Chapter 7: Broken but Not Buried

Ella’s POV

The next day they dragged me to the labour room, a dank, sprawling chamber buried deep in the mansion’s underbelly.

The guards shoved me inside with rough hands, not caring that I was a woman or that my body still screamed from yesterday’s whips.

I stumbled and caught myself against a grimy wall; the chains on my wrists clanked with the movement.

One guard—a burly man with a jagged scar across his jaw—leaned in close, his breath hot and ...