It was a few days later that the next emotional revelations were laid bare between them all. Ella's mind and body had continued to heal under the care of her five protectors, each of them going out of their way to make sure she felt safe, valued and accepted. In fact, she was finally feeling strong enough to start coming up with a plan to help Cassie and the others she'd left behind. Freeing them and bringing down the bastards who'd taken them all into the very depths of Hell was not going to be easy, but she was determined and it was looking like the guys would be her best chance to do that.

What she wasn't prepared for though, was to discover that the guys had their own demons to overcome.

Ella was sitting in one of the overstuffed armchairs in the living room watching as Blaize, Ryder and Storm battled it out on the Xbox in a rather unsettling game of Call of Duty. Wolf had just finished explaining how the explosions, firefights and decapitated bodies was actually not that far from the real thing when it came to the experiences they had all gone through during their time in the military. Whilst Wolf sounded slightly impressed at the realism of the game, Ella was horrified. She'd witnessed and been subjected to her fair share of violence, but what she was seeing on the screen was beyond anything she could've imagined.

"You mean this is literally what it was like for you when you were stationed overseas?" she asked with a shaking voice.

Hunter looked over at her, "Not always, but there were times when it was."

Storm gave a triumphant yell as Ryder's head exploded onscreen.

"Oh yeah! Who's your daddy now sucker?" he crowed as Ryder groaned and Blaize laughed, giving Storm a high five.

Turning her attention back to Hunter, Ella asked, "Did you get hurt?"

Wolf and Hunter couldn't exactly be described as 'fun' even at the best of times, but they'd been sitting watching the antics of their brothers with mild looks of amusement on their normally stern faces as they sipped their beers. At Ella's question however, they both stilled. Sharing a quick look and doing that weird silent twin speak thing, Hunter focused his attention back on the screen as Wolf answered quietly, "Yeah, we got hurt."

Sensing the sudden tension between them, she almost let the subject drop there and then, but the guys had all been encouraging her to speak up, saying that she could ask or say anything she wanted to them and they wouldn't be angry. Screwing up her courage, she asked the question that she wasn't sure she really wanted to know the answer to.

"Did... did you... lose anyone?" The question came out as a stutter, her voice small and almost drowned out by the sound of the television. Wolf heard her though.

"We lost our brother, Tyson," he replied, his deep voice gruff with emotion.

The moment he said the name, everyone stopped. Storm looked over in surprise, Blaize paused the game and Ryder's fingers tightened on the controller he was holding until his knuckles turned white. The sudden silence was almost deafening.

"You... you had another brother?" Ella asked tentatively, unsure about whether it was such a good idea to push any further.

Wolf nodded, "He died two years ago. We were ambushed while on a mission in South America, never even saw it coming."

"Oh my God," Ella whispered, "I'm so sorry."

The silence was tense as each of the guys seemed to get lost inside their own memories of the tragedy. Ella was alone in the world, but she'd never actually lost someone important to her that she could remember, Cassie was the closest thing she had to family. To lose a brother would be almost unbearable. Finally, it was Storm that broke the silence.

"We were in a really remote part of South America, I can't tell you where exactly because it was a classified mission, but we were there to rescue some American aid workers who'd been taken hostage," he explained quietly. "We'd been set up with a local guide who was familiar with the area and willing to help us, for a price. Turned out he was one of them and we walked straight into a trap."

"Tyson was our scout, he went ahead of us to scope out the situation and radio back to us what he saw so we could come up with a plan," Ryder said, taking up the story. "Our guide had sold us out though. They waited for us to break into the warehouse to rescue the hostages and the next thing we knew we were under heavy fire with no way out. Tyson died saving the life of one of the aid workers."

Ella felt as though her heart were actually in physical pain as she listened to the barely concealed agony in their voices as they recounted the tale of their fallen brother.

"Eventually we were able to fight our way out and take Tyson's body and the hostages with us," Ryder said, a look of fury on his handsome. "We didn't have the manpower to take them all down and get the hostages to safety, so we had to complete the mission which meant leaving the bastards alive. We'll never forget their faces though, and one of these days we'll put each and every one of them in the ground."

There was a rumble of agreement from the rest of the guys at his statement. Ella didn't doubt for a second that they would succeed in their mission to destroy the men who'd betrayed and murdered their brother. They weren't Delta Force for nothing.

