Adored by the Alpha

Chapter 76.9

This is a very short update with something quick that I felt I needed to address in the story before I moved it any further. There are some references to the sexual assault that Paige experienced in this chapter, so be warned. 

There will be more references to her trauma and experiences (because you don't just get over wildly traumatizing events from one day to another), but this is the chapter that will be focused on mainly that - it will be touched on a couple more times before the steadily approaching end of the story, though.

I cried writing one of the epilogues - yes, there will be multiple. 

**********

I raised my brow at Allen as he walked to me, arms full of stuff, and began setting it down on the table in front of me. A stress ball. A pitcher of water and a plastic cup. Notepad and pencil. Tissues. All placed around the little desk in Allen's emergency office.

He smiled softly at me and knelt in front of me as I was in the office chair. "You good?"

I shrugged and looked down at my hands. "Yeah, I guess."

He kissed my forehead. "No worries. He's a professional, there to help you. I have some emails I need to answer with regards to all the Alpha stuff, but I'm two rooms over, should you need me."

I smiled carefully up at him, then looked at the screen. I was waiting in the video chat room that the link the therapist had sent me had taken me to, waiting for him to show up on the call.

Allen left the room, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs. I picked up a tissue from the box and began separating the layers of paper, and then ripping the see-through thin paper sheets apart, letting them drop from between my fingers onto the floor one by one. Tripped my foot against the carpet.

The rest of my family had come back ereyesterday, tiptoeing around me and vaguely offering support. No one was comfortable mentioning it. Including me. We'd eaten dinner together for two nights, watched a movie in the living room. It was, by the way, incredible how my Nana no longer sent evil glances Allen's way. Turns out all he needed to do to win her approval was save me out of an icy lake and then save me from the clutches of an insane kidnapper.

Talk about standards, Nana.

A noise sounded from the screen, and then a very pixelated image of a man with dark skin and dark hair showed up on the screen. "Hello there Paige. I'm Nirajit! I'm very honored to be talking to you." He had some sort of Indian-ish accent.

He started out with some slow-ball questions. Where I'd grown up, my immediate family history. Then he began to get closer to the issue at hand. "Paige, if you're comfortable with it, could you begin to describe how you experienced the assault? I've been given a general overview by your mate, but the most important thing is of course how you're feeling, what you experienced - perhaps the things you experienced, which you might not have felt comfortable telling Alpha Allen, because they were too painful or private."

No one had asked that of me yet. To go through it again. My hands were shaking in my lap as I explained. Being thrown from car to car. Being dragged into a murky storage building. I managed to keep it together up until the point where I had to talk about him, them, all of them touching me.

"It felt like they thought they owned my body. I was... I wasn't even the real target. To all of them, I was just a means to an end. I wasn't a human being, I wasn't Paige. I don't know why, but it just makes it so much worse to know that it could have been anyone. No matter who Allen's mate had been, they would've done something like this. It's not like I have to feel like the most important person or whatever, it's just so... it's terrifying to know there are people who would do that to total strangers, for no reason other than to hurt someone that stranger is close to. And I also just have this feeling of, like... why me? If it could have been anyone, why did it have to be me? It's not that I wanted it to happen to someone else, but why did it have to be me?" The tears were rolling.