Austin’s POV

After tucking her into bed, I started my slow descent down the stairs. Poor baby girl, she had been through a lot with the old master. There were multiple burn marks and the slashes where a whip had cut her back to shred and then healed back together. She was sweet as could be and beautiful as well.

The other were sitting around the table in the kitchen. I got myself a glass of water and joined them. Tino and Phil didn’t look to happy.

“Why’d you stop us? You told us that we had to adjust her!” Phil groaned. Tino and Phil were always hard on the new girls here, but they typically calmed down and offered to help after a few days. I shook my head. After seeing her reaction to the fireplace and the burns on her back, I now understood.

“Yes, but that’s off limits. She’s learned her lesson now.” I snapped back. I was the leader of this house, the official Master. Phil, Tino, Aaron, and Alan all looked up to me and didn’t question my orders. Alan was my second in command and best friend.

“It wasn’t like she was hurting your flowers, Tino.” Alan told him with a glare. Tino ducked down in embarrassment. A heavy set silence balanced between us.

“You’ve grown soft, Austin. Last girl we had, you broke her with a whip. Why not this time?” Aaron asked curiously. I shook my head. It was true. The last girl we had was feisty and I had to whip her to break her. She was soon submissive after I was done. This girl, Kynder, she was different. Kyn hadn’t been broken properly. She had been shattered. I could see it in the blue eyes that held so much sorrow she would’ve drowned.

There was a fine line between breaking someone, punishment, and cruelty. Punishment was just to correct a wrong. Breaking someone was to crack their habits, to train them. It was turning them from feisty and head strong to calm and submissive. But there was a line between breaking someone and the abusing them. It turns into abuse when the master does it for pleasure and to see them weakened so they had no more will.

Kynder’s last master had shattered her so that the pieces were picked up by the wind and scattered. She was broken by a few whips, but the scars that lined her back showed that she was beyond broken. The burns confirmed it. Miles, the person we rescued her from, was the one who took a fire iron and burned her so that she would could never speak to him, never refuse or do anything on her own. The look in her eyes showed me that it wasn’t because she was head strong, she had this thrown upon her and it pure torture for simply being a human. The way she stepped back when anyone walked near her, the way she would whimper if I barely breathed down her neck, it all showed signs of being abused.

I was so wrong when I saw her, thinking that she was rowdy with how she struggled. She was afraid, that’s all. The leash was probably choking her, rubbing against her neck and freaking her brain out. I told them to break Kyn, but all she needed was a kind word.

“Some people need a whip to break them, others need a kind word. I was wrong, so wrong, saying that she needed to be broken. She was already shattered.” I murmured. The others just stared at me. Alan patted my shoulder.

“Well, what are we going to do about that?” The ginger asked. I gave him a thankful smile for understanding. Hadn’t we all been shattered at one point or another?

“Well, let’s just try not to set her off for now. No triggers.” Aaron suggested. Tino and Phil grumbled their agreement. They weren’t as emotional, just the use force to get things done faster.

“I’ll try talking to her. She’s so quiet, but maybe she’ll open up.” Alan suggested. I nodded, hoping that it would work.

“She hasn’t been eating.” Tino threw out. I already knew that but sighed with the others.

“I’ve got a few tricks.” I told them. They simply nodded. The afternoon was getting us hungry. Our little meeting broke as we went to our own corners of the room. Tino went outside to garden. I could only feel bad for our little darling.

Notes