She didn't know what else to say, 'sorry' seemed like such an insufficient response to their pain. Instead she offered the only reply she could, "I know what it's like to have your demons running around free somewhere out there in the world, and I know how it feels to have a burning pit deep inside that screams for revenge and justice. If your demons are out there and still drawing breath, then I have no doubt that you'll see them to their graves one day."

Ella's own demons were still alive and hurting people, and she had sworn her own vengeance on that fateful night when she'd escaped their clutches and run off into the darkness, leaving behind all the other women who'd been imprisoned with her. But she'd taken with her a fierce anger, burning brightly in her chest that wouldn't be extinguished. She was going to make them pay, she was going to make them burn and hurt and beg for mercy, and then she was going to see them each leave this world for the next, and she would smile.

Wolf and Hunter had been studying her closely as she'd been lost in her thoughts of her own demons. They must have seen the pain in her eyes and the anger in her words because Wolf finally asked the question she'd been waiting for since she'd arrived at the compound.

"What happened to you, little one?"

It was time, she knew it was time to finally tell her story, she just didn't know how she was going to make it through.

Taking a deep breath, Ella closed her eyes and thought back to where her nightmare had begun.

"I was put into the foster system when I was about 6. My mother couldn't take care of me, so a woman from Social Services eventually had me removed. I never met my dad, I have no idea who he even is, he was gone before I was born. I bounced around from home to home for years until I turned 18 and aged out of the system. I was given a bit of money, and sent on my way. They'd arranged for housing but the day I arrived some guy pinned me up against the wall and told me how happy he was that we were going to be neighbors. I didn't even stay the night, I walked straight back out again," Ella recalled, her memories of the man's foul breath and meaty hands making her stomach turn.

"I had nowhere to go and hardly any stuff, and I ended up staying at a few shelters. I needed money to get myself set up but I didn't have enough to rent an apartment. I was bouncing between shelters and staying on the street until I finally found a diner that was willing to hire me as a dishwasher. It wasn't great work but I got paid in cash which helped," she said, remembering the terror of being on the dark streets alone at night.

"It didn't last though. One of the cooks took a liking to me, told me that I was beautiful and he could offer me a warm bed. Of course, he'd be in that bed with me," she scoffed, the memory of his greasy hair and fat gut making her skin crawl. "A couple of days after I started, I was finishing the clean up in the kitchen when he cornered me in the back. We were alone and the only people still left were in the front of the café. I...... he......" Suddenly she couldn't seem to get the words out, they became stuck in her throat. She swallowed thickly and opened her eyes to stare up at the ceiling as she tried to get a hold of herself.

"Don't Ella, you don't have to tell us the details," said Storm. She glanced across at him and saw a look of pain and sadness on his face. "We know men like that, and we know what they do. You don't have to go through it again for us."

Ella was grateful for the reprieve. "He didn't rape me, but he did other... stuff..." she said haltingly. "After that I never went back. I was terrified and didn't know what I was going to do or how I was going to survive. And then I met Cassie," she smiled, as the face of her one and only real friend came to mind. "Cassie was also on the streets, but she showed me where I could sleep that was safe. Taught me what to look for and which people and places to avoid."

"We started looking for work, staying and eating at shelters when we could, finding other places to stay when we couldn't. There was a volunteer group who worked in the area that brought meals around a few nights a week to the people on the streets. One guy became our friend, he said he was there with his church group. He always remembered our names and that I liked the turkey sandwiches best and Cassie hated pickles. He'd put aside our favourite foods for us because he knew we liked them. He was nice and treated us like people instead of charity cases to be pitied," Ella said with sadness, the unfairness of life weighing down on her.

She looked around the room to find everyone's eyes on her. The game on the console was long forgotten, beer bottles were on the coffee table or the floor, and their attention was solely on her and the tale she was telling.

"One night he said he was taking a break and asked if he could eat with us, and we said yes. We had no reason to doubt him, he'd always been friendly and polite. Cassie didn't sense anything wrong with him. We were the last stop for the night so he was going home after eating. We went and sat down to eat while we chatted, but both Cassie and I started to feel sick and dizzy. Within seconds we were both so weak we couldn't even move." Ella remembered the absolute terror of realising she'd lost all control of her body.

"The next thing we knew, a van had pulled up beside us and Jake and another man were lifting us into the back. I blacked out and woke up in a warehouse. We were in these metal cages, and there were dozens of us, other girls of different races, sizes, hair color. It almost looked like a prison, rows of cages with a walkway down the middle. Cassie and I were in the same cage thankfully, and I woke up before her."

