Sue me. I’m curious. I want to know what Connor is doing, and since he didn’t follow on my heels, it has to be outside. Lindy Watkins is still out there in her skimpy bikini, and even if I hate Connor, there’s a part of me that would hate him kissing me, then going right over to Lindy for a piece of non-Offering ass even more.
The patio leads into the massive kitchen. I move until I reach the window over the sink, allowing me to peer outside.
I see the pool. I pick out Lindy’s pretty blonde hair, surprised when Connor’s darker head isn’t anywhere near her. In fact, I don’t see him at all… at least, until I lean a bit, finding an angle that has me pressing my cheek against the window glass, and find him still standing on the patio.
He’s holding something in his hand. At first, I can’t tell what it is, but then he moves just enough that the porch light reflects off of what has to be metal.
I gasp.
It’s a knife. Connor’s trademark pocketknife, the same one he carries with him everywhere, absently tossing the folded-up version when we’re supposed to be working on an English assignment or something. The teachers at Harmony Heights High gave up on trying to get him to keep his weapon at home, and as long as it’s folded, they pretend it’s anything other than a three-inch-long blade.
It’s not folded now. Oh, no. It’s open as he…
Holy shit.
Is he digging the point of the knife into his skin? Because, I swear to God, it looks like he’s cutting himself on the same arm where I bit him. Like he hates the feel of my mouth on his skin so much, he’s slicing it off.
I jump away from the window before he peeks up and notices that I’m spying on him. Then, my mouth dry and my body shaky, I push past\\\\\ everyone standing between me and the exit.
I’m going home, and I only hope that, once there, I can forget the sight of Connor with the knife in his hand as well as the taste of him lingering on my tongue.
And I don’t just mean the salty tang of his skin and the cologne that was there when I bit him…
PROLOGUE, PART II
TWO MONTHS LATER
HAVEN
Every August, the most important ceremony of the year takes place in a closed-off part of Reynolds Park—oh, sorry.CollinsPark.
I remember how, when I was about thirteen, my dad came home from an Order meet and snorted as he told my mom that one of the King’s cronies suggested that we rename the largest wooded area in Harmony Heights after the Collins family. Dad thought that was ridiculous. It’s been Reynolds Park for decades, but the thin-skinned King wasn’t a fan of how the Fortress—the skyscraper in downtown Harmony Heights where the most powerful members of the Order lord over the rest of the city—is also known as the Samuel E. Reynolds building. He couldn’t get the old guard to agree to change the name on the front of the Fortress, but the park? That was okay.
During the summer days, plenty of families bring their kids here to feed the ducks along the lake, maybe throw a baseballback and forth, or fly kites. Kissing couples walk the winding paths together before finding a private bush to do a little more than kissing behind. Teenagers make out anywhere and everywhere, not caring who sees them.
But that’s during the day. At night, the park is closed—except for the middle of August every year when the Order overtakes the greenery.
It’s not dark out yet. Twilight won’t begin until after nine, though the sun already started on its descent as so many members of the secret society filled the parking lot and made their way to the area where Offerings are segregated from the Owed, plus the young members about to be branded in. To the west, the sky is a mix of purple and orange, the red rim around the setting sun promising that tomorrow will be another scorcher.
As it is, I’m sweating beneath the pristine white dress my mother bought for just the occasion. I could blame the fact that it was in the mid-nineties earlier today and, at eight o’clock, it’s barely dipped down to eighty-five. I could blame the roaring bonfire built in the middle of a nearby clearing just for tonight. The flames are more than ten feet away from where I’m standing with all available Offerings, but while the heat is stinging my cheeks, it’s not the reason why my pits are damp.
Oh, no, that’s because I’ve been told to stand with twenty other women, waiting to be Claimed…
Some are newly eighteen, like I am. Others are older, hoping they’ll be picked before they hit the dreaded three-oh and their hope of being a kept wife for one of the Owed goes up in as much smoke as that billowing over the flames.
There’s one Offering missing, and an empty space beside me where Loni should be standing. We’d planned this for years. After the mandatory etiquette lessons and all of the training, we’d talk about the night we would basically be bought and paidfor. Not because we looked forward to it. We never did. But we accepted that it was inevitable, and if we had to go through it, at least we would go through it together.
And then Jack Collins declared her ruined for having sex with some unnamed Owed before the Claiming ceremony, and rather than accept her fate and become one of the Used, Loni packed her bags and left Harmony Heights.
She leftme.
It’s all my fault. That night at Sebastien Reynolds’s party… I let my run-in with Connor twist me up so badly that I abandoned Loni to the Heirs. And while most of Harmony Heights suspects that Desmond was the guy she got caught with in the upstairs bedroom, a handful of us know better. It was Adrian in that room with Loni, and even after Desmond dumped Loni in front of the entire cafeteria, basically calling her a whore while Adrian flat-out denied having anything to do with her, the school sided with Adrian. Of course he wasn’t fucking the same girl he’s terrorized since grade school. It had to be Desmond, and he only turned on her after they were caught to save face with the Order.
Not that it would’ve mattered. Guys get slaps on their back if they get laid at all. Us girls? We end up with an Order brand on our neck, the mark of the Used, and that’s if we’re not discarded like trash first.
Loni knew what she was doing. I admit, I was so… sofrustratedthat she got caught after almost a year of hiding her affair with Adrian that I let her have it when she came to me for comfort. I regret that now. If I’d known that was the last time I’d hear from my best friend, I would’ve handled it differently.
As it is, Loni’s vanished off the face of the earth. No one knows where she took off to. Her phone number’s been changed. Any socials, wiped and deleted. She’s gone, and if there’s one small mercy in that I’ve lost her, it’s that Adrian can’t have her, either.
