Mated To An Enemy Chapter 234 Kept Me Going

[Present]

Axel found himself sitting beside her, holding her hand. He didn’t know when he had moved back to her side.

“What happened next?” he asked quietly.

Alice shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “For … I drowned. I was pulled into a dark hole in my mind, and the mories poured over . All of them, all at once.”

Axel rembered how awful he had felt after only regaining the mory of eting her. However, Alice had recovered a lifeti at once.

He squeezed her hand. She lifted her eyes to him cautiously.

“I was lost in that hole for a long ti,” she continued. “By the ti I could move again, the sun was setting. Ashleigh was long gone. I have no idea where he took her.”

Axel sighed and nodded. He didn’t like it, but he understood that she had at least tried to stop Granger.

“Why were you working with him?”

Alice took a deep breath.

“For my freedom,” she sighed. “He promised to free from the treatnts. To give back my mories. So I guess he kept his end of the bargain.”

Alice looked away from Axel..

“Even without the promise of freedom… I didn’t have a choice. The last treatnt I received… was more intense than the ones before. Holden wanted to ensure I was completely scrubbed of any mory of you.”

“Of ?” Axel asked.

Alice looked back at him and then away quickly as she felt a warmth in her cheeks. She continued as though he hadn’t said anything.

“But when I woke up, it wasn’t Holden that said the passphrase. It was Granger.”

“Passphrase?” Axel asked.

“The guidelines for my mories to be routed, Holden has set up many of them. So make compliant; others make violent. One or two shut down, just in case I get any funny ideas.”

Alice stared at her feet under the blanket. She didn’t want to see what look might be on Axel’s face.

“It’s hard to imagine anyone controlling you,” Axel said softly, touching her cheek.

Alice looked back at him; she swallowed. Her eyes lingered on his face.

“You aren’t hiding it anymore,” she said, touching the bottom of the scar.

“Do you rember everything now?” Axel asked.

Alice looked into his eyes. She saw the hope in them. She looked away.

“No,” she whispered. “As I said, the mories flooded my mind. I should be dead or a vegetable now. I managed to swim to the surface, but everything is pretty jumbled up here.”

“What happened?”

“I have secrets even Holden doesn’t know about,” Alice smiled. “My own routes of mory.”

“What do you an?”

“I have made backdoors for myself, ways to rember small things. But I don’t know them on my own. So, when Holden wakes from treatnt, he usually sends to rest. So I go to my room, and scattered through my room are reminders.

When Granger released my mind, there was a life preserver in the flood. Sothing that kept going until I could think enough to find my yellow brick road.”

“What is it?” Axel asked, then suddenly realizing that it might be personal. “If you want to share… you don’t have to.”

Alice smiled.

“It’s ok,” she said. “There are two. The first helps rember my core personality. The second… keeps going.”

Alice took a deep breath. She looked at Axel, wondering what he really thought of her.

“You sort of know them already,” she said.

“I do?”

She nodded.

“Earlier… when I was still… lost. You heard so of the story.”

Axel rembered her words, the little girl, the red kitchen, and the monsters. He swallowed.

“What kind of story?” he asked.

Alice looked away.

“An origin story,” she said quietly. “I tell it to myself, to remind where I ca from, who I was… what I have beco.”

Axel wasn’t sure how to respond. He wanted to hold her, but he felt like that wasn’t the right choice at this mont.

“That’s what woke my mind enough for to put up walls again… to push back the flood of mories, they’re still there, but now I can sort of try to sort through them slowly,” Alice continued. “For almost two days, I have wandered half-mad. I am not sure what would have happened if anyone else had found .”

“Why?” Axel asked. “Why didn’t you go to Sumr? They could have helped you!”

He suddenly felt worried, scared at the possibility of what could have happened.

“I wasn’t thinking straight,” Alice countered. “My mind was still barely holding onto one thought.”

“Exactly! You could have been killed!” Axel shouted, standing from his place beside her. “What if it had been soone else on that hill, Alice! What if–”

“I had to find you!” Alice shouted back.

Axel stared at her in shock. Alice got on her knees in the hospital bed. Bringing her almost to his eye level.

The blanket that had been covering her fell away, and Axel was suddenly reminded that he had brought her here in nothing but her underwear.

“My life preserver? The thing that kept from drowning?” Alice said, her chest heaving from the deep breaths she was taking in. “You.”

Axel swallowed.

“The phrase, the one that keeps going. The one that has held together all these years. ‘A piece of chocolate to rember .’,” she whispered.

Axel took a step toward her.

Alice licked her lips and hesitantly placed her hands on his chest.

“Even when I didn’t rember your na or who you were…” she whispered.

Axel couldn’t hold back anymore.

He laced his fingers into her hair, holding her gaze. They stared at each other with the sa longing.

Axel leaned in, bringing his lips to her with a soft touch.

Alice gasped. This small act, this warmth. It was indescribable. A tear fell from her eye.

Axel pulled back, and he looked at her with tenderness. He wiped the tear away with his thumb.

He leaned in again. This ti, Alice t him halfway.

Alice felt her heart picking up with every centiter that disappeared between them, the fluttering in her stomach was a feeling she had never experienced before. In all her flirting, never once had she felt sothing.

But with Axel… Seeing him made her stomach flutter and being close to him caused her breathing to beco heavy.

Conversation with him filled her with a warmth that she had never known she was missing. And now, with his lips so close, she ached for him.

The softness of his touch, the smooth press of his lips to hers. It wasn’t enough.

Alice parted her lips; their kiss beca heated.

Axel gripped her hair in his hands, she gasped as the sensation echoed throughout her entire body, a heat that rose from her stomach to her chest and spread to her limbs.

Their kiss deepened and with it, every sensation.

Alice wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer to her.

His scent, his taste, so sweet. The rich velvety smoothness of chocolate.

Axel suddenly pulled away, helping her to sit back down on the bed gently. He then moved away, taking deep breaths.

“You need rest,” he said quietly before turning and leaving the room.

Alice was left confused and alone, pulling the blanket to cover herself.