by Helena Novak
“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” I growl. “This is Beren’s daughter, his second. He’s more secure in The Order than ever. And you are nothing. A quick, unremarkable fuck in an alley. You’ll stay that way until your dying breath.”
His hand snaps up and snatches my jaw, pulling my face towards his. His eyes darken with malice, his free hand deceivingly gentle on its descent to my hips. “Unremarkable?” he hisses.
I sneer back. “Downright pathetic.”
His fist locks around my ass and his hand is back at my face, striking me hard across the cheek. He grabs my hair and yanks my head back forward, his eyes burning through me like fire in a coal mine, and it goes straight between my legs.
“Maybe I need to remind you.”
Heat and shame war for dominance inside of me. I’m so desperate for release after Ivy wound me tighter than a drum, and unlike my husband, I know D’Andres can deliver. Part of me wants him to take me, to show me just how remarkable he really was.
And another part is haunted by what I promised Ivy.
“You’ve been the queen around here a long time, Orsa,” D’Andres snarls. “It’s long overdue someone rein you in.”
Orsa
Madness coils around me like poison ivy, wrapping around my neck and strangling all living sense out of my body. D’Andres hands call out like a siren, while Ivy stares down at me, her opal eyes glowing with possessive disappointment.
The bruise between my legs tingles, the ghost of her touch soaking my core all over again. Like she’s here. Touching me still.
D’Andres hands are far rougher, his thick fingers wrapping around the nylon and ripping it off my body. It snaps against my center and I squeak, clenching my thighs together, only for him to strong arm them back open and fit his wide hips between them.
“The girls,” I protest, trying to keep the tremors out of my voice. Whether it’s unbridled fear or lust, it doesn’t matter either way to him. I’m not sure it matters to me, either. The lines are so blurred, I can barely tell the difference anymore.
D’Andres dares a glance over his shoulder. Ursula is oblivious to our behavior, instead chattering away with her little mercreature friend, telling them all about her little sister and how she believes babies come to be.
“Keep that whore mouth shut,” D’Andres says, “and they’ll never notice.”
Heat curls in my stomach, but acidic, frozen rage tickles the edges of my consciousness. I open my mouth, not sure what I expected to come out, when his crashes down and claims it, his tongue dominating the kiss and calling a moan from my throat. He pulls me off the glass panel and ushers me around the planter, tripping me up and knocking my feet out from under me. He steps over me, unbuckling his belt and pulling it from the loops, letting it hang between us and tickle my ankle.
“How’s your memory coming along?” he growls, the smirk on his face like violence and melted sin.
I spit at his feet, defiant ’til the day I die. “Not ringing a single bell. Just like last time.”
He narrows his eyes at me, glancing back at my daughters—my girls, my babies, never his—before he comes down over me. I lash out to claw at his face, and he catches my hands, batting them away.
Close up, I see the wrinkle on his jaw, the dry, frostbitten patch of skin peppering his cheek. He jerked away from the cold touch under the water and covered his face. Maybe that’s why.
“Nice scar,” I mock him.
He folds his belt over, raising a brow at me. He holds my eyes as he claps the bent leather to my breast, growling deep in his chest when I gasp and recoil from the touch. “You’re much prettier when you’re quiet.”
He forces the folded belt between my teeth, latching it at my ear and banging my head off the ground. His weight bears down on me and I squirm and struggle, until his hand tangles in my hair and yanks my head back at a painful angle.
“Behave yourself,” he growls against my neck, his hot, rough tongue moving down my chest and circling my nipples. “Wouldn’t want our little girls hearing.”
I growl and struggle harder, angered by his choice of words. Mine, I try to force around the makeshift gag, but all that comes out is, “Ungh.”
He growls and bites my ribs, and when I don’t stop pushing, smacking, scratching, he pulls back, flipping me on my stomach and slapping my ass so hard tears burn my eyes. I arch back into it, raising my cheeks for him as my hands are crushed under me.
