Page 441 of Once Upon a Fable

Only...it wasn’t me.

One blue eye and one brown stared back.

Hair flopped over my forehead.

Retribution gleamed on my face.

My lips moved, but it wasn’t me who spoke. It was Jareth. “No one is safe from me.” My teeth flashed in the mirror, stained in blood and vows. “No one.”

I woke in a cold sweat, my legs thrashing under a blanket, my mind still half in my dream and half panicking with confusion.

Jareth.

He needed my help.

He wasn’t safe.

They’d hurt him.

I let out a pained grunt, trying to understand where the fuck I was.

A hand landed on my chest, pushing me down as I tried to launch upright. “Whoa, buddy, just a bad dream. You’re all good.”

A stranger’s hand on me.

A man’s voice in my ears.

Ah, shit.

The trigger set off a detonation inside me.

Every man who’d ever touched me, every voice that’d ever teased me, and every fucking minute of agony I’d been given flooded through my brain.

I lost touch with reality.

Panic roared through my system.

I.

Lost.

It.

The man’s hand pushed me harder, trying to keep me lying down. “I told you, buddy. It’s all good. Just calm down, alright?”

His fingers bit into me.

I was a kid again.

A kid being held down for someone to rape and hurt.

No.

Fuck, no.

Rage I couldn’t control drenched everything.

I’d kill him.