All Chapters of The Darkness Between Us: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

BRIELLA. When he kissed me, I wasn’t ready.I had time to pull back. I had time to laugh it off or change the subject or stand up and put distance between us. I did none of those things. His palm settled warm against my cheek, and then his mouth was on mine, and every thought I had been organizing for the past hour scattered like papers in a gust of wind.I had been kissed exactly zero times before that moment. I had imagined it, of course. Vague, soft-focused daydreams that bore no resemblance to the reality of Ryder's lips pressing firm and certain against my own. The mate-bond lit up between us like a current completing a circuit. Sparks raced across my skin wherever he touched me, and my nerve endings fired in a cascade that made every moment before this one feel like I had been living underwater.A voice in my head, thin and rational, said to stop. Said this was too fast. Said I should slow down, breathe, think. That voice had always been the one I listened to. It had kept me car

RYDER.She was an absolute dream as she shattered.Her spine curved, fingers still tangled in my hair, and the sound that tore from her throat—broken, raw, my name shaped like a prayer and a curse—lodged behind my ribs and stayed there.I'd had my fair share of women. I hated to admit it now, kneeling in the wreckage of what just happened, but the count existed. Faces and names and bodies that had meant something for an hour or a night and then faded into memory that doesn't cling. None of them came close to this. Not the sounds they made, not the way they moved, not the way their bodies shook. Briella had come apart like something fundamental cracked open inside her, and the absence of performance hit me harder than any touch ever had.This was Briella. The same girl who kept her head down in crowded rooms, who angled her body away from attention like it was a physical force she could dodge, who spoke in careful, measured sentences. The one who blushed when I looked at her too directl

BRIELLA.I stretched beneath the covers, and the ache caught me off guard—a deep, dull soreness between my thighs that pulsed when I shifted my legs. My muscles protested in places I didn't know could feel this way: the insides of my thighs, the tender spot where my neck met my shoulder where his teeth had pressed just a little too hard.I winced, but then something else bloomed through the discomfort. A warmth that spread slowly, curling through my chest and settling low in my belly. The soreness wasn't just pain. It was proof. Evidence of what had happened between Ryder and me, written into my body like a signature I couldn’t erase. I pressed my thighs together and the ache flared again—sharp and immediate—and my breath hitched.It was nearly impossible to wrap my head around what’d happened.I'd lost my virginity. That thing I'd guarded so carefully, the thing I'd told myself mattered, the thing I'd been saving for someone who deserved it. And I'd given it to Ryder. Worse, so much w

BRIELLA.I unlocked the front door and pushed it open.The smell hit me hard. Stale vodka mixed with the faint sweetness of whatever candle my mother had burned earlier, the wax pooled and hardened on the coffee table. Three empty bottles stood in a neat row beside it, lined up like soldiers, and a fourth had tipped over, leaving a dark ring staining the wood beneath it.She was lying on the couch.One arm dangled off the edge, knuckles brushing the carpet. Her mouth hung open just enough to let shallow, rattling breaths escape. The kind that came after someone drank themselves past the point of dreaming.I waited in the doorway.There had been a time when I'd run to her, terrified that something had happened. I'd shake her shoulder until she woke, help her stumble down the hallway, listen as she promised through slurred words that this would be the last time.I'd believed her. Every single time.Until one day, I didn't.Now I just stood there, staring at the woman who looked so much l

RYDER. My breath caught. It was unusual for a pack member to block out their Alpha. The hierarchy was woven into our DNA, woven into our very instincts, making our voices nearly impossible to ignore through the mindlink. Blocking an Alpha, or a future Alpha in my case, required exceptional mental discipline. Control that most wolves never achieved.But Briella had done it effortlessly. I shouldn't be surprised though. I reached for the mate bond, but I once again felt a wall.Fucking hell! This was a mess.I tore my phone from my pocket, hope surging through me. One call. That's all I needed. One conversation to make her understand.My thumb hovered over my contacts. The hope shattered.I never asked for her number. The realization landed like a punch to the gut. I'd been so consumed with finding my mate, with memorizing every curve of her body, every sound she made when she experienced pleasure, that I'd never thought of asking for one thing that would've let me tell her how terribly