“That’s better,” he huffs, then hits me again.
And again.
And again, until even the gentle wind on my skin builds the tears in my chest.
I could fight him off if I really wanted. He’s barely holding me down at all, and if I hit him hard, if I shifted a hand and really refused his touch, this would be over.
I need it now. I need the pain, the lack of control. I need something real, not a dream of a girl who could be nothing more than the embodiment of my mental breakdown.
She’s whispering my name, her cold lips on my ear, her soft hands moving over the wounds D’Andres leaves all over my body.
I close my eyes, let myself feel both. The delicate touch that I crave, chased away by the vicious touch I know.
Only one of them is real, isn’t it?
D’Andres kneads my ass, kissing down my back while my moans melt into whimpers. He spreads my cheeks apart and rocks against me, his thick cock throbbing as it glides over my lips. I lean back to meet him halfway as he pushes inside of me, and I groan, dropping my face into my elbow.
He gives me no time to adjust to his girth, holding my hips in place and ramming into my body. His hips strike my ass with each inward thrust, my bruised skin screaming pitifully, each touch of his skin lighting me on fire in the worst way.
What did I say about being gentle with my pet?
I raise my mind’s eye without moving my head, getting lost in the vision of Azlin in my reverie. Her jaw is tight, pretty eyes narrowed as she follows a line of sweat down my stomach.
This is a form of harm, Orsa, she scolds.
“I’m sorry,” I say out loud, too soft, too muffled for D’Andres to hear anything but keening. “I’m so sorry.”
She steps into me, stroking my jaw like she had before, and soft tears spill over my cheeks. She parts my lips with her tongue and kisses the moisture from my face, her sweet touch adding to the eroticism of D’Andres punishing fuck.
It’s a process, she whispers, calming, giving me peace in exchange for my soul. You’re still my girl.
Then she kisses me, soft and tender but demanding as hell, spears of ice sliding down my throat, in contrast to the burning thirst D’Andres thrusts forcefully between my legs.
It sends me crashing over the edge she denied me earlier, every inch of my body a glacial flame, consumed by the passion these two give.
Neither of which are my mate, my spouse, my lover, but two people with deep roots inside of me I fear I’ll never be able to weed out.
When did I become so careless?
D’Andres pulls out and rolls me back over, leaning over me and pumping his glorious length. He wraps his hand around my throat, squeezing a little too hard as he takes himself over the edge, emptying his hot seed over my stomach and chest.
I open my mouth in a silent moan, leaning into the degradation. Though I feel Ivy sneering as though she’s standing above us.
“Well,” D’Andres grunts once he’s finished, unclasping his belt and yanking it out of my mouth. “Suppose you’re right. One of us is vastly unremarkable.”
I flinch in spite of myself, drawing my arms in tight. He couldn’t possibly know how raw I feel, but the slight still hurts.
Kill him, Ivy demands, even as he zips his fly and walks away from me.
“No,” I murmur, swallowing the blood in my mouth down. He cut me with that little move of his.
As if she tastes it, too, Ivy’s snarls become louder, more insistent.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
D
’Andres reappears before me, throwing my coverup at me. “Put that on. We’re going home.”
“You’re not going home with me,” I rasp, trying to clear my throat without him knowing. “I’m taking my girls home to my husband, and you’re going back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
He steps over me and puts his foot in my chest, pinning me flat on my back again. He pushes his heel into my ribcage until I whine out in pain, his eyes dark and dangerous when he says, “You’re done calling the shots.”
A soft tinker of laughter carries through the air like a siren song, my barrage of vicious daydreams on what I’d like to do to this cretin before me melting away in the breeze. A voice that’s not my own claws up my tortured spine, sinking cold tendrils of intrusive thoughts into my mind. I find myself powerless, lost in a vision, my claws buried deep in D’Andres’ chest, holding him under the water until the echoes of his final scream died out.
Kill him. Now.
