Pale blue marks had formed on either side of my throat.
Without having to try, I heard the sound the Prince had made when he’d tipped my head back. Smoothing my fingers over the faint bruises, I wondered if the Prince had seen them. Was that why he’d… growled?
What in the hell was the Prince even doing at Flux?
And I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t struck back at me. He could’ve. I’d kicked him. Swung a chair at him. Hit him, and all he did was restrain me and then told me to leave. He’d been pissed, that much I was sure of, but he didn’t try to hurt me.
Steam crept across the mirror, blurring my reflection as I pulled my hand away from my throat. When I’d left the room, there hadn’t been a single fae in the alcove on the second floor. The couches and chairs were empty. There wasn’t even a human in sight. The Prince had done something to the fae.
I didn’t think he’d warned them off.
He’d taken them out, and that made sense. The fae that frequented Flux were the Winter fae, the enemy of the Summer Court and humans, but what didn’t make sense was why he was looking for Tobias.
I knew why I’d been there. Just like I knew I would go back to Flux, because eventually the remaining two fae would make an appearance. They always did, and I would do the same thing I’d done tonight. Watch them. Learn their habits. Strike fast and get out, hopefully without The Prince showing up. I would kill them or die trying, and there was a good chance that would happen, because one of the two remaining fae was an Ancient.
And he’d been the cruelest, the sickest.
I shuddered as I gripped the sink. Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply and then held my breath a second before the all-too-familiar thought blasted forward, shoving everything else out of the way.
This isn’t who you are.
Stalking the fae and putting myself in ridiculously dangerous positions wasn’t who I used to be. That was who I’d wanted to be, but what I had become was some kind of twisted version of that.
Being consumed with vengeance was something I never thought I’d experience, but I was knee-deep in it and I wasn’t coming out anytime soon.
Who I used to be was a woman I could barely remember. I’d once thought that my life had changed when I was twelve and that my life could never be that rattled again. I’d foolishly believed that every human had a cap to what kind of tragedy they’d experience, and I’d already had my fair share. My father had died in the line of duty, as many Order members did, before I could even form one memory of the man. My mom had been brutalized but survived to never be a hundred percent the same again. I’d watched friends die in the battle against the fae, and naïvely, stupidly thought that we were free and clear, because how could anything else happen to me or my mother? We’d experienced enough tragedy to last a lifetime. God couldn’t be that cruel to deliver yet another soul-crushing blow.
I’d been so wrong.
Thinking back to the night of the attack, I wondered if I had misjudged the reason for Mom being antsy. Maybe it wasn’t a sign that she was about to have another episode. Maybe it was some kind of primal instinct had told her what was coming that night. What if she had known that those were the last hours of her life?
Guilt churned, flooding the pit of my stomach with acid as I walked myself back through the night. Our shouts of surprise and screams of pain had been quickly silenced. They’d swarmed us within seconds, pulling us into the courtyard of the empty home.
They’d torn through clothing, skin, and muscle. The pain… God, it had been shattering and devastating. They hadn’t even attempted to feed on us. I’d learned later from Ivy that Gerry and the others hadn’t appeared to have been fed on either. The attack was all about pain and blood, and there’d been so much blood. It had coated my skin and soaked my hair.
I’d fought to stay conscious, but it was all too much. The pain. The blood. The sounds. The shock of it all. I wasn’t able to hold on, and the last thing I’d felt was my mother’s hand slipping from mine. The last thing I’d seen had been her. I’d seen what they had done to her. No human could survive that.
My chest and throat burned until the point I started to feel faint. Dragging in a deep breath of air, I opened my eyes and saw nothing but mist.
Leaning forward, I dragged my hand across the mirror, wiping away the steam until I could see myself staring back at me.
It was my face and my hair. No makeup or special contouring. Those were my lips and my eyes. I was staring at me, but I….
I didn’t recognize who I’d become.
Chapter 6
I jolted awake, heart racing and my pulse throbbing in very interesting places as my eyes snapped open. My gaze fixed on the churning ceiling fan. Oh my God, I’d been dreaming.
Not the usual one, reliving the final moments of the fae I’d sent back to the Otherworld, like I normally dreamt after such an event. I’d been back at the club, in that dingy room, but Tobias was nowhere to be seen. I’d been in that same chair, though, and I hadn’t been alone.
The Prince had been underneath me.
It had been his warm lips skating down my neck, his hot fingers skating along my sides, and I hadn’t been sitting there, holding myself immobile. Oh no, I’d been rocking against him, head thrown back, panting as I moved over him, against him, feeling things I hadn’t felt in… in what felt like forever, if ever.
I’d woken up right when his fingers had found the clasp of my bra, and there was a tiny, stupid and utterly insane part of me that was now staring at the ceiling fan, disappointed.
Good God, I needed help.
Lots of mental help.
A soft purring sound drew my attention as I willed my heart to slow down and my body to get back on the sane and safe path. I turned my head to the right and found myself eye to eye with two yellow eyes.
Meow.
I frowned as the all gray cat—except for its tail, which looked like it had been dipped in white paint—stretched out his little legs and yawned right in my face.
“How did you get in here, Dixon?” I asked the cat, which was named after a character on The Walking Dead. Dixon didn’t belong to me, but he was kind of a package deal at the moment. Not that I minded. I liked the little guy.
Dixon flopped on his side and twisted his head so he was staring at me upside down. I raised a brow and then heard a soft creaking noise. I rose onto my elbows. The iPad slipped off my chest and fell to the floor, the soft thump drawing a sigh from me. I’d fallen asleep… putting a jigsaw puzzle together.
Again.
Kind of lame, but it always relaxed me, helping shut my brain down so I could sleep, but I really needed to stop falling asleep mid-puzzle like a narcoleptic.
I scanned the large dimly-lit bedroom, but the buttery glow from the bedside lamp only held the shadows back from the bed. The thin slice of slivery moonlight seeping through between the curtains did very little to cut through the darkness, but I was confident no one was—
A lump formed under the thin bedspread near the foot of the bed, about the size of a crab. A really large crab.
What in the holy hell?
I watched the lump work its way up the bed, stop every couple of inches, and then start moving again. I waited until it was near the top and then leaned over, gripping the bedspread and ripping it back.