To all my readers who have followed me and all those who find this series for the first time with this chapter I want to extend my thanks for your feedback and comments. Every author says this at some point but until you've been in the authors shoes you don't realize how true it is. Feedback, comments, voting on our stories mean a great deal to us and we appreciate it more than we can express.
For Chapter 8 there isn't much to say. If you have not read this series, I highly suggest you read at minimum chapter 7 or much of this will not flow well for you. There is very minimal sex in this chapter in the form of memories.
For those interested the poem quoted is Invictus by William Ernest Henley
As always thanks to everyone who helped with ideas, encouragement, and editing.
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The wind tore at her. There was no going back. No changing how things had happened. She'd made her choice and all she had left to do was live out the consequences of that choice. One last breath. Just enough time for one last regret.
Then she was falling, fighting the urge to flail her arms uselessly against the rushing wind. Eyes squeezed shut she forced herself to try and calm down. Quietly she murmured words she'd heard her father say too many times to count. Words that hadn't been heard on Advocacy property in three decades.
"Out of the night that covers me. Black as the pit from pole to pole. I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul." Her eyes snapped open, alight with vengeance as she gripped the stock of the RM Magnum.
"In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud," She whispered. Remembering the next verse of her father's favorite poem. "Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed."
She took one last breath. "Time to end this," she whispered softly to herself as she brought the gun into firing position and braced for impact while her mind drifted for a second back over the last two days.
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30 Hours before.
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"Erillia." that word kept bouncing around in her head. Likely one of the first words if not the first word ever spoken to her in this life. God only knew if it might not be one of the last as well. Most recently it was the last word Ren spoke before he passed out and she cried herself to sleep.
"Oh god, Erillia." if she was going to be specific, as he'd thrust hard into her clutching depths grunting as his rigid cock pulsed while he filled her pussy with cum one last time. A few grunts and incoherent sounds were the only other noises he'd made. Then he had the gall to pass out under her!
Not that she could really blame him if she was being honest or fair. They had after all been fucking for several hours at that point and he'd cum in and on her six times already. Most men would have been done several times before especially since the preceding days hadn't exactly been a dry spell.
He'd told her he was spent the time before but she'd taunted him that she could get him up again. A feat that had taken her nearly a half hour itself and made her jaw ache, but she'd happily climbed aboard and angrily fucked him through several rolling orgasms until it was too much and he'd cum in her a final time.
She sat there catching her breath and finally realized he wasn't just relaxing under her.
The rhythmic rise and fall of his chest and the softening of the lines around his mouth and eyes told her he was well and truly gone. At first she'd been miffed that he could fall asleep like that, and then angry because of how the whole night, no, the whole week had gone.
After a short time though the sorrow broke through the anger. She'd relaxed and lay on his chest, covering them both with the sheet and blanket when she first shivered.
Only it wasn't the cold of the night air that had made her shiver. As she lay there on Ren's chest the slight quivering progressed to full body shivers and finally to a shaking so bad she'd have sworn it was a tremor. Then came the tears, and a cry of sorrow the likes of which she'd never uttered, not even when she lost her father.
She'd been in shock when he had died as she sat there in the hospital listening to the doctors and nurses trying to offer solace and explain that there had been nothing they could do.
Anger had flooded her because she'd known something was wrong with his death but never been able to figure out what.
Fear had been close behind because she was now alone with a mother who didn't approve of her or understand her and no one else in the world. Determination had been forged from those two emotions. Determination to keep his memory alive, and to provide for herself and her mother.
That determination had seen her through her rape, and had kept her going when her mother publicly denounced her saying no daughter of hers could have killed those men and that as far as she knew or cared Erillia had died of the injuries inflicted.
It had kept her going when she had finally confronted her mother, only to have her mother throw her out of the house spouting nonsense about how she should have found a way to survive without killing those men and that there were worse things in this life than being raped.
She'd scoffed when her mother told her she was no longer welcome in their family home, and had tried to convince Erillia it was for her own good. Determination born of anger and fear had seen her through it all.
