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“Are you here to check up on me? Because he should know that nothing’s changed—there’s no reason to worry.”
“I’ve got better things to do than hang around you dumbasses anymore. So fuck off and leave me alone. How much clearer can I say it?”
Why the hell had I gone and picked the youngest of our possible hosts? This dude had only been nineteen, and he had idiotic hormones flooding his body at all the wrong times like he was a freaking baboon. My twenty-five-year-old soul and its much more self-controlled influence hadn’t calmed down that part of his physiology anywhere near enough yet.
His gaze caught on the burn—a strip of mottled pink skin from my elbow to halfway down my forearm—and he bared his teeth like he was ready to chomp someone’s head right off. “Who did this to you?” he repeated in an even more ominous voice.
“You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Lily?” he murmured, every word like a flame. “No one’s treating you fucking right. But I’ve got you.
And at the same time, some stupid part of me was disappointed that they’d followed my request for space.
Something inside me cracked apart as if echoing the scene in front of me. All at once, I couldn’t bring myself to give a fuck. This was what I was working with. Screw everyone who thought they could pull shit like this and I’d roll over.
When I focused in on him, his features gradually came into sharper focus: a knob of a nose, puffy lips, and beady eyes that were fixed right on our woman. My hackles rose automatically. The man’s posture oozed slimy and his expression screamed predator. I’d like to stuff a few of Ruin’s wings down his throat.
A second later, the guy caught me glaring at him. His head twitched to the side, the leer that’d twisted his mouth snapping away. It appeared I could spare Ruin’s food from the dire fate I’d pictured.
“I’ve got to take care of a couple things,” I told the others. “I’ll meet you there.” “Is everything okay?” Lily asked with a furrow of concern on her forehead, as if she needed to be worrying about me. “No big deal,” I told her. “Jett always looks like the world’s about to end,” Nox informed her, tucking his arm around her waist as the four of them headed out. “You’ll get used to it.”
“You’re not going anywhere until we’re good and done with you,” Nox said. “And probably not even then.”
My bullies weren’t stupid. They could obviously tell they were about to be dead meat, or at least the closest thing to that without actually meeting their ends. The group broke apart, the assholes scattering in every direction, Peyton dashing around the side of the store. But my guys were faster.
I couldn’t decide whether I was more horrified or amused. One thing was for sure—these fucknuts were never going to forget this beating.
Kai made a dismissive sound and clapped his hand to the doorframe below the camera. With a sizzling noise, the camera gave off a few sparks and sagged slightly. Kai wiped his hands together with a triumphant air. “I fried it all the way to the hard drive that’s storing the footage. There won’t be anything to look at except our redecorating efforts.”
That deep, dark hum that was becoming familiar started to resonate through me, swelling in my chest.
I squared my shoulders and stepped back into a defensive pose. “You don’t want to do that.” “Why not?” Peyton taunted, squeezing her hands into fists. “Are you going to pout and cry out for your boys at me?” My jaw clenched. “I can do something way worse than that.”
Frogs. A flood of frogs, flinging themselves toward Peyton from both sides. I’d summoned an army of fucking frogs. Maybe it wasn’t actually normal for people to run into the croaking creatures all over town. Maybe they just liked me. Huh.
“What else do you expect from a psycho? Trust me, you don’t want to find out what else I can do.” I wasn’t sure I even wanted to find out, but I didn’t have to mention that.
“You can’t just… just do things like this to people. I’m going to tell security—the dean—” I snorted, cutting her off. “Tell them what? That I sicced a horde of frogs on you?
“It’s a short story. You should have heard it already. You had a total mental breakdown. You went wild, throwing things around, attacking us. Your sister was terrified. We put you away for your own good. Lord only knows why they let you out. You’re obviously not much more stable than you were back then.” A trace of nervousness crept into his tone.
“None of us did anything,” he insisted. “And nothing could have justified—the fit you had—” A flare of the anger I’d been suppressing so long under shame and doubt spiked to the surface. He was dicking around with my fucking life here. He’d stolen seven years of that life from me, and he couldn’t even bring himself to tell me why?
“They didn’t fix you,” he babbled. “They didn’t fix you at all. You’re crazy. This is crazy!” The truth clicked in my head with a wave of shock. This wasn’t his first introduction to the stranger parts of me. What I was doing right now, or something like it, was what he’d meant by going wild.
I didn’t think Wade had absolutely no idea what that might have been, but when it came to men and little girls, I could put all the horrible pieces together well enough on my own. The rest I was better off getting straight from the source.
