“Mal was there.”My voice scrapes out like sandpaper as Talon drags me into the apartment. “She was in the crowd.”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look at me. Just drops to his knees beside the couch and pulls out his old leather bag, seemingly searching for something.
“My curse…it left my body.” My breath hitches, my chest burning with more than exhaustion. “I didn’t even know I could do that.”
And it happened in front of everyone. I sucked off the entire room of the Poison Apple as I tried to drink some of them dry. The looks of shock on Ariel and Snow’s faces burn inside of me. In one stupid, rash moment, I lost my friends, my job, my new life. Because now that it’s out I’m a Succubus, no one will want to come within thirty feet of me.
Hell, since my identity as the Rosari Princess was also outed, it may even get back to the kingdom. If it does, there’s really no going home.
Still nothing from Talon. He reaches into the bag and retrieves something new.
Black gloves. Fine leather. Unmistakably his size.
When the hell did he get those?
He slides them on and grabs my elbow, hauling me toward the bathroom. The motion sends a scream through my starving body, like every muscle is shearing away from bone. My legs barely work. I’m shaking so badly I’m vibrating out of my own skin. Hunger gnaws deeper like acid, eating me alive from the inside. My vision tunnels in and out.
He sets me on the toilet seat and lifts my crop top so it rests up on the swells of my breasts. My skin prickles with the painful awareness of his closeness, but Talon moves with mechanical precision. There’s no hunger in him now. No heat. Just cold, grim focus as he kneels and starts working antiseptic into the burns his hands left on my waist.
I hiss at the sting, but it’s nothing compared to the ache gnawing at my center. The real pain is beneath. Deeper, spreading. My soul is devouring itself, cell by cell, thought by thought. I'm an empty pit lined with teeth, clawing for something to fill it.
I fed a little, but not enough. Not even close.
Talon is silent as he digs shards of glass from my knees, his jaw tight. My power used to heal this kind of thing. Now? I’m too empty to knit skin, too drained to even stop the slow trickle of blood down my calves.
“What was Mal doing there?” My voice breaks on her name. Even now, with my body collapsing in on itself, my mind fixates on her. The shape of her. The look she gave me. She did this. She did this on purpose. She must have.
“I don’t know,” Talon says, clipped and distracted as he tapes gauze into place. His touch is careful, almost tender, but his tone is steel.
“You sound like you don’t care.” The words come out harsh. My hands won’t stop shaking, and their wide-eyed stares keep replaying in my head, as vivid as if I were still standing in that room. There’s no room for grace or softness left in me. “Like you don’t care that I blew up our new lives in spectacular fucking fashion.”
I hate myself for how bitter it sounds, how desperate.
Talon finishes with my bandages and stands without a word. I trail after him into my bedroom, dazed.
My knees buckle under me, vision tunneling as the hunger gnashes harder, meaner, hungrier. Not just in my gut now. In my veins. In my bones. In the hollow of my skull, where thoughts used to be. I can’t think. Can’t breathe. There’s only the need. I’m burning through my own existence trying to stay upright.
Talon opens the drawer like he’s reaching for a gun. But it’s worse.
The collar.
“What are you doing?” My heart sinks as he holds it in his gloved hand.
“My job.” His tone is flat as stone.
“No. I—I?—”
“You have to feed,” he says, like it’s a fact as immutable as gravity. “And we’re going back to the club. Right now.”
Panic rises sharp and hot in my chest, choking off air. “I’m not going to feed on anyone but you. Never again.” The vow anchors me. I’ve already chosen. I let him inside me, and that choice is carved into bone now. I won’t share my body, my hunger, my curse with anyone else, even if it starves me hollow.
For a moment I can’t remember if my parents found Talon to protect everyone from me, or me from myself?
Even in their fear of what I'd become, they searched for a solution, spent a fortune to keep me safe. Would they recognize this starving, stubborn creature I've become?
Would they still see their little princess in this Lost Girl covered in piercings and rage? Part of me hopes not. Part of me desperately hopes they would.
Talon's face is unreadable as he closes the space between us, taking off his gloves.
