Chapter 2

Alex POV

Pain was the only tether holding me to the living.

It crashed over me in waves, syncing with the violent rhythm of the ocean that tossed me back and forth like flotsam. Saltwater burned my throat, my nose, my eyes. My limbs felt like lead, dragging me down into the suffocating dark depths.

I kicked, fueled purely by a primal instinct to breathe.

My fingers scraped against something solid. Sand.

I clawed my way forward. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how long I had been drifting in the inflatable raft Rico had stashed at the base of the cliff. The raft was gone now, shredded by the jagged rocks or lost to the merciless current.

I dragged my broken body onto the shore. The sand was coarse and biting against my cheek. I coughed, retching up seawater until my stomach cramped violently.

But the cramp didn't stop.

It twisted deep in my abdomen, a sharp, tearing agony that had nothing to do with the ocean.

I curled into a tight ball, clutching my stomach as a low, guttural moan escaped my lips.

"Please, no."

The plea died in my raw throat. A memory surfaced through the agony-the doctor's words. Two months pregnant.

The pain intensified, a hot knife carving me open from the inside out. I felt a warm, sickening wetness between my legs that I knew wasn't seawater.

I tried to sit up, to stop it, to do something. But my body was broken. I was shivering uncontrollably, my teeth chattering so hard I thought they would crack under the pressure.

Gavyn's face flashed behind my eyelids. The cold indifference in his eyes. The way he had turned his back on me.

"He killed us," I whispered to the empty, desolate beach.

The physical agony bled into the emotional devastation. I was losing the last piece of me that mattered. The only thing I had taken from that house that was truly mine.

I lay there for hours as the sun began to rise, baking my salt-crusted skin. The heat did nothing to warm the ice in my veins.

I drifted in and out of consciousness, suspended in a grey haze.

In the delirium of fever, I saw him.

Gavyn stood over me on the beach, his shoes polished and spotless amidst the grit and sand.

"Get up, Alex," he sneered, his lip curling in disgust. "You're making a scene."

I reached out a trembling hand. "Help me. Please. It hurts."

He laughed, and the sound was cruel, hollow-a void where a heart should be. "You served your purpose. Why are you still here?"

He turned and walked away, fading into the blinding white glare of the sun.

I screamed his name, but no sound tore free. My throat was too raw to speak.

Slowly, the pain in my belly subsided into a dull, hollow ache. I knew, with a mother's terrible, ancient instinct, that it was over. The life inside me had flickered out.

I was empty.

Then, a shadow fell over me.

My vision was blurry, swimming with heat and tears. I tried to focus. A figure was walking toward me from the tree line.

Not Gavyn.

This figure was rougher, the edges less refined, less polished.

I tried to crawl away, my survival instinct kicking in one last time. But my arms gave out, useless beneath me. I collapsed face-first into the sand.

The darkness rushed in from the edges of my vision, claiming me.

I welcomed it.

If this was death, it was kinder than Gavyn Dunlap had ever been.