I Will Revel in Glory (Death by Daybreak MC, #3)

by C.M. Stunich

Nothing beautiful can ever bloom from darkness. That’s what most people think anyway. But there are entire worlds of shadows where life thrives: in the deepest parts of the ocean, in the coldest caverns, and inside the heart of a girl who only ever wanted to belong.

The lens with which we view the world is hazy, distorted, and oftentimes, obscured by our own bullshit.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Edgar Allan Poe’s dark poetry filters

He’s a part of me, an integral part. He’s a piece of my past, a majority of my present, and a hopeful beacon for my future.

This is an affliction, his gaze says. This love is a wound that I never want to heal.

“The declaration where you said, “If you really want this though, just be aware: I will be all over your

This is a new chapter. I refuse to allow myself to sink back into ruin; I will revel in glory.

“Because I finally found what I was looking for,”

looked everywhere for happiness.”

“Even then, I knew it wasn’t enough. I still hadn’t decided what, exactly, it was that I was looking for.”

“Until I found you.” The smile fades from his face, replaced with that terrifying intensity. “The club is irrelevant. The other men are irrelevant. My only loyalty is to you.”

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue; And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”

two shadowed souls tangled together in perfect darkness.

giving him this look of cold cruelty that I really hope doesn’t blossom into a dark rose. He needs to keep it contained, just as I need to work to control the fires of my own internal rage.

“You don’t know the shadows of my own heart,”

“And true friends, real friends, those are as hard to find and as rare as true love. Ask anyone. I’ve got your back. I wasn’t lying when I said that.”

Seeing a man who’s usually so composed but is currently having a breakdown … it’s devastating for me.

Any woman who approaches my men will get her ass handed to her by yours truly.

“So what else can you take from me, Gidge?” Crown continues, stalking over to the helmet and picking it back up. He moves over to me and very carefully places it over my head. “All of it. Take it all. Because the only time I like who I am, is when I’m with you.”

“Does it hurt that bad to love me like that?” I ask him, but without judgment. If it hurts, it hurts.

experienced,” he admits, watching me there with memories dancing in his eyes, illuminated by the soft glow of the porch light. It’s a gas lamp which makes it flicker like real flame. That’s what this man’s attention to detail is like. A regular porch light wasn’t enough to bring his wife home to. “Like being eviscerated, crucified, and left to rot in the hot sun.”

other guys, but Crown … he made love to me. That’s not a mistaken turn of phrase; it’s a fact.

hurts so bad. I can never give him the things he wants so he hurts which makes me hurt, and … it’s glorious pain. Once upon a time, I was afraid to feel like this. Because falling in love is just that—falling.

love you, Gidge.” He puts his mouth near the side of my neck and whispers against my throat. “And I’ll keep loving you even if it kills me.”

“I love you, too,” I murmur finally. “I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen. Maybe longer than that.”

There’s always been this strange thing between Sin and me when it comes to kissing. It’s where we connect the hardest, where our souls resonate the loudest. So it was the day he kissed me against a tree at my sister’s funeral. When he broke from years of shunning to kiss me in the kitchen and make me drop my sandwich. To the kiss we shared at the hospital that reorganized the stars in my sky. He groans with relief against my mouth,

“Life is short. It’s hideous. We find beauty where we can.”

“Can I just say that I like it when you stand up for me?” “I will always stand up for you,” I assure him, but even as he reaches for me, I make sure to add, “but I’ll call you out, too. Don’t forget that.”

“Once you let yourself give into an obsession, it’s like a dark curse: there is no escape.”

I like to make girls come, and then I like to shove my cock inside of them while their muscles are clamping and pulsing and squeezing. I love forcing my way in through their pleasure and taking some for myself.”

I have to give up something. So, the endless darkness of my heart spreads out like a pair of leathery, black wings, blotting out the sun, inviting them into the shadows of my soul.

I splay the fingers of one hand against my chest, glaring down at him with every ounce of emotion that I’ve felt in the last week. My melancholy. My love. My fear. I almost lost you, you dipshit. Forever. We were almost separated forever.

We tell each other that we hate one another when what we really mean is I fucking love you so much that it hurts me, kills me, rips me apart. It’s hell to love you, and I want to burn forever in your flames.

“I’m processing a lot of shit,” I explain, holding up both hands. “That’s it. I’m …” I almost choke on the next words I want to say, but they have to be said. I have to say them. I can’t let my intimacy issues get in the way or this won’t work the way I need it to. “I’m glad you’re all here. I’m glad we’re together.”

“It’s over, Gidge. I’m tired of running from this. You’re mine; you were always meant to be mine. I explained that to you.”

It’s the sort of dark, morbid love that can only be built on a foundation of tragedy. It’s the only thing a girl like me can really dig into.

we are also like stars, shooting stars. Passing comets in the night. We came so close to being wrapped up in one another inextricably, forever.

out. “I love you so much.” And there it is. The words hit me like a punch to the heart, and I’m groaning and writhing and thrusting up to meet him.

“But for what?” I whisper back, almost too afraid to move, to break this moment apart and realize what I’ve feared all along: that life is dark and bloody and thick with bullshit, and that moments of beauty are too few and far between for it to be worth it. I’ve been rethinking that lately, but I’m scared. I don’t want it to be true. Please, prove me wrong, I beg, but I’m not sure who it is that I’m asking.

Like father, like daughter. I know what I’m doing here. I fucking know it. I was born and raised in this shit. Born in ruin. Dressed in sin. How dare these men try to get in my way?!

“Was the lesson: true love always prevails?”

When we climax, we climax together in near perfect unison, one of those bullshit romance novel moments that are so rare in real life. Rare, but not impossible, like a jewel plucked from the rocky earth, a single perfect thing in a casing of endless rock.

This is what he was dreaming of. Someone to talk to. Someone to love. Someone to trust.

“Life is never ruined. It just shifts. If you learn to follow the wind, you don’t have to fight against every storm.”

I was born ruined. I soon found myself dressed in sin. But for my future? I choose to revel in my own glory. Was, am, will. Past, present, future. The darkness can choose you, but it doesn’t have to define you. You are the master of your own fate and me, I’ve got control of mine. Forever, always a Daybreaker.