Don’t want to kill.
Once a month. Keeps the urges at bay.
Need to find a wife.
Need to provewecan be loved.
Need to provewe’re still human.
Ibarelysuppressed a gasp before I snapped the book shut. Did I fully understand their crazed line of thinking? Absolutely not. But… part of me felt bad for them, worse than that, part of me wondered if these mencouldbe fixed.
I didn’t have long to marinate with that thought though. Just as soon as it crossed my mind, the creaking I’d been ignoring grew closer. The rattle of a door handle soon followed, and on instinct I fell to the floor and crawled under the desk.
These men had enhancedeverything,and I had no idea who might barge in, that meant I needed to be as inconspicuous as possible.
A door squealed open, and footsteps echoed in the otherwise silent room. I clamped a hand over my mouth, hoping it’d prevent me from breathing too loud. My pulse pounded in my ears, so disorientingly loud it made me dizzy.
The steps grew closer, and I forgot how to breathe. Hot tears slid from my eyes and down the fingers starting to dig into my cheeks. I suppressed a sob and tried to curl in on myself.
The floor beside me shifted, and a hand curled around the lip of the desk. Drops of water fell to the floor as someone slowly leaned over, bringing themselves to my eye level. Icy eyes stared at me for just a moment before the silence finally broke.
“It’simpoliteto snoop, Little Light.”
Chapter 9
Seth
Lux cowered under my desk, her rabbit-like pulse practically shook the floorboards. She was completely naked, other than the cross strap of the bag I’d given her at the start of the night. Her once long and wavy hair was matted with sticks, like it’d been full of mud and then dried. Her hands and legs were spattered with blood, but it didn’t look like it’d belonged to her. The only wounds decorating Lux were slight scrapes, likely from running around outside, and bruises.
Never had a bride eventhoughtto prowl around in my library, let alone findthose.And I wasn’t sure what to do about this faux pas. Anyone with an ounce of decency knew not to look for what their host had hidden. But our Little Light didn’t seem to be veryladylike.
I stood slowly, not wanting to jostle the surrounding air more than needed. Normally, I didn’t shower until the full moon was done. But this whole thing had me so on edge that Ineededthe feeling of water on my skin.
But now that I was out of the shower, my body still buzzed from the steam, and the rapidly cooling droplets, mixed with the damp towel sticking to my waist, had formed my own personal hell.
My knees cracked as I stood up and fingered the first drawer on my desk. It slid open just in time for Lux to shift. My skin prickled with the movement, and my jaw locked. The razor-sharp fangs the WRAITH project decided I needed dug into my lower lip, causing tears to prick my eyes.
The taste of copper danced on my tongue as I patted around the drawer before finding the plastic frames of my glasses.
I’d never needed them before the experiments, but after I lived for a month with nothing other than my sense of touch, my vision neverfullycame back.
Like some type of fucked up joke.
For the most part, the others healed. Ronan was fine. Cassian was fine. Solomon couldn’t smell the best, but that was it. I was the only one permanently damaged.
Sure, glasses fixedmostof it, but losing sight wasn’t the worst part. It was the chronic overstimulation, the need to trudge around in fleece-lined clothing to preventeverythingfrom being overwhelming, even in the summer.
Fuck—if my skin got slightly too dry, it felt like I would explode. My life had become a series of endless steps to make what I’d become somewhat more bearable. And for a while, I thought I wanted to be loved. Somehow, in my fucked up mind, if we could find someone to shinedespiteour darkness, that we could bask in the glow and heal.
All we needed was a little light.
But we were now ninety minutes away from sunrise, and somehow, Lux Rhodes had not onlysurvived,she appeared to be thriving.
Most brides were dead by now, or simply being toyed with. Sometimes tortured. But, Lux, while scared out of her mind, still roamed the house. No mortal wounds. Nothing that would even scar.
I should have yelled for Ronan the second I felt the air shift in here. He wouldn’t hesitate to rip her apart limb from limb. The thought caused me to grip the desk so hard that I was shocked it didn’t splinter.
Once a month, a woman must die. As is written, not in stone, but inourway of life. I’ve grown used to this, and though I’d started this evening praying that Lux could be our Little Light, our bride, the one wholovedus though we’d forgotten how to love ourselves, the thought of changing our routinekilledme.
