Teddy's Caramel: An MC Shifter Romance

Chapter 02

**TRIGGER WARNING: DV/ABUSE/IMPRISONMENT/NEGLECT/ADULTERY**

CARMEN POV

Consciousness returned slowly. If you’ve never been in a state where you’ve been hit by a bus multiple times and survived, then you wouldn’t understand the difference in consciousness. Because that’s how it felt in this moment. It wasn’t like waking from sleep; it was more like crawling up from the bottom of a deep, black ocean.

Pain reached me first.

It lived everywhere in my body, radiating through muscle and bone like fire buried beneath my skin. My chest rose in a slow, shallow breath, and immediately a sharp agony stabbed through my ribs.

I gasped.

The sound barely escaped my throat.

For a long moment, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My body felt foreign, heavy, broken in ways I didn’t dare discover.

The floor was cold, hard, and unforgiving, like my husband.

At just the thought of him, the memory came back in fragments.

Arthur’s fists.

The mysterious article.

The crack in my ribs.

The being dragged.

The door slammed shut.

The pain—my broken screams for help that never came.

My eye fluttered open.

But only one.

The other refused to cooperate, swollen shut. Even slight movement sent throbbing pain through my cheek and temple. I saw one of my molars on the floor. I was almost jealous—it had escaped. Even discarded, it was freer than I was.

I lay there in the dim light of the tiny staff room, staring at the strip of moonlight stretching across the floor.

It had moved since the last time I'd seen it.

Hours must have passed. Perhaps even days, but I was too disoriented to care.

My breathing was shallow and uneven as I tried to shift slightly. The moment I moved my leg, a scream tore from my throat before I could stop it.

White-hot pain exploded through my lower body.

My leg.

Something was wrong with my leg. I remembered Arthur stomping on it as I tried to crawl under the bed.

I bit down hard on my lip to keep from crying out again.

And that was when I heard it.

At first, I thought it was something in my head. My ears were still ringing faintly from the beating.

But then the sound came again.

It was a woman’s voice.

High. Breathy. Loud.

Followed by Arthur’s unmistakable voice, and instantly, my stomach twisted.

They weren’t even trying to hide it.

The bedroom door upstairs must have been wide open because the sounds echoed through the mansion’s hallway like some grotesque performance.

It was Germaine. She was Arthur’s newest live-in mistress.

I had only seen her once before, when she arrived with him two weeks ago. Tall. Blonde. The kind of beauty that seemed sculpted specifically to draw attention.

She had looked at me like I was something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

And now, only two weeks later, while I lay here feeling like even death refused to accept me, her laughter drifted down through the house.

It was dramatically loud. It was performative.

Arthur answered with a low, satisfied chuckle and loud, drawn-out grunts.

The bed upstairs creaked rhythmically. The headboard banged wildly against the wall.

I closed my eyes, as humiliation and exhaustion rolled over me like a wave.

This had become normal.

Arthur parading women through the house. Arthur is enjoying them loudly enough that I can hear.

At first, it had crushed me, but now it just felt empty.

However, something about tonight was different.

Arthur sounded relaxed. Carefree. Certain of himself.

Maybe it was because he believed I was unconscious—maybe even dead.

Then I noticed—no guards were in the hallway for the first time in years.

Usually, two men were stationed near the main floor entrance at night. Arthur claimed it was security for the house.

But I knew the truth. They were there to make sure I never left.

Tonight the house was quiet.

Too quiet. Normally, the guards chatted among themselves, but there was nothing.

Arthur had grown careless because he thought I wasn’t waking up.

A small flicker of something unfamiliar stirred in my chest.

I dared to call it Hope.

It was fragile. Maybe even dangerous, but it was there.

I forced myself onto my elbows.

The movement nearly made me black out again. My ribs screamed in protest, and the room spun violently.

I waited and focused on controlling my micro-movements and breathing. I counted slowly until the dizziness passed, and then I tried again.

This time, I managed to push myself into a sitting position against the wall.

My vision swam as I looked down at my body.

Bruises covered my arms.

Dark purple blotches bloomed across my skin.

My nightshirt was torn and stiff with dried blood. My eyes continued to take in the damage my loving husband left, and that was when I looked at my leg.

It bent in a way that it shouldn’t. A wave of nausea surged through me.

It was broken. It had to be. Why else would it bend like this?

I squeezed my eyes shut and fought the urge to vomit.

Upstairs, Germaine’s voice rose into another exaggerated moan.

Arthur laughed.

They sounded drunk and distracted.

They weren’t paying attention to anything else in the world.

If I was going to leave, this was my chance.

I reached for the dresser beside the bed and slowly pulled myself up.

The moment my injured leg touched the floor, a bolt of agony shot through my entire body.

My knees buckled.

I grabbed the wall to keep from collapsing.

My breath came out in shaky gasps.

“You can do this,” I whispered to myself.

My voice sounded weak and unfamiliar.

The room spun again, but I forced myself to stay upright as my panicked gaze drifted across the small room.

