What wasn’t normal? Using his dark magic to blow off the door of the nursery and sending my father sprinting after him towards the front door of the institute.
That was where they had found me, abandoned and soaked to the bone, sitting on the stone steps in a stained, dirty dress. I hadn’t been crying, though. My father said it was the oddest thing, almost as if I’d been waiting patiently for them.
Of course, I didn’t remember any of that.
But because of his action of taking me in, my life had been changed. The man didn’t usually take an active role in the nightmare babies that were left with us, yet that night he had chosen to take both me and Razar under his wing, and from that moment on, Razar and I had been attached at the hip. His darkness had protected me, and I’d, in turn, somehow managed to balance out his rather delicate emotional state by surrounding him with affection. You would never know it, but the man was actually quite vulnerable at times. I knew I was the only one to see that side, though, because our connection had always contained this other element I couldn’t fully explain. Razar was just mine. It was that simple.
“You left this morning,” I accused softly.
Razar’s face contorted slightly, frowning at my expression.
His red eyes warmed to a deep burgundy as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head and spoke quietly. “Your father needed help with a new arrival.”
“Oh?” I arched a brow curiously, letting my head fall back so that I could look all the way up to where he stood at nearly 6’7”. My head barely came up to his pectoral. I found his large muscular build way too fucking attractive, and I couldn’t help but run my fingers over his chest.
I could have stared into his stunning face all day, examining the bronze shade of his skin and the faint red sparkles that almost seemed like embedded diamonds throughout. His crimson eyes, which should have been off-putting, were surrounded by thick lashes that matched his midnight-colored hair, shaved short to show off his dark earrings and tattoos that crawled up his neck to the back of his skull. The man was honestly absolutely delicious. He didn’t even realize how handsome he was, and any time I tried to tell him, he got all… growly? Sure. Let’s go with that.
It was obvious that Razar had been produced and abandoned by a night terror. He was classified as a Class Alpha night terror here at ISS, which translated into him being a scary bastard. While most people had only encountered night terrors as the ‘monster under the bed,’ they were so much more than that. I think that was why he still tried to scare me sometimes—his magic was unable to accept the fact that it was never going to happen, no matter what he did. I almost smiled thinking of all the times he had tried, though.
One time in particular always stood out to me. When we were around five, both of us had fallen asleep after lunch for a midday nap. I had woken and found that his human form was gone, and instead, in the dark shadows of the room, a pair of void-like eyes watched me from the darkness. His magic had tried to terrify me, but instead I’d stood up and walked over to him, curling up against him until he turned back into his human form. Even at that age, I’d known he wouldn’t hurt me. Then, around fifteen, he’d shown up in my bedroom one night and kidnapped me up into the corner of the ceiling, dangling me menacingly as if he was going to drop me. Or at least, it was supposed to be menacing. I could partly blame what happened next on being exhausted that night, but I’d simply let out a small yawn and fell asleep, suspended like that, knowing he would never drop me. It was right around that time when he’d stopped trying to scare me as much.
Personally, I didn’t mind it. It was in his nature because his magic fed off terror. I actually felt bad I couldn’t give that to him, but honestly, the man had me feeling a lot of different ways, and absolutely none of them had anything to do with fear.
“They brought him to the holding cell hoping you would be able to talk some sense into him,” he grumbled, almost hoping I wouldn’t hear it. Then he suddenly changed topics. “Have you had breakfast yet?”
“No,” I admitted. His dark tattooed fingers almost immediately intertwined with mine while leading me from my room.
My personal quarters, along with my father’s and Razar’s, were located on the top floor of the massive building that housed the Institum Sequuntur Somnia—the Institute of Nightmares—and its many teams. There were dorms located throughout the bottom floors of the institution, and the larger teams had entire floors to themselves. Technically, Razar should have been on the floor with the rest of the team we were part of… but he had demanded to stay on the same floor as my father and I. He was fiercely protective, and I honestly don’t think my father had given it a second thought, because he viewed Razar as his son and never seemed to notice the odd connection between the two of us. The one I didn’t even have a name for, frankly. If I had decided to move floors, I knew he would come with, but while the idea of living with the rest of my team sounded tempting, I knew I would also be giving up that last shred of privacy I had managed to hang onto.
To say the others were overbearing was an understatement.
“What time did he arrive?” I asked, mentally preparing myself for the day and the upcoming confrontation. Honestly, I was very curious to see who my father had brought in last night, considering it hadn’t been planned. Usually if we were bringing someone in who didn’t want to be here, it was because we had retrieved them after extensive brainstorming and strategy sessions.
My father, James McCroy, was the only human I knew. Well, I assumed he was human. Although… he was rather robotic and analytical sometimes. No fault of his own—it was just his personality, and I knew he loved me as much as someone like him could. Plus, he did a damn good job at running ISS.
He’d inherited this institute and run it successfully for years, long before the fall of the veil even occurred. ‘The fall of the veil’ being the phrase used to describe the day nearly forty years ago when humans realized the nightmares and monsters they feared the most were, in fact, real. Apparently, long before I was born, the nightmares of the world had stayed hidden and out of sight from the humans that dominated the planet; the humans that thought they still dominated the planet but who had no idea how severely outnumbered they were.
One would almost question why the nightmares hadn’t taken over, except without humans, a majority of nightmares would die. You see, they fed off terror and fear, and there was a lot of that in the world. So much so that they were stronger than ever. But if the humans went away? No fear. So instead, we were left in this odd state of not being able to kill the humans as they attempted to kill us.
“What would you like?” he asked softly as we reached a small room down the hall that served breakfast. Outside of the living and dorm areas, the decor of the institute was modern and very minimalist. The common areas were warmly lit to make the nightmares here comfortable but lacked any ornate furnishings that might create shadows to hide in, making it easier to know if anyone was watching you from the darkness—a ‘threat’ that always existed here.
What I wouldn’t give to have Razar watch me from the shadows… well, not just him, if we were being honest.
I grabbed a granola bar and a banana from the long counter of different foods, then turned to leave, only to run straight into Razar’s chest. I muttered a curse as he led me towards the table nearby and pulled a chair out. My scowl grew as I watched him start to gather an assortment of food I didn’t need, but honestly, there was no point in fighting this. He had always been weird about food when it came to me, so if it made him happy to make sure I ate more, far be it from me to stop that.