"I asked some of the other girls where we were and what was happening, but they didn't seem to know anything more than I did. We were fed once a day and I'm pretty sure the food was drugged, or the water was, because we were so lethargic that we couldn't have made an escape even if they'd left the doors open," Ella said.

"Every now and then the men, I suppose you could call them guards, would come and take one or two or three girls at a time. We never saw them again, but then the next day new ones would arrive to replace them. It was like being in a living nightmare. What I didn't realise was that I should've been praying to stay there, because what came next was so much worse."

The memories of what happened came flooding back and Ella's stomach started churning. She broke out in a cold sweat as the remembered pain and fear clouded her mind.

"Breathe baby," said Blaize, suddenly appearing beside her. "Deep breaths, that's it."

His calm and gentle voice helped her focus and fight back the rising tide of emotions, as did his hand lightly rubbing circles on her back. The others remained silent and watchful as she brought herself back under control. Eventually she lifted her head and gave Blaize a tremulous smile in thanks. He waited a moment longer to be sure she was ok before sitting back again.

"I don't think I can tell you in detail what happened later, but basically I was auctioned off and given to a man. I was with him for two weeks before I managed to escape."

"How did you escape?" Wolf asked, his face like stone. "If you can't tell us it's ok, but it would help if you could give us any details."

"Help?" asked Ella. A tiny flicker of hope kindled inside her at the prospect that maybe, just maybe, they would offer to help her free Cassie and the others. She knew she couldn't do it alone, but it had seemed almost too much to dare hope that these five dangerous, capable warriors would be willing to put their lives on the line to help a group of desperate girls they didn't even know.

Whilst she hadn't said more than one word, it appeared everything she'd been thinking was written on her face, because Hunter said, "Yes help. You didn't think we'd leave you on your own to deal with these bastards did you?"

"I never really allowed myself to consider the possibility that you might be willing to help. I'd be glad for any help that you can give me though, I need to save Cassie, and the others. They're still there and I can't bear the thought of them going through what I went through," she said, a lump in her throat causing her to choke up with unshed tears of gratitude and sadness.

"Tell us what you can little one, and we'll go from there. Don't worry though, we have every intention of helping to free every single one of those women and bringing down the organisation that took them," Wolf announced, his deep voice strong and clear. "We'll make them all pay."

With that promise fanning the flames of her hope, she told them of her escape. How she'd been locked in a room with a manacle around her ankle, how her captor had come to visit her each and every day, how he'd drink himself stupid. It was her luck that he'd drunk so much one day that he'd actually passed out in her room after he was finished with her. He'd had the keys in his pocket and she'd seen her chance. Unlocking her manacles and racing out the door, she'd found herself in a revolting house. Empty beer bottles and cigarette butts had littered every surface and the smell burned her nose and eyes.

Knowing that she needed supplies of some sort, and that he would likely be passed out for a while, she'd taken a few precious minutes to ransack what she could, taking money and a knife from the kitchen, before racing out the door and away into the night.

She'd spent the next two days, hopping bus after bus, getting as far away as fast as she could. She'd only had the white slip dress that the guys had found her in and a pair of slippers for her feet which she'd lost while running. The guards at the warehouse had made her wash and change into the dress and shoes before the auction. No doubt they wanted to get the best price for her they could, and dirty merchandise didn't command the highest prices.

She'd narrowly dodged the men hunting her on her second day on the run, it was pure luck that she'd seen them before they'd seen her. She'd immediately jumped on the very next bus and hightailed it out of there. Eventually she'd landed in the small town of Crystal Creek.

Having arrived on the afternoon bus, she'd slept in the local park for the first night, unsure what to do next. Beyond exhausted, she'd slept fitfully for a few hours until dawn the next day. She'd been trying to work out her next move when a couple of rough looking men had caught sight of her in the park and started toward her. Without even waiting, Ella had turned and fled into the forest. Her flight or fight responses were so overwhelmed that she'd just kept running, the ruffians in the park transforming into the monsters she was trying to evade in her mind, filling her with blind terror. And then she'd stepped on the hunting trap and everything had gone black.

As she reached the end of her tale, the guys took a moment to digest everything she'd said before Wolf turned to her and said, "Again."