What could I use to stabilize myself enough to get out of here?

There was nothing. There was a bed, a dresser, and a cracked mirror.

And then I saw it.

In the corner, leaning against the wall, was an old broom. I was expected to keep my room cleaned at all times, and so I was given an old broom. The bristles were no longer straight, the handle gave you slivers, but it was still a tall stick. Something I could make use of.

My heart started beating faster at the thought of what this might mean.

Slowly, painfully, I hobbled across the room and grabbed the broom handle.

The wooden stick felt rough beneath my fingers.

I turned it upside down, placed the worn, coarse bristles under my arm, and tested my weight against it.

It wasn’t perfect, but it held after I put a sock on the bottom to improve traction on the marble flooring.

Another sound echoed from upstairs. It was Germaine’s laughter again.

They still hadn’t noticed anything.

Good.

I shuffled toward the door. Each step felt like walking through broken glass.

My broken leg trembled violently every time it brushed the floor, forcing me to lean heavily on the broom. It was lucky that I was so malnourished; I weighed next to nothing at this point, but that also meant I had zero muscle strength.

The hallway stretched endlessly before me when I opened the door.

Sure enough, there were no guards. Weird. For a moment, I simply stood there.

I had not walked freely through this hallway in nearly three years.

My heart pounded in my ears, and I began moving again.

The broom scraped faintly against the marble floor as I moved toward the front entrance of the house.

Every few seconds, I paused, listening for footsteps. But the only sounds were still coming from upstairs.

Arthur and Germaine were too busy with each other to notice anything else. Too confident that he had broken me completely, that I wouldn’t dare try to escape.

When I reached the front doorway, my strength began to fade. My arms trembled from supporting my weight, and the broom slipped slightly in my grip.

I nearly collapsed again.

But the front door was right there. It was just a few more feet. I couldn’t give up. That’s what Arthur wanted.

I dragged myself across the marble floor and reached up, pulling the door open.

Cold night air rushed over me.

For a moment, I simply stood there breathing it in.

Fresh air.

Real air.

The smell of grass and earth filled my lungs. I hadn’t felt that in so long.

Tears blurred my vision, but I couldn’t stop now.

The estate grounds were large because Arthur liked privacy. Which also meant the gates were far from the house—Much farther than I remembered.

The gravel path cut across the yard like a silver ribbon under the moonlight.

I stepped onto it.

Pain exploded through my leg again.

But I kept moving.

Step. Drag. Step. Drag.

Eventually, the broom was no longer enough. My leg refused to hold any weight. So I dropped to my knees.

The gravel tore into my skin as I began crawling. Each movement sent fresh agony through my ribs and leg. But the gates were closer now.

I could see them; it was just right there. I just needed to keep pushing.

The iron bars looked enormous from where I lay in the driveway.

I forced myself forward again.

Crawling and dragging my body as if it were dead weight, I refused to leave it behind. And technically, it was dead weight. But even with the struggle, I still refused to give up.

My breathing became ragged, each breath a dragged-out gasp.

But it was all worth it, because I finally reached the gate.

The main gate was locked, but, as if something were watching over me tonight, I found the side gate unlocked. It was clear that Arthur never expected me to make it this far.

With shaking hands, I pushed it open and dragged myself through.

The road stretched ahead of me, empty and silent.

My body had nothing left.

I crawled a few feet onto the asphalt as darkness edged in. Fading fast, I kept trying. The cold pavement pressed against my cheek as I collapsed in the middle of the road, and I thought maybe that was it.

Maybe I had made it this far only to die here. This could still be considered free, right? This didn’t mean I failed to escape?

But then—Headlights appeared in the distance.

A large vehicle approached slowly down the road. It was an RV, and I could sense that it had slowed at the sight of me crumpled on the road.

The engine cut off, and voices filled the air.

“Oh my Goddess—”

“Is she alive?”

Footsteps rushed toward me. Hands gently turned me onto my back. The sudden movement sent pain tearing through my body again.

I groaned weakly, trying not to scream out and risk Arthur hearing me.

“She’s breathing,” a man said.

“She needs a hospital,” a woman replied urgently.

At her words, panic surged through me.

Hospital. Police.

Arthur.

With the last ounce of strength I had left, I grabbed the woman’s sleeve. My fingers barely held on; I was too weak to assert anything, much less strength, even in a desperate plea.

“Please—” I rasped. My voice sounded like broken glass.

“Don’t—hospital—”

I felt them both freeze at my plea.

“Don’t tell him I—escaped,” I whispered. Fear burned through my chest.

“If he finds me—he’ll kill me.”

Through the flutter slit of my one eye, I saw the woman’s eyes widen. She looked at the man beside her.

And for a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then the man nodded slowly.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “We’ve got you, little one.” Strong arms lifted me gently from the road.

The inside of the RV smelled like coffee and warm blankets, and someone wrapped something soft around my shoulders.

My vision blurred again.

The last thing I felt was the RV beginning to move.

Then the darkness returned.

And this time—I let it take me.