Mated to Her Alpha Instructor (Eileen and Regis) novel Chapter 199

Mated to Her Alpha Instructor

Chapter 199

Eileen

‘I don’t remember much, she said, and her voice was hoarse, rusty with disuse and weighted with old pain. “Most of it’s just… fragments. Impressions. I was so young when I got away, and I think maybe my mind protected me by letting the details blur. Her hands twisted together, knuckles going white. ‘I remember the cage. The cold. My mother’s voice when she sang to me at night, trying to keep me calm. A pause, breath shuddering. “And I remember men coming to take her away, and the sounds that would follow, and knowing that I couldn’t help her, that I was too powerless to do anything but hide in the corner and pretend I couldn’t hear.”

The raw honesty of it hit me like a physical blow, the casual mention of horrors that should never have been visited upon a child delivered in that flat, distant tone people used when the alternative was falling apart completely. I wanted to reach across the table and take her hand, to offer physical comfort, but I held myself still, sensing that touch right now might shatter whatever fragile composure she was maintaining.

“How did you escape?” I asked gently.

You tried to find them? I asked. “Other witches?‘

‘Of course I tried. The bitterness in her voice was sharp enough to cut. “I spent years following rumors and old stories, traveling to places where witch covens were supposed to have hidden, searching for any sign that I wasn’t the last of my kind. Her laugh held no humor. “But whatever magic I might have inherited from my mother, it’s mostly gone now. Dormant or destroyed, I don’t know which. She met my eyes directly for the first time since beginning this conversation. “So even if I found other witches–assuming any survived–I wouldn’t belong there either. I’m too diluted, too broken, too much a product of what was done to us to ever fit into whatever their world might be.”