Scrubbing a hand down my face, the helpless anger is beginning to morph into weariness, everything seeming so damn complicated and impossible. “She was human before being turned. I don’t know the half of what she’s been through, but I can tell you that she likely wouldn’t have grown up with fated lore, or the hope of finding hers someday. Hell, Beck, most humans pair off in couples; they don’tdopacks. With the way Malcolm’s energy flares have been, it’s clear he hasn’t cemented his bond with her, so she’s probably struggling to wrap her mind around the fated concept in the first place, and throwing another mate at her is tossing another problem on her already full plate.” I take a sip. “At least if I can get promoted to their guard when he takes her out of the building, I can tell myself she needs me.”
Dropping his feet on the ground abruptly, he grabs a bottle out of the case and clinks it against mine. “You’re wallowing instead of celebrating my friend. You found your mate, you lucky son of a bitch! Sure, things aren’t exactly easy, but when are they? Consider it a noble quest to rescue your damsel from a dreary existence of cocktail parties and board meetings.”
I roll my eyes, but a small smile twitches the corner of my lips. “How the hell am I supposed to compete with what he can offer her, which is, and I mean this quite literally, anything she wants. Dude’s loa- ow!” I rub the back of my arm and glare. “What the hell? Are you five? Don’t fucking pinch me.”
“You don’t compete with him, dumbass, he’s pack. He brings something to the table for her, but so do you. Yeah, he’s rich. You can’t tell me you’re not thrilled that she has someone spoiling her like she deserves. He can provide for her, and you can protect them both. Don’t sell yourself short, and quit comparing yourself to everybody else. You put yourself down too much, Kas; always have. It’s not about this guy in particular, or even the money, it’s your own insecurities.”
I simply blink at my friend before shoving through the mess of dark hair to put a hand on his forehead. “Are you sick? You almost sounded wise for a second, there.”
Grinning as he bats my hand away with a scowl, I start feeling a bit better about the situation. I may have only known the guy for a couple of years, lucky enough that his roommate bailed just before I moved out here and I snatched up the room before someone else could. While Coria Bay has a thousand more things to offer than the shitty, segregated backwater town I grew up in, housing is not one of its many benefits. Houses are snapped up within days at a price tag that makes my head spin, and honestly, everything out here is sort of ridiculous. With what Drake Enterprises pays me, I could afford a goddamn mansion back home, but here, I’m not even considered middle class.
It’s worth it though to escape the hellish place I grew up, where shifters were one wrong twitch away from being gunned down by humans. Hell, we’re barely tolerated in the cities for business, and even the smaller, more tolerant towns are a hot mess. The mages are used as tools and blacklisted if they piss off the wrong person, keeping them in check with the threat of living on the streets. We were shoved out into the wilds, and while I loved being able to shift and hunt in such open land, it was, frankly, boring as shit. Out here, it’s a damn utopia compared to that part of the country, and I will gladly live in little more than a shoebox so long as it has air conditioning and I don’t have to flinch away from anyone and constantly be told that I’m lesser.
You’re still doing it, though. You went belly up during the stare down with Malcolm, are only telling yourself every way you don’t measure up. You’re desperately trying to convince yourself that Scarlett is out of your reach, out of your control, so you can pretend it isn’t your fault that she isn’t by your side.
Shaking the intrusive thoughts away, I focus on what Beck is saying, only to have him repeat it since I checked out at some point in the conversation.
“Isaid-” he dramatically huffs “-just mark her. Then Malcolm will have to pull his panties out of his ass and learn that sharing is caring. If he’s as decent as you’ve made the guy sound up until now, he’ll want to protect her and indulge her. If she’s miserable without you, he’ll come around simply to make her happy.” He shrugs, taking a drink and grinning at his own genius.
Heat creeps into my face as I clench my fist, trying damn hard not to hit him as I get up, towering over him and glaring. “I’m not forcing my mark on her, you damn psycho! Who the fuckdoessomething like that?!”
He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off, storming across the living room and down the hall to my bedroom. The door handle bends in my bruising grip as I shove it open, slamming it shut behind me like it can keep the vile idea on the other side. Instead, the words bounce around my skull, each echoing whisper conjuring the image of a terrified Scarlett as someone, anyone, sunk their teeth into her shoulder as she fought against them. Someone that hurt her, scared her, from that moment on forever having a direct link into her mind to taunt her with whispered words, never letting her escape.
Blanching, my stomach churns and I barely resist the urge to vomit as the realization hits me. I was one of the few that was present for the debriefing on the discoveries of the vampires that aren’t public knowledge yet. Humans, changed with forced bites, drained, and fed the disease-ridden blood that would change their genetic makeup into a corrupted version of what should have been a shifter at one time. The original vamps from when the plague hit hundreds of years ago controlling their minds, making them captives in their own bodies and forced to slaughter like feral machines so that the monster could feed off of them while he remained hidden safely in the deepest trenches of their nest.
The parallels have my hand trembling, and I barely make it down the hall to the bathroom before I puke. A stranger’s bite, changing her life forever. Giving myself access to her thoughts, able to speak telepathically in her mind? Even if Scarlett accepted me as a mate, how can I put her through that again? She’d look at me like I was no better than the monster that ruined her life.
Chapter 8
Scarlett
––––––––
Wrapping my arms aroundmy legs, I rest my cheek on my knees, curled up in the corner of my room on a pile of pillows that I stripped from the bed. The bedroom has been transformed after my trip out with Malcolm, the man insisting I make the space my own. Cool colors surround me, everything plush and soothing, but as guilt eats away at me, it’s becoming too much.
I managed to hold it together for two agonizingly long days, Malcolm hyper-vigilant to ensure I was handling the short trip to the store alright, that being around people like I was one of them instead of as a leper didn’t mess with my head. He tried so damn hard that I couldn’t let myself ruin it by having a meltdown, or he might insist I never leave again, or worse, up the ante to try and make me happy when he’s already showering me in a life of luxury. So now that he’s at work, I finally let myself process everything. Thankfully, by delaying it for so long, it’s more of a pity party than a full blown spiral.
