Intransigent

Intransigent | 5

Chapter 5

Emma's POV

2 Years Later...

The door at the top of the stairs slammed as the guards left the basement. I laid spread-eagle on the floor, unable to move from the most recent beating, blood trailing across my body.

I felt Ricky take my hand gently in his. "Em?" he whispered, his voice pained and angry. "Em, please answer me."

I sighed, closing my eyes and whispering, "I'm...okay." The whisper was full of the pain that I couldn't conceal. I heal fast, but the daily beatings that I'd been taking for the past two years left multitudes of scars.

Ricky was my rock. Without him, I probably would've broken and gone insane only a couple weeks after this started. He was in a separate cell, but he was still able to comfort me and give me the strength to keep going. When I was taking a beating, he would maintain eye contact with me and I would try to pretend nothing was happening.

I knew it was hard for him to watch the beatings every day. I saw the pain in his eyes while he tried to distract me from my own. He did it because I had once told him it helped. Looking into his eyes showed me that I wasn't alone, that I could face this. He'd become the older brother that I'd never had.

The days that I had the strength, he would distract me by asking me about my pack. I told him everything. I told him about Ally and Will, about Elizabeth, Lisa and the kids in the pack that I loved so much. I told him about my parents and how much of a daddy's girl I was. Everything that came to mind, I told him. And he did the same. I'd never known anyone as well as I knew Ricky.

He had grown up in a strict pack, but he was high in the ranks, so he wasn't cracked down on like the lower members. He had two younger sisters and a little brother that he missed terribly. He wasn't close with his parents, but his siblings had been his life. He was captured when he was trying to talk to the alpha about a peace treaty and lost his temper, punching him. They decided to let him stay down here until he died.

I could no longer communicate with Mel. We were both too weak to talk to one another. I couldn't even feel her anymore. I hadn't been able to for a year and a half. I had no clothes. That first day, the guards had shredded my dress and no one brought me anymore. I was no longer embarrassed by nudity; I had so much else to deal with that the fact I was naked was the last thing on my list.

"I need to come up with a way to get us out of here," Rick muttered. "You at least," he added. We went through this almost every day. He knew that there was nothing we could do. I was too weak to stand, let alone break out of the cell.

I didn't say anything. I kept my eyes closed and pictured my pack. I did this after every beating. It reminded me who I was fighting to get home to. I would survive this and I would find a way back to them.

"Rick," I murmured quietly.

"Yeah?" he whispered back. I felt him lean in a little closer to me.

"Thank you for being here for me," I told him. "I love you."

I felt his other hand brush gently down my less bruised cheek. "I love you, too, Em," he told me.

We sat there in silence and waited as my strength slowly returned to me. He never let go of my hand, staying as close to me as possible as we both waited for my wounds to scab and stop bleeding. It took a while.

I was surprised when the guards didn't come back down that night for my second beating. I normally get one in the morning and one at night, giving my wounds time to scab, but not heal before they dug at them some more.