp, no blankets, no food, no water.

Sometimes it would just be for a few hours.

Occasionally, it’d been days.

Once, he’d left me so long I’d been delirious from dehydration when he’d pulled me out.

I’d thought I was going to die.

Actually, I’d prayed for death, because then I would be free and would no longer be forced to live in fear or captivity.

I’d constantly wondered what the point of my continued existence even was.

I’d given up on ever being free.

When Liam had brought the pack doctor to treat me—Adam, I think his name had been—I’d tried to refuse treatment and had been furious that I’d survived.

It seemed like some cruel joke, some terrible twist of fate.

Why couldn’t I just die and be at peace?

I haven’t thought about any of that—those darkest days—since I’d returned home.

And for good reason.

The memory of that specific fear, of being locked down in the dark with no idea how long it would last and no way to tell how much time was passing, was something my brain refused to handle.

Now proves to be no different as all those horrible feelings come rushing back, immediately overwhelming me.

No.