Chapter 17

"Are you becoming what you've always hated?"

Zyran Demir

Zyran sat in the dimly lit room, his hands clasped together, fingers digging into his palms as if the pain would anchor him to the moment. The low hum of the IV drip punctuated the silence, each drop echoing louder than it should in his ears. He barely noticed the presence of his brothers, though their tension was a living, breathing thing, curling around the room like a suffocating fog.

Two days.

Two days since she had opened her eyes. Two days since the DNA test had confirmed the truth his soul had already recognized long before the paper had been handed to him. Yerenica was his sister. Their sister.

Rezan was fidgeting, his eyes darting to the IV line in Yerenica's delicate hand, fingers moving restlessly as he double-checked the connection for the third time in the last ten minutes. His jaw was clenched, his usual smirk absent, replaced by something Zyran wasn't sure he had ever seen in his brother before, unease. No witty remark, no cocky grin. Just raw, undiluted anxiety.

"Fuck off and sit down," Dehrin snapped, his voice sharper than usual, cutting through the thick silence like a blade.

Zyran expected Rezan to bite back, expected the usual sarcastic jab or a muttered insult but it never came. Instead, Rezan exhaled slowly and murmured, "I'm making sure it doesn't make her uncomfortable."

Cihan's gaze hardened. "Rey, sit" he ordered, his voice laced with authority.

Rezan hesitated for only a moment before he obeyed, moving away, sitting back against the chair, but his knee bounced restlessly. None of them could rest easy. Not when she still lay unconscious, her fragile form drowning in the sheets, lost beneath the weight of everything they had done to her.

Zyran's gaze drifted, tracing the lines of her face, too pale, too small. His eyes lowered to her right hand, bruised and wrapped, the stark contrast of the white bandages against her skin a cruel reminder.

Dread coiled around his throat, squeezing the air from his lungs.

He had done that. He had stepped on her hand, crushed her beneath his weight, watched her cower without an ounce of mercy.

The memory hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest.

He wanted to tear the moment from his mind, to gouge it out with his bare hands, but it clung to him like a parasite, burrowing into the marrow of his bones. He had seen fear before, had inflicted it upon men who had begged for their lives, their dignity, their freedom. He had never hesitated. But Yerenica...

His sister.

She had flinched from him, had cried, had trembled under his gaze, and he had let it happen. Had made it happen.

A sickness swelled in his gut, black and vile.

The men who had touched her, the guards who had dared to lay their hands on what was his, he had made sure they suffered.

He had given them no mercy, no reprieve. Their screams had echoed through the underground chambers long after their voices had given out. He had shattered their bones, peeled their skin from their bodies, made them choke on their own terror until they understood what it meant to be powerless. Until their last breath, they had known that the girl they had harmed had been untouchable. They had begged. It hadn't mattered.

It hadn't been enough.

Nothing would be enough.

The world they lived in had not been kind to them. It had turned them into wolves, forced them to bare their teeth and rip flesh from bone to survive. Their father had made sure of it.

Zyran could still feel the bite of the leather belt across his back, the bruises he had carried for years so his brothers didn't have to. He had shielded them from their father's wrath, had taken every lashing, every punishment, had learned to endure pain like it was nothing more than an inconvenient itch. But there had been no one to shield Yerenica.

She had suffered at their hands.

Dehrin's voice broke the silence, barely above a whisper, yet it carried through the room like a bullet to the skull.

"Do you think she'll ever forgive us?"

A pause. A sharp intake of breath.

Zyran looked up just in time to see Cihan pull Dehrin into an embrace, his grip firm, unyielding. Dehrin, reckless and untamed, now looked so painfully lost.

"Abi," Dehrin murmured, his voice cracking, the weight of his guilt carving into his features. "Neden bu kadar zalim olmak zorundaydık?"

(Brother, why did we have to be so cruel to her?)

Zyran had no answer.

There was no justification for what they had done. No excuse that could erase the torment they had inflicted upon the one person they should have protected above all else.

He had always thought cruelty was a necessity. Their father had taught them that softness was a weakness, that love was a liability. But looking at Yerenica now, he wondered if the old man had been wrong. If they had all been wrong.

His eyes flickered back to Yerenica, his thoughts unraveling into something darker, something he could not name. If she woke up and looked at him with that same fear in her eyes, if she never saw him as anything but a monster, he would have no right to ask otherwise.

Then, movement.

A small shift, barely there, her fingers twitched against the sheets.

His breath caught in his throat.

For the first time in days, hope warred with his despair.

And Zyran Demir, feared leader, ruthless executioner, and the man who had built his empire on the blood of others, felt utterly, devastatingly helpless.

Thoughts?