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Blood isn’t love, and love is the only thing that begets loyalty.
“After a while, you know you’ll never escape it,” he said, “so you can either keep fighting the ugly, or you can reinvent it.” He turned his eyes on me again. “The biggest difference between my father and me is I just didn’t care if anyone saw the blood on the walls.”
“Don’t worry,” he told me. “I’m nothing like my father. Or Taylor, or Damon Torrance. I don’t force or coerce.” He dropped his voice. “It’ll hurt you more if she wants it.”
“Everything is part of a bigger plan,” he said. “Whether it’s God or fate or something else, I honestly believe that, Will.” He tossed the cloth and looked at me. “We were always going to be important to each other.”
CHAPTER 6
I rubbed my temple and closed my eyes. She was killing me. Had been killing me for years.
“I ruined his daughter.”
Ashby’s other daughter had to be only fourteen or so. I’d never seen her and Damon together.
“He was really flattered you approved of his taste in women when you adjusted yourself right in front of him at the sight of my mother.”
She’d be gone.
I watched the both of them, kind of enjoying how they hardly ever got along. Kai was ready for tomorrow. Damon never wanted to leave today.
This was the kind of guy who would discharge his weapon on someone, claiming the cell phone in their hand looked like a gun.
“I know how you see me,” I said. “Ignorant, arrogant, frivolous . . . I want to be good. Honestly. Goal-oriented, a hard worker, honest, righteous . . .” I paused. “Like Emory. Your sister, right?”
“You know,” I continued, “it’s amazing that given the years your family has been in Thunder Bay, I don’t know her as well as I’d like.” I turned to my friends. “You hear that, guys? A girl I don’t know.”
“All the hours we walk the halls together at school,” I taunted. “All the hours on that bus to away games and back. All the late nights at basketball practice and her at band practice.”
They thought that because I liked being nice, that I didn’t know how to be mean. And believe me, I was capable.
My interest in Emory Scott had nothing to do with her brother, sadly. I wish it were that easy.
“The first Horseman,” Damon chimed in.
I just wanted my people, and I wanted the girl of my dreams.
I was tired of playing in the catacombs, but Damon didn’t like to play alone. He needed me. I liked someone needing me.
“Why does no one ever get to go into your room?” I asked. “Not me. Not Michael. Not Kai. Definitely no girls. Can’t we all go somewhere comfortable?”
“You’re not good enough for her,” Damon said, breaking the silence. I stared at him. How did he know what I was thinking?
“A friend would help me get what I wanted,” I told him.
“Michael is always in so much control,” he continued, his voice growing harder. “I’d love to show him what he really needs. I’d love to see Kai troubled and confused. Really fucking unhinged, so nothing I have can ever escape me. They act like they don’t need us. I wish they knew that they did.”
With Damon, he didn’t see the person. He was attracted to control. Making people do things they wouldn’t normally do. It was all about the turn of the screw. Like a fishhook, he burrowed his way into heads and stayed there, long after he’d gone.
“She’ll never be to you what we are,” he told me, “because she’s too scared, too proud, and too boring.” He stopped and finally turned to me. “She’d never love you like you deserve, because she doesn’t respect you. You’re too shallow to her.” And I felt my insides fold in on themselves, over and over, creating this hole in my gut, because I knew he was right, and fuck him.
I always liked her. I always looked for her.
It made me smile.
I thought she was Jewish. If not, I was going to feel stupid for the Yom Kippur gift I left in her locker.
I was nothing, and she knew it, and in ten years, she’d be amazing, and I’d be nothing.
CHAPTER 7
The floor above me creaked, and I shot my eyes up to the ceiling, the floorboards whining with someone’s weight.
I shook my head. Unbelievable. Was Will here hours ago? Watching me? Was someone else?
“Eat it when you’re ready,” he told him. “I can’t take your food.”
“Don’t,” he said. “I don’t want him to see.” Who? And see what? That he was hurt?
Just then, Micah looked up and met my gaze, finally seeing me hiding behind the door.
Walking over, he kicked the door, slamming it in my face, and I blinked, startling. Prick.
I should get back to the kitchen. No one was paying attention, and for all Aydin knew right now, I was sleeping. I could grab some provisions and be two miles downriver before he realized.
Babe that wont end up well
“Ask for it,” Aydin taunted him. “He can have it. All you have to do is ask.”
“All the pleasure you got from their pain,” Aydin told him. “You knew it was going to cost something someday, didn’t you?” He bit his ear, pulling it as every muscle on Rory’s body tensed.
“But no,” the alpha continued, “you only dish it when you’re sure you can win. On girls who couldn’t even tell you were coming for them. You knew that wasn’t going to last forever, right?”
Why aren’t they helping him? The only person who seemed to be enjoying the show was Taylor. Was this how Micah got injured? Fighting Aydin?
What the hell was he doing? Will could fight. He wasn’t even trying. What had happened to him?
“He’s hurting,” he said to him. “Ask me or beat me, and you can have the whole bottle.”
I gasped as blood spurted from Will’s nose and he fell to his knees again. I started to rush toward him, but he shot out his hand, stopping me without a look in my direction.
What had happened to him? He wasn’t the leader in high school, either, but he never let anyone treat him like shit.
He stared at me, amused, and then he peeled down the rest of his clothes, leaving him completely naked.
“Or maybe controlling basic necessities helps you control the people,” I retorted, shifting my gaze from Taylor to Aydin.
“In any case,” I said, looking him up and down, “you don’t seem to be underfed.” Unlike Will, who gave his rations to Micah—and how often was he doing that anyway?
“Or, if you prefer, we can come up with another arrangement.” His eyes drifted down my body. “Women have their uses, after all.”
