When His Perfect Mask Shattered, I Awoke Novels & Stories

The world spun sharply around me, and I stumbled. “W-what did you do to me?” I slurred, my voice barely above a whisper. The last thing I saw before everything went black was the masked figure leaning over me. His voice was cold and detached. “Sleep tight, little wolf.” *** When I awoke, my head throbbed and pain seared through my entire body, as if invisible chains were weighing me down. I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar darkness, surrounded by a cold floor and the smell of old dampness.

He caught himself on the counter, knuckles white. “What do you want?” he whispered. “The truth.” He looked at me then and something inside him broke. “I can’t keep this up,” he said softly. “And you know I can’t.” His voice was raw. Honest. Terrifyingly honest. His mask had cracked. Not shattered, just a thin fracture that revealed the truth beneath. An Omega fighting extinction. His gaze flickered to my chest, to my stance then back to my eyes. Fear, Trust and Instinct.

***AURORA*** The rain was relentless now, washing the dark blood-red lipstick from my mouth and plastering my silver-blonde hair against my neck. I kept my palms flat against the rough, freezing brick wall, my chest heaving as I tried to force air into my collapsing lungs. Everything I'd just done had all been a mask. Now, in the dark, empty VIP alleyway of the Moonspire Hotel, the mask was gone. I was just a ruined girl in a shredded white dress, drowning in the wreckage of my own life.

“If he bolts, he bolts toward Clara.” He didn’t bolt. He collapsed like a sentence losing its verb. I caught him because if I didn’t, the storm would. He was lighter than he should have been and too warm. His skin carried the smell of cheap oil and cheaper electricity. The ash eye did not smear when the rain hit it. “Who did this?” I asked, not because I expected an answer but because questions are ropes we throw in case someone remembers they want to be pulled back to a boat. He winced as if the memory had teeth and they were still in him. “Mask,” he said. “Voice like a man who learned to pray and forgot why.”

Slowly, with an agonizing lack of haste, the silver began to slide away from his skin. The reveal was a slow-motion nightmare. First, a sharp, stubbled jawline emerged. Then a nose, straight and aristocratic. Finally, the eyes. Those obsidian eyes, stripped of their metallic cage, burned into mine with a ferocity that made my throat close up. I gasped, the sound a sharp intake of air that felt like swallowing shards of glass. My hand went limp, and the mask fell onto the silk sheets with a dull, final thud. I recognized him instantly.

I reached out instinctively, but my heel slipped against the floor, making me land with a heavy thud. The silver mask shifted. There was a sharp sound. No no no!!. It… broke!!.

He always knew what was best for me. Suddenly, the mask that had been my shield for the night just felt suffocating. In a surge of emotion, I tore it off, the elastic snapping sharply against my fingers. I looked at it in my hand; the very thing that had given me the courage to be someone who I wasn’t. I hated it. Without thinking, I crumpled the mask in my cold fingers, feeling a combination of satisfaction and sorrow fill my chest as I felt the lace and plastic break beneath my grip.

he commanded, his voice strained. I opened my eyes, my vision blurred by tears I didn't even realize were falling. I saw him, the man behind the mask. He was undone. The control he spent every waking hour maintaining was shattering. His movements became faster, more desperate, his forehead resting against mine as he whispered my name like a prayer.

"I'm awake." "You're okay." "I'm okay." He held my face for one more second. Then his expression shifted. The relief hardened into something else. The tenderness armored back over and he straightened. The mask came up. "You stupid, reckless, completely insane human." "Good morning to you too."