Page 33 of Demons and Darlings


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This deal with him was risky. Yet somehow, I was less afraid of my mother than I was before I had met him.

Natalie was right. I had to stop letting her control me. I made my own rules now. I could protect myself.

“Let me walk you home,” Alek said after a few moments. “I’ve put you through enough trouble today.”

I let him guide me the few blocks to my apartment. I tried not to think about his teeth in my flesh. I tried not to think about his hot body pressed against mine, or the way his hands felt on my skin.

If only my mother could see me now.

ChapterTen

“It’s not that bad,” I argued. Natalie stared at the bite mark on my shoulder in utter disbelief.

“Well, it’s not good, Lyra. I can tell you that much.”

I pulled my shirt back over the healing wound, kicking my feet up on my coffee table. Natalie refilled her wine glass, and I could feel the disapproval oozing off of her.

“I didn’t have a choice!”

Natalie sat back and looked at me with those big, brown, puppy-dog eyes. “He forced you to do this?” she asked.

“Kind of,” I explained. “But not exactly.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “You have to be more careful, Lyra,” she whispered. “If anyone sees this, if yourmothersees this—”

“Yeah,” I cut her off. “I know.”

Natalie was the only other person in the entire world who understood these consequences. When we were younger, she was the one I would cry to about my mother, about what she would do to me. Natalie had been my shoulder to cry on in the darkest of times.

Natalie was also the one person who would wonder where I was if I went missing. But because she knew who my mother was, and because she knew who I was… there was nothing she could do about it. At the end of the day, we were both daughters of goddesses. We didn’t play by the same rules as everyone else.

“I swear, Nat, he didn’t mean to,” I said.

Why did I feel the need to defend him? Alek knew exactly what type of situation he was bringing me into. He might not have meant for me to get bitten, but he sure as hell risked it.

“If you trust that he’s in this for the right reasons, I’ll believe you,” she said. “But the second he hurts you, Lyra, I’ll kick his ass.”

There was no way she could kick a demon’s ass, but the determination in her voice made me smile. “Thank you. For everything, I mean.”

We watched the rest of our movie in silence.

I had just begun to forget about the absolute hell I was living in until my phone buzzed. I glanced down to see another text from Theia,

“Work is keeping me for another couple of days. I hope you’re behaving, dear Lyra. I would hate to have to resort to chains once more, but those days are behind us. –T “

I was an idiot to have forgotten.My throat grew dry, and no amount of water in the world would solve it.

Theia was the tight, suffocating parasite I would never be able to outrun. I could play house with this new life as much as I wanted to, but that would never change my reality.

Even with a bonding bite from a demon, I was living on borrowed time.

ChapterEleven

Iwoke up with a text from Alek. “Salem’s on her way to get you. Dress casual. Wear good shoes.”

I jumped out of my bed and ran to my closet.A warning would have been nice.

Luckily for Alek, casual was all I owned. I slid on a pair of black leggings and a matching dark hoodie before securing my tennis shoes on my feet. I was barely able to slick my auburn hair into a ponytail away from my face before I heard Salem’s car pull up on the street outside.

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