When I blink through the haze, his blood burns down my fingers, and I struggle to keep the shock off my face. I sneer back into his pained expression, digging my claws into the back of his knee. He slips and stumbles, narrowly avoiding a knee to my face, and I leap over him. He opens his mouth, but his words dissolve into a scream, as I hook my nails through his ribcage.
Ivy.
“There is a reason no one has been able to rein me in, D’Andres,” I whisper, my throat tight as though speaking around a phantom hand. Or maybe through one. “You are no different from others who have tried. And if you wish to keep your life, it will behoove you to remember that.”
Kill him, that same gleeful little giggle urges. Finish him, pet. Kill him.
I release him quickly, his hands covering the bloody gashes in his chest as he curls inward, and throw myself away before my control is overthrown again.
I peer around quickly, almost hoping to see her nearby. I don’t know which direction to look, where to even begin to imagine it came from.
Come on, it whispers, my blood running cold. Come back to me. Play with me, Orsa.
“Stop it,” I snap aloud, before I bite my tongue.
I step over D’Andres and snatch Ursula off the ground, her mer-friend whimpering and disappearing into the depths. Ursula gasps and struggles momentarily, her tantrum drowned out by the persistent chanting in my head.
I lock her into her carseat and Keyona in beside that, then hardly manage to throw myself behind the wheel of my Benz before it feels like my legs break under the weight of me, the whole world spinning, contorting, morphing into something… sinister.
Trust me.
I drive, half blind, unsure which roads are the Nevada streets I’ve taken a million times before and which streets are made up from my wicked imagination, leading me into deadly tailspins and never ending ditches.
I grip the steering wheel with white knuckles, watching Ursula come down off her tantrum and transition into an impressive pout more than what’s in front of my windshield. She’s real. She’s here and she needs me to be, too.
The opal eyes that tease me closer to insanity can never be more important than that.
My mother has never been a kind soul. And upon my entry into my house, she doesn’t start now. “What the absolute fuck have you been into?”
“Fuck,” Ursula repeats, perfectly, like she’s a parrot and not a bear.
“Ursie,” I huff.
She shrugs, reaching for Keyona’s feet.
“Long story,” I mutter, knowing at the heart of it, she doesn’t care.
“Your husband could’ve seen you like this,” she grunts.
I scoff. As if Beren would care. He doesn’t feel a drop of embarrassment for anything I do. He’s too observant for his own good, he sees every last one of my flaws, and the man lets it go. He doesn’t care, whether I hurt him or not.
Any man who would quietly allow my indiscretion is worth more than I’d given him credit for. He’s got his heart on his sleeve, and I’ve despised that since I was a little girl, since we were put together in front of cameras for holiday photos and forced into mundane tasks like we were married from the moment our bodies met the earth.
I don’t love him. I don’t think I ever will, or ever could. But I respect him more than I did a month ago.
And I wish he were standing in front of me, fussing over my injuries, instead of my mother, judging, condemning me.
She steps forward, grabbing my face and pushing it to the side. “What in… What is this? Who did this to your beautiful skin?”
She touches the kiss Ivy left me, and immediately withdraws her finger, a startled yell leaving her. I watch her hand, as her fingers bruise and her skin shrivels, like she stuck her hand into a bucket of dry ice.
Don’t touch my pet, Ivy growls into the air around us.
My mother’s shoulders tense, but she shakes it off quickly. She stares at her hand, then pierces me with a glower.
“Did…” I blink. “Can you hear—“
“I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into,” she hisses, “but I suggest you pull yourself together. I will not have you make a mockery of this family.”
I nod to let her know I heard her, then retreat to the bathroom to wash off. I look a sight, no doubt. D’Andres blood crusting on my nails and up my arm, scrapes down my arms and legs, a bruise over my cheek, and my ivory coverup doing less than nothing to show I’ve lost my bikini somewhere between the here-and-there of my day.
