Chapter Twenty
Athens
It’s been days since I told myself I’d read more of the journals, another lie wrapped in false comfort. I’ve been avoiding them like they might bite. Maybe because they already have.
But the Devils are stirring, the shadows are shifting, and pretending I’m fine doesn’t hold up when the air still tastes like ash and blood.
So here I am. Sunday morning. Sunlight spilling through the curtains like a lie I want to believe.
Coffee in one hand. Journal in the other. A different kind of weapon.
I flip it open.
The pages crack like old bones. The scent of ink, time, and pain rushes me all at once, and I realize I haven’t really been breathing.
Because the deeper I go, the more I feel it crawling back. That gnawing, festering question clawing at the edges of my sanity:
What the fuck happened to me when I was seven?
And why does every page feel like it’s about to tell me the truth I already know, but am too scared to say out loud?
Athens, Age 7⒈／⒉
Mommy took me to see a lady today.
She was really pretty, tall like the queens in fairy tales, with shiny black hair, golden skin, and eyes so blue they didn’t look real.
Mommy said the lady was going to help me forget.
I didn’t understand what she meant… but I nodded anyway. I always say okay when Mommy says it’s for the best. I trust her. I have to.
Afterward, we got vanilla ice cream. My favorite. I don’t like it in a cone, it drips too fast. Just a cup, with a spoon.
I liked today.
I don’t remember why I was sad before.
Mommy says that’s a good thing.
So… I guess it was a good day.
Athens, Age 8
Today’s the day we go see her again.The lady with the too-sweet smile and the eyes that stare too hard.
Mommy says there’s nothing to be scared of. That it’s just talking. Just questions. Just remembering.
But I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and make Daddy mad again.
The car ride feels like it’s dragging me toward something I can’t stop. Like the road itself is pulling me apart, one secret at a time.
I’ll have to put my journal away soon. The nice lady’s office is just up ahead. Mommy’s fixing her makeup in the mirror.
I’ll be back later. If I can.
Athens, Age 11
I sit at my vanity, legs tucked beneath me, pretending not to notice the way my mother’s fingers tremble as she brushes my hair.
She says this ritual makes my hair grow long and strong, "like roots," she whispers sometimes. Like roots that can’t be pulled up, no matter how hard the world tries.
It’s peaceful, this moment. A quiet we don’t often get. The kind of quiet that feels borrowed, like it’ll cost us later.
I catch her eyes in the mirror and wonder, again, why I don’t look like her. She says my eyes deceive me. That I see what I want to see, not what’s really there. She says things like that a lot lately.
She tells me my parents are beautiful people. Souls spun from gold and light. I write that down because maybe if I repeat it enough, I’ll believe it the same way she does.
We’re moving tomorrow. Korea to America. My dad says it’s for work. My mom smiles like it’s the answer to everything.
Gaia’s coming, too. My best friend. My sister in all but blood.
I have everything a girl could want. A family. A friend. A future.
Right?
What could go wrong?
Bye for now.
I slam the journal shut like it just told me I was never real. That final sentence? A gut punch I never saw coming. My life was a beautifully constructed lie, stitched in silk, soaked in blood.
Maybe it was meant to protect me.
But now?
Now it just feels like a cage wrapped in ribbons.
When did we move to Korea?
How old was I when I really met Gaia?
Every journal reads like a puzzle missing just enough pieces to make me question my own mind. No page picks up where the last one ends. Each one drags me deeper into a timeline someone deliberately scrambled. Maybe on purpose. Maybe to keep me from ever knowing the full truth.
I should be angry. But all I feel is hollow.
Lying back in the bed I now share with Wyck, the one place I thought I could pretend to feel safe, I shut my eyes and try to conjure her face.
The woman I called Mom . The man I thought was Dad .
Both dead. Both liars. And yet… still mine. How fucked is that?
I want to reach out to Josie… or Kaia… or whoever the hell she is. Same with Gaia. But I can’t. Not yet.
Their names still taste like ash in my mouth.
Their calls go straight to voicemail now. I made sure of that. I needed space before I burned the whole goddamn house down.
The door creaks. Footsteps follow. I tense… until I hear his voice. Low. Laced in lazy amusement. “You look like you’re about to crawl out of your own skin.”
Dash.
I push up on my elbows, roll onto my back, and find him watching me with those sharp, impossibly green eyes. There’s brown swirled in them, just enough to remind you he’s dangerous beneath the pretty.
He’s the youngest of the Devils, but don’t let that fool you. There’s something twisted hiding in his softness. A wolf draped in silk.
“Just reading,” I mumble, flicking my fingers at the closed journal like it didn’t just gut me.
He walks over, sits beside me on the bed like he owns it, and maybe, just maybe, he does. At least for now.
“Learn anything useful?” he asks, casual, like we’re swapping gossip and not unraveling a legacy of betrayal.
I laugh. It sounds broken. “Apparently, I always noticed I didn’t look like my parents. My mom, Kaia, I guess, told me it was just my mind playing tricks on me.” I shake my head. “But that was bullshit too, wasn’t it?”
