"A little obvious," Pierce's low grumble announces his arrival as he stands next to me, dragging his vision over my attire, "even for you." "And what would you have me dress as?” I keep my vision forward and voice low, “A bloodsucker? Perhaps you wanted me to put on furs and pretend to be your long-lost cousin?” My outfit was expensive, but nothing less would have been acceptable to a man of my stature. Are there any other Minerva’s owl descendants? No, but would anyone connect me with the Cartiers? No. I know my mask comes with risks, but some of us don't have the luxury of being overpopulated. He, on the other hand, could dress in all the half-rabid wolf masks he wanted without worry. Wolves were a dime a dozen and few people have seen his face and lived to tell the tale. “Ah, brother, you only wish you could have half the charm my furry ass does.” Charm. I tried not to scoff out loud at such a ludicrous thing for him to pretend to have. I may love him like a brother, we may hav

Making a scene would be childish. It would feel amazing but do nothing short of alert Trent to my disgust. No, I need to be smart here. What he'll see is sweet, hurt, loveable Devlin. What he'll get is his own personally curated nightmare. But first, I need to be anywhere that isn't watching them grope each other as if I don’t exist. The problem is that I am exposed here. The man to my left has already disappeared, but there are several men watching my every move. Predators - I’m sure, deadly - guaranteed, but Brixton follows closely as I make my way to the ladies' washroom. A cold grip on my wrist startles me, but not as much as the fact that I'm now outside and staring into the red depths of a handsome stranger's eyes. “A human,” he brushes the hair from my shoulder, “trying to hide amongst monsters?” He cocks his head slightly, his smile widening much wider than friendly as the two pointed tips of his teeth slip over his bottom lip. “A Vampire,” I whisper out, barely abl

*** There’s no light, and no way to catch a glimpse of my surroundings when the darkness is never ending. I’m still under water, always under the water, but the weight of it is crushing my chest more than usual. My arms and legs are working together for once as the water glides past me, instead of feeling like a giant weight dragging me into the depths of the river. There're splashes of water around me and I reach out, desperate for my fingers to grip into the mud. As I’m pushed onto the ground, I still have to crawl my way out as the water continues to lap against me. My fingers reach ground that the water isn’t touching and I drag myself up onto the edge. Breath after breath, my lungs are still inflating as much as they can until I'm satisfied I can breathe normally. Scrambling from the edge of the water, everything is still impossible to see through, but I’m unwilling to test if something will drag me back under the water, so I walk forwards into the darkness. This is new

Trent presses my face away from him, and the move isn’t a new one. It's always like this. A war with him between his want for me and his need for control. He knows he made me jealous, and if the situation was reversed, I’d be disfigured with dead men laying at my feet. Trent needs to let me go, but he'll never do that, and the look in his eye tells me what it's been telling me for months… I'm in danger. There are still times I feel like the old Dee. I’m head over heels in love with the hazel-eyed boy who was kind to me from the moment he laid eyes on me, and I’m so in love with him loving me that nothing else matters. But more often than not, I'm the present Dee. The Devlin he wants to be the old Dee, because the old Dee ran wild with him. She smiled and never found a single fault in any of his actions. Now, he hates my defiance because it’s directed at him. He hates my beauty because it makes Corbyn and his father look too closely at me. He doesn’t understand why I hate the

Devlin’s voice is light as a blade and sweet as blood as she repeats my words. Little Sweetness might think she can lie to everyone around her, but not me. Never me. I can feel the betrayal in the way her blood runs through her body beneath my hold. “… I will never lie to my Master again…” that’s four, and I’ve already had to conceal the growing hardness behind her, but she shifts on her feet and brushes against it. She stays silent for a moment, the same way she had before, not shying away from it but not leaning in towards it either, “… I will never lie to my Master again.” “Now that your punishment is complete, how about we try this again?” The sweet smell of her almost distracts me from the reason we went down this path, but I’ll know everything there is to know about her. “How often do you pass out, Devlin?” She might not think I’m her Master, but she’ll see. She belongs to me. “It hasn’t happened in a long time,” her voice is barely a whisper, “I just can’t get myself wo