Fight and flight seemed to kick in, but it was far too late for that.He gripped onto Romeo’s arm with both hands, but it was weak, pathetic even.
It only increased Dean’s panic when he realized he couldn’t save himself.
His life was now Romeo’s, and Romeo slowly distinguished it, watching with heated dark eyes as Dean’s rolled back.Dean’s face turned red, his cheeks bulged, and his paling lips opened with his last desperate gasps for air.
It was addicting, no doubt about it, power inducing in a way Romeo could never describe with words.You could only feel it, through hands, through arms, through the thudding heart in the chest.It was a physical thing, like something rising up within him.
Then he looked back over his shoulder.Or the monster looked back.Romeo didn’t know which part of him made the decision or why, but for some reason he looked back expecting to see Chad behind him.
Chad’s dark eyes, heaving chest, and twitching fingers.His look of want so palpable Romeo could feel his lust in waves.
He wasn’t there, and it wasn’t the same.
His high at taking a life had evolved to include Chad.He was part of it, the ritual, the moment.
It was still there, the rush, but Romeo knew it could be more, itshouldbe more.
He wanted more.
The monster did too.
“What ...what are you doing?”
Romeo let go.
Dean hit the ground.
Romeo turned to face the man he’d paid to watch the door.His bottom lip trembled in reply to Romeo’s expression.He’d stepped into the toilets, but kept his back to the wall, flashing looks at Dean motionless on the ground.
Romeo didn’t wait to see if he was dead or not.
It just wasn’t important.
He dropped the remainder of what he owed on the toilets floor, then strolled away.
Let me go.
He couldn’t.
He’d tried to do therightthing and let Chad go, but his right didn’t coincide with everyone else’s.
Before Chad had become his Juliet, before they’d moved to Bardhum, before Romeo had realized how deeply he loved Chad, there had been him, a barn, and a handcuffed Chad.
There was a rake, and an incapacitated littlemagpie.
Because that’s all Chad had been in the beginning, just another magpie.
Romeo nursed him back to health, forced a bond between them, one that only grew stronger as time went by until it turned into somethingbeautiful.
There were monsters, and there were magpies.
And there was a fragile truth about magpies Romeo had learned long ago.
Their legs could be broken.
Their wings could be clipped.
They could be ...confined.
