After I Learned To Obey Why Did My Family Start To Regret It? Chapter 06
“Harriet, I don’t know what trick you’re using to make yourself look dead.” Sean pressed the branding iron closer. “But you’re not getting out of this. Not this time.”
The iron sank into my shoulder.
Burning flesh hissed.
I looked away.
It was only a corpse now.
They could do what they liked.
When Sean pulled the iron back, torn flesh came with it.
He stopped. His throat worked, but no words came out.
The table beside him was covered with instruments.
After a moment, he put down the iron and threw a whip to an attendant.
“You do it. If she moves, stop. If she doesn’t, keep going.”
The whip cracked through the air.
Blood sprayed.
Again and again, it fell, opening fresh wounds across skin that could no longer feel pain.
By the time the doctor arrived, there was almost no untouched flesh left on my body. I hung from the rack like a broken doll, soaked in blood.
Sean stared at the red pool beneath my feet.
His voice was rough.
“Wake her up.”
The doctor went pale but did as he was told.
After the examination, he swallowed hard.
“Alpha… she’s dead. She has been for some time.”
Sean went rigid. Then he rounded on the doctor, his voice rising.
“You fraud. You can’t even tell the dead from the living?”
The doctor checked again.
The longer he worked, the more sweat gathered at his temples. At last, he looked between Gerald and Sean, terrified.
“Alpha, there’s nothing I can do. Perhaps… perhaps another doctor should look at her.”
Gerald said nothing.
Sean’s eyes were bloodshot. He kicked the attendant who had fetched the doctor.
“Then get another one. Get the best doctor you can find.”
Dusk settled over the prison.
One doctor came after another.
Every answer was the same.
The last doctor, accused of incompetence, lost patience.
“You don’t need a doctor,” he snapped. “You need a witch. Even a child could see she’s dead. No one is bringing her back.”
He left in anger.
Sean stood where he was, empty-handed and lost.
“No. Stop pretending. You can’t be dead.”
He repeated it again and again.
Only when he grabbed my hand to pull me down from the rack did he feel how cold my body had become.
His breath caught.
Gerald had already accepted it.
“Tiffany hasn’t seen us all day. We’re going home.”
He walked out first.
But once outside, he turned the wrong way. An attendant had to remind him of the path home.
I did not want to follow them.
Something unseen pulled me along and kept me near.
When the car stopped outside the villa, Tiffany rushed out with a cane.
“Were you with Harriet all day?”
Sean hurried to support her.
“You don’t need to worry about her. She pushed you out of a moving car and hurt you like this. Did she worry about you?”
The scent of blood drifted through the air.
A flicker of satisfaction crossed Tiffany’s face before she hid it.
“You punished Harriet? She’s so weak. How could she endure that?”
She frowned as if she cared.
Gerald lifted a hand and smoothed the crease between her brows.
“Only a little. Pain will teach her. Were you waiting here for us?” Tiffany nodded.
They helped her into the villa.
Sean could not bear her worried look, so he made faces and told jokes until she laughed.
Their three shadows stretched across the ground, pressed close together, leaving no space for anyone else.
When I had first come home, they had once kept me in the center like that too.
They had led me through this same gate as if I were precious.
