Protector's Claim

**Gabrielle Thornton**

I made a mistake.

I allowed myself to be born. I allowed myself access into a life that wasn’t mine, and for that, I had willingly submitted my body and soul to a man whose sadistic pleasures knew no bound, a man who relished in my pain as much as he craved my flesh.

*A monster I would do anything to escape.*

But what if I could make it stop? What if the cost of freedom was a single night in a stranger’s arms? What if one final sin was all I needed to commit to find peace?

**Kieran Kincaid**

I had always known of the sickness that lived inside my father, the demons who controlled the man. His death was a blessing to every innocent he’d destroyed with his dark hunger.

Yet, despite his demise becoming my curse, a shackle trapping me in his twisted secrets, it lured me to it, too. It promised me the thing I coveted above all else. It seduced me deeper into the world I wish I knew nothing of, but there was no turning back, not even if by accepting, by taking what didn’t belong to me made me a monster like him.

*Gabby would finally be mine.*