Then froze.
The skeleton along his side came into view first.
It wasn’t decorative. It wasn’t stylised. The ink looked torn into his skin rather than laid there—ribs warped and fractured, the spine crooked as though it had collapsed inward on itself. The thing appeared mid-motion, clawing its way out of him, jaw split wide in a silent scream. It followed the natural lines of his body too closely to be coincidence, as though the artist had traced something already living beneath the surface.
Ella’s breath caught.
I saw the moment it registered—not fear, not revulsion, but something far more dangerous.
Recognition.
As if she understood this wasn’t art meant to be admired. It was something worn. Something carried.
Nick turned toward the bathroom.
That was when she saw the rest.
The demon across his back unfurled as he moved—wings stretched wide, jagged and torn, their tips clawing toward his shoulders. The body at the centre was twisted and malformed, crowned with horns that curved inward like a prison. Dark ink bled into darker shadows, the edges deliberately uneven, violent in their restraint. It didn’t dominate his back so much as cling to it, like something that had latched on and refused to let go.
Not a monster.
A confession of how he saw himself.
Ella’s eyes followed him until the bathroom door closed behind him. She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. One hand tightened in the sheets, fingers curling into the fabric as if she needed the anchor.
She wasn’t disturbed by the brutality of it.
She was disturbed because she understood exactly what it meant.
They shared a common denominator—their fathers.
Nick wore his damage openly. What tore him apart was etched into skin instead of buried where it could rot unseen. Messy. Grotesque. Honest.
Human.
And for the first time since she’d come into our house, I saw something shift in Ella’s expression that had nothing to do with fear.
She had seen a fraction of Nick’s truth.
And God help her if she ever crossed him.
While my attention had been on Ella, Alec had been watching me just as closely. I felt it before I acknowledged it. I closed my eyes for a brief second and gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
If handled carefully, this didn’t have to remain a trio.
It could become four.
Chapter 19
Ella
The bathroom door slammed shut.
The sound snapped me out of my daze. My pulse skidded, my breath catching as reality rushed back in around me.
Nick wore his life on his skin. I’d thought the skull and demon etched across his hand and fingers were macabre before—dark, unsettling—but the ones along his side and back were something else entirely. Stunning, in a horrific way. As if his body had been turned inside out and inked before being stitched back together.
He wore his monsters on his skin.