And Ivy’s mark on my neck, deep purple like a fresh brand, a perfect outline of her soft mouth left on my collar for all to see. I trail my fingers over the cupid’s bow, and it’s like her fingers lace through mine, her frail arms tightening around me in a secure embrace.
I don’t care if she’s not physically with me. If she’s nothing but a hallucination. I see her in the mirror. I feel her on my skin.
I close my eyes and lean into the madness, because it tastes so much better than bitter reality.
Azlin
Any other time, I’d have given up by now. I’d have snatched the bear shifter, toyed with her feeble little mind, convinced her if she behaved, her children would be spared. Or live in luxury. Or whatever pretty twist of words made her cave into my touch.
It’s worked in the past.
Time is of the essence. Every minute in the human realm drags like scorching razor blades down my skin. My twin sister Caliphe is waiting, locked in a daydream, somewhere between death and the faery realm, for me to return. To bring news, or my new pet, the new power we need to enact our ultimate plan.
For her, hardly any time has passed. Fifteen minutes, maybe an hour. I’m sure it’s driving her out of her mind to wait for even a moment to carry on with our plot. But she doesn’t have a clue how I’m suffering here, in more ways than one.
What would she think of me like this? Caught up in some trite human emotions, letting some soft mortal hurt me while she lies around with other men.
She’d be disgusted, ashamed, confused. Why not just take her, glamour her into submission? That’s what she would do, were she in this position. Hell, any fae would take what’s theirs in this position. Orsa wouldn’t have any choice.
But I don’t want to do that. She has no choices already, in any part. And she chose to let me touch her, and that alone has gone straight to my head. I want more of that. I want more of her offering herself up to me, body and soul and everything else, of her own accord.
It’s so much sweeter to earn than to steal.
Orsa stretches, extracting herself from her bed. She presses her hand to her husband’s chest and nudges, leaning in to whisper against his mouth. “Beren.”
He grumbles, nose scrunching, but makes himself blink up at her. “Mm… Mhm?”
“I’m taking a walk,” she whispers. “I need some air and moonlight before I lose my mind.”
“Need me to go with you?” he asks. “Keep watch…”
She shakes her head. “Just keep an ear on the girls.”
>
He hums in agreement, stroking his thumb over the bruise on her cheek. Such a well behaved man, that one. Doesn’t even argue with her ideas, regardless of how unsafe they are. There are monsters out there, stalking through the shadows, hunting in the night.
Like me.
Orsa leaves her warm bed and pads down the quiet streets, losing sight of her house as she wanders aimlessly through the park.
I follow.
The moon hangs low in the sky, casting chilly white light over the dry grass. Small shadows dance in our peripheral, and she turns her attention to each one. Hunting. Tempted to chase them, each one sending harder thrills down her spine.
“I’m here,” she whispers. “I’ve come out to play.”
Ah. She’s looking for me.
Something about that makes warmth unfurl in my stomach, but I try to tamp it down. I want to watch her scour when I’m right beside her a little longer.
I giggle in spite of myself, the joy of being wanted too much to swallow, and her breath catches. Her dark eyes close and she leans back into the wind. I ache for her—her touch, her smile, her very presence. She offers a sense of freedom stolen from me long ago, a loss of control I crave more than air.
I wonder if she feels the same. If I’m the freedom she yearns for all the same.
I want us to be free.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
She turns at the sound of my voice, surprise forming her mouth into a soft ‘o’ to find me peering out from behind a tree. Frost blooms on the grass and the branches, a shudder running through her as the glamor falls and my magic crawls up her body like a caress.
“Ivy,” she sighs.
I really do hate that name. Why did I bother trying to lie? I tilt my head, hoping the name will drip back out like water. “What’re you doing out here all alone?”
“Looking for you.”
I bite my cheek to keep in a smile. “For?”
A million emotions war in her gaze. Desolation and hopelessness, hunger and rebellion. She looks around us, from the snow to the stars, like she’ll find the answers written in the tree line or carved in the top of her hand.
