Page 89 of Made to Be

My eyes settled on something out of place, the worn, brown leather draped carelessly over the back of the sofa. It was as unfamiliar in my home as it was recognizable.

Dread pooled like lead in my gut as the bile rose up my throat. No, no... It couldn’t be.

Steady footsteps sounded on old, creaky stairs. My heart rate spiked and my breaths quickened. Despite knowing it was useless, I pulled at my bound wrists, but all that managed was to send sharp stabs of pain up my arms and shoulders.

Perhaps if I hadn’t been so distracted by Cam’s kisses and roaming hands, I would have seen it coming.

I would have noticed that fucking leather jacket on the damn sofa. I would have spotted the light turned on in my spell room despite having been gone for days. I would have realized the mage-locks had been disabled. I would have taken the ghost’s warning for what it was.

She had tried to get our attention.

But we’d been too damn distracted.

I’d let my guard down. And now...

“Cam?” My voice came out a weak, tremulous thing swallowed by the emptiness of the room. But it wasn’t Cam’s familiar steps that I had grown so accustomed to that echoed up from the basement. They were another set of steps, ones I had learned to associate with harsh words and brittle, false affection. Steps that instilled fear in my very bones and left me trembling in terror.

Their cadence brought in a fresh wave of memories. Of the terrible pain of having been beaten to near death. And the years of psychological abuse that had been that physical pain’s precursor.

“Fuck,” I hissed in a whisper, heart pounding, mind struggling to fight off the shutdown.Stay calm, stay calm. Think.

Just as the footsteps neared the top, I thought the incantation to summon Jinx. My head ached at the amount of focus required, but when a flash of black appeared before my face and Jinx’s membranous wings flapped cheerfully, I nearly wept with relief.

Thankfully, he didn’t squeak his normal greeting, seeming to sense that something was very wrong.

“Buddy, I need your help,” I whispered to him as he hovered. “Hide. And when he’s distracted, find Cam. Please, find Cam.”

Jinx flew off and out of sight just as the basement door opened. When his face came into view, it was almost as if I was seeing a ghost. One that hadhaunted me for years. The figure that lingered in my nightmares.

He looked exactly as he had that day. And that was somehow even scarier than if time had changed him. His dirty blond hair was a little longer but still cropped short. His sharp features were smug, an expression that took nothing away from his outward attractiveness. He had always been handsome; it was what had drawn me to him from the beginning. But that chiseled jaw, tanned skin, and those hazel eyes had all been nothing but a ruse to draw me in. It masked the shit-stink of his rotten soul.

“Byron, you fucker,” I bit out venomously. “What are you doing here?”

He shut the door behind him with terrifying calmness, and I flinched as he approached my spot. I fought the urge to squirm under his intense, piercing gaze. It was the look of a man who had been hunting for something for years and at last had it within his grasp. It was hungry and filled with arrogant satisfaction.

It terrified me to my core.

“That’s what you say to me after all this time?”

He stopped only once he was looming over me, his sneer trained on my trembling shoulders.

“I tirelessly search for years only to find you holed up with one of your,” his lips curled derisively, “experiments. I always knew you were a sick pervert but shit, you actually did it? You brought a corpse backto life just to fuck you? If you were truly that desperate for a dick up your ass you should have come back to me.”

I couldn’t even think about how he figured it out, how he realized just who andwhatCam was. I was blinded by fury while simultaneously terrified for Cam. And myself.

“Don’t talk about him that way,” I growled, my quavering voice betraying me. “As if I would ever go back to you, you cowardly piece of shit.”

There was no time to prepare myself before my head viciously snapped to the side and fierce, stinging pain lashed my cheek. Blood pooled in my mouth from the fresh cut on my inner cheek, but I spat it out, casting defiant eyes up at Ron's scowling face.

“You and that fucking mouth of yours.” He gripped my cheeks so hard tears welled in my eyes. “You did always know just what to say to piss me off. But,” his eyes focused on my mouth, “it was also more than willing to do other things. When my cock was involved, it grew very obedient.”

The way his voice deepened made my stomach churn with revulsion. I ripped my face free of his grip.

“Where’s Cam?” I hissed.

“What, thatthingyou were making out with?” he scoffed, the sound oozing disgust. “I saw your books, your journals, the mess of satanic magic shit in your basement. Are you some sort of cultist now, is that it?”

I spat again, this time aiming my bloody saliva for Ron’s designer loafers.