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She walked inside my house as if she owned the place, leaving me with a longing so heavy I thought my heart would burst outside my chest. People passed by me, greeting me, while other girls tried to get my attention, but none of them mattered.
Only Danika mattered.
She came back,was the first thought that tore through my mind.She came back to me.
Her mother reported her as a missing person to the local police, but I knew better. Danika wasn’t missing.
She simply left, choosing her own path for the first time in her life. And even though it hurt that she didn’t come to me immediately, I knew that she needed to find herself again. She had to figure everything out without any of us meddling. Though my mind knew that it was the right thing to let her be, my heart rebelled, begging me to go after her.
Begging me to find her, to bring her back to us, to show her where she belonged.
I wasn’t a man who feared many things, but the mere thought of her being lost in the world, without me, brought fear straight into my veins, while my mind played scenarios where she was happy with some other man.
It didn’t matter that I never would’ve allowed it, those thoughts haunted my nights and days.
But she was here now, and unfortunately, so was Judah.
I thought he would back off after the failed experiment on Danika, but if anything, he became relentless. Crazed with the need to have his Red Maidens, to mold them into the perfect figures he had in his mind. I still had no idea why he needed these women or what the purpose was of this entire thing, and I didn’t ask.
All I needed from him was to leave me alone at the end of the day, and to pay me. I didn’t want to know the logistics or the reasoning behind his actions, but with each new Maiden, he became more crazed. Hungry for power, for more and more and more, and I fucking hated it.
My father thought I was a monster, but what would he think if he ever got the chance to meet Judah Blackwood. Everyone said that Judah’s father was insane, but I had a feeling that he was a kitten in comparison with his son.
He couldn’t stop talking about the Order, and every single time he mentioned it, Gabriel would flinch and retract into this little shell he created after that night with Danika. He was sure that she truly ran away or that I did something to her. No matter how many times I told him that I had nothing to do with it, he didn’t believe me.
As if I would hurt the one person who looked like salvation to me.
With her, everything seemed brighter. That one interaction alone was enough to hold me over the last year, but my reserves were getting empty, and I needed my fix. I needed my Danika.
I couldn’t care less for all these people that came on Devil’s Night to my little carnival of horror. I couldn’t care less about the obvious looks from the women who filtered onto the grounds of Morass Asylum.
I only had one goal in mind—to make Danika mine.
“Laza—”
“Not now,” I interrupted the brunette who was eyeing me from afar for the last half an hour, only approaching me now. I didn’t care about the pout on her lips or the frown between her brows.
I couldn’t see Danika anymore as she disappeared inside the house, and feelings I’d never had before suddenly became alive, consuming my entire body.
Mine.
Hunt.
Own.
But the moment I saw her tonight, the moment her eyes dragged over my body, I knew that this would be a hunt. She was my prey, my final prize, the one woman who could calm down the monster in my mind.
My feet moved on their own, my entire body knowing what it needed to do—what it was created to do. We fit like two pieces of a puzzle, our souls entwined with one another even before we met each other. I never cared much for soulmates or what they represented, but I couldn’t deny the pull I felt toward her from that very first moment.
I couldn’t deny the game our fates played or the fact that I waited this long to finally make her mine. I couldn’t deny the fact that my heart suddenly became alive every time I saw her.
I could pretend I wasn’t affected—I was a master at pretenses—but I didn’t want to. Not anymore.
Pushing through the crowd that had gathered in the main foyer of the house, I ignored the calls, the whispers and the loud music blasting through the speakers. If my father saw this, he would’ve been displeased.
He hated crowds. He also hated the people of Winworth, but he wasn’t able to open his practice anywhere else. So he settled on his hometown instead of moving to California as he initially wanted, trapping us all here. I used to hate the fact that we lived here instead of somewhere else, but the older I got, the more I realized that this was the perfect playground.
A perfect hell I could control.
