imed by My Bully Alpha

    bChapter /bb241 /b

    Ashton leaned forward, his eyes locking onto mine with a strange intensity. “I’ll answer them,” he said, voice low. “I was the first one to be taken. I’ve seen what he’s capable of. Just… ask.”

    “The first?” I asked, my eyes wide.

    “Yes,” he nodded, shaking his head on a rueful smile. “It’s been five bloody years in this hellhole.”

    I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The words felt like they were too heavy for me to fully grasp, but they were spilling out of his mouth, raw and painful, and I couldn’t turn away. “I was lucky, I guess,” he said, his voice distant, like he was somewhere far away, in a ce where I couldn’t follow. “I had my mom until my teens… until she took her own life.” I felt my heart tighten at the weight of that.

    “Wait, what?” I asked, my voice breaking slightly, but I couldn’t stop myself. I needed to understand. “She… how? Why?”

    “She was raped,” he answered, his eyes fixed on the ground, his jaw clenched like he was fighting against the memory. “By Lucas. He’d stalked her for months, pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He befriended her at her school… and then… he took everything from her.”

    The anger surged inside me like a tidal wave, my hands trembling. “Lucas…” I whispered, the name making me sick. “Why… why would he do that? Why would he do this to all of our moms?”

    He just shrugged, shaking his head as if the answer wasn’t something he wanted to remember. “He said he loved her… that he loved all of them. But it didn’t matter, did it? It didn’t change what happened. What he did to her…in the end, that’s how all of us are here.”

    I didn’t know what to say. How do you even begin to process something like that? And yet, somehow, it didn’t stop there.

    Maggie, who had been quiet beside me, suddenly spoke up, her voice soft butced with pain. “It’s the same with my mom,” she said, her gaze meeting mine. “Lucas imed to love her too. But… look at what it did to her. Her marriage, her family–it was all ruined. My mom’s life, my whole family–nothing was the

    same after Lucas came into it.”

    I felt a pit form in my stomach, my mind racing. “But… why? Why would he do this to all of us?” I asked, my voice trembling, more to myself than anyone else. “Why did he hurt so many people?”

    Maggie looked down at her hands, as if she couldn’t bear to meet my eyes anymore. ‘He’s broken,‘ she said, the pain in her words clear. “And I think he wanted to break all of us. But the worst part? He convinced everyone that it wasn’t his fault–that it was us, our moms. The men believed their wives had cheated, that it wasn’t their fault, but…” She paused, swallowing hard. “They all just… left us to pick up the pieces.”

    The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating, I wanted to scream at Lucas for what he’d done to them, to all of us, but somehow, that wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t undo the damage.

    1

    All this time, all this pain, I realized… I wasn’t the only one who had been hurt. I wasn’t the only one who

    had suffered. “You weren’t alone,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “None of you were. And neither

    am I.”

    Maggie looked at me then, her eyes searching mine like she was trying to see if I understood.

    “No,” she said, shaking her head, a small smile tugging at her lips. “We weren’t alone. And… maybe that’s the only thing that matters now.”

    I didn’t know if I agreed with her. But in that moment, I knew one thing for sure–nothing would ever be the same again. And I wasn’t going to let Lucas get away with it. Not if I could help it.

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