He doesn’t flinch. Just nods slowly. “They lied, yeah. But they loved you in their own way. People do fucked-up things when they think it’s the only way to keep you safe.”
“Is that supposed to make it easier to swallow?” I snap. “I just want to know why , Dash. Why the lies? Was it because Josie killed my father? Or is there something worse waiting at the bottom of this?”
He exhales through his nose. “I don’t have that answer yet, Pumpkin. But we’re digging.”
He stands, then pauses, eyes on me like he’s weighing the cost of what comes next. “You don’t have to carry the weight of this. Let us handle the dirt.”
“Don’t do that,” I bark. “Don’t protect me with half-truths like they did.”
That gets his attention. He turns slowly, steps back toward the bed.
“There’s nothing good waiting at the end of this story, Athens,” he says, voice velvet-wrapped steel. “But if you want it bad enough, we’ll rip it out of someone.”
He drops down beside me again, close enough that his presence burns through the chill still wrapped around my spine. His hand finds my face, soft, warm, far too gentle for someone who’s helped bury bodies.
“I want to kiss you,” he murmurs. “May I?”
The question catches me off guard. I nod before my brain can catch up.
His lips are warm. Sure. A little dangerous.
But when they press into mine, something ignites . Not just heat, but something… darker.
I should pull away. I don’t.
He deepens the kiss, his fingers tangled in my hair now. I’m falling back against the pillows, my breath syncing with his, and suddenly he’s straddling my waist, claiming, teasing, testing.
We don’t speak. There’s no need.
Because in this kiss, in this moment, he’s not just kissing me. He’s branding me.
And maybe… Maybe I’m letting him.
“Wyck wasn’t lying,” Dash murmurs against my swollen lips, dragging the words over my mouth like a blade dressed in silk. “You taste like sin wrapped in sugar.”
A smirk curves my lips, but his next line slices through whatever air I had left. “I wonder if your other lips taste just as sweet.”
My breath catches.
He doesn’t mean… But he does.
He absolutely fucking does.
While my brain trips over itself, Dash moves with terrifying purpose. My joggers are already halfway down my hips, no warning, no hesitation, just gone. He doesn’t even wait for my hips to lift. He rips them down and off like they offended him.
“Knew you weren’t wearing panties,” he growls, eyes flicking over me like he’s already claimed this body in ten different lifetimes. “You were made to be devoured.”
“Dash…” I whisper, part question, part surrender.
He looks up, smug and wicked. “What am I doing?” His smirk widens. “Having a light snack before breakfast.”
I drop onto my elbows as he lowers himself between my legs. He doesn’t dive in. No, Dash is too precise for that. Too cruel. He starts slow. Soft, almost reverent kisses line the insides of my thighs, heat building with each one.
Then, bite.
I jolt.
He grins against my skin, doesn’t apologize. He bites again. And again. Love bites, bruises I’ll wear like a goddamn offering.
“You’re squirming already,” he murmurs, voice dragging along my bones. “You want me filthy, don’t you?”
“Dash,” I breathe, wrecked already.
He doesn’t answer. He just moves up, lips brushing over my navel, tongue dipping, tasting. When he finally settles between my thighs again, my legs are already open, shaking for him.
And then, he inhales.
“I can smell you, Athens.”
Panic flutters. Do I stink? Did I-
I try to sit up, but his palm slams flat against my chest. Firm. Commanding. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“You said you could smell me,” I whisper, shame creeping in.
His eyes darken. “Yeah. And it’s driving me insane. You smell like heaven corrupted. Like you were made to ruin men.”
I go still.
“You’re exactly where you’re meant to be,” he says, lowering himself like a demon sent to worship. “So let me enjoy you properly.”
He spreads me open with both hands, slow, wide, reverent, and then drags his tongue from bottom to top. One slow, devastating stroke.
By the time his mouth seals around my clit, I’m gone.
Completely, utterly fucking gone.
His tongue works me over like it’s the only thing he was born to do, circling, teasing, sucking until I’m clawing at his hair and moaning his name like a prayer no god will ever answer.
“If you keep this up,” I gasp, “I’m going to come.”
He pulls away for half a second, breath hot against my slick skin. “Then come,” he growls, eyes locked on mine. “I want to taste the part of you no one else has.”
He dives back in, tongue fucking me open, alternating between slow torture and frantic hunger. I shatter with his mouth on me, screaming his name into the Devil’s house.
“Dash, oh my God! ”
He doesn’t let up. Not even after I come. He licks it up like he’s starving. Then he kisses me.
I taste myself on his lips, warm, sweet, obscene.
“Good girls call on God,” he says, voice thick with satisfaction. “But you, Pumpkin…” He licks the taste of me from his bottom lip. “You scream for your Devils.”
“I’m a good girl,” I lie, breathless.
“You’re the filthiest kind of girl,” he growls, pressing his lips to mine again, rougher this time.
And then, he opens my mouth with his fingers and spits . Some of my own orgasm, back into my tongue.
My eyes go wide. Every nerve lights up.
“Swallow,” he commands.
And like the dirty little creature he’s turning me into, I do. I fucking swallow.
“Show me.”
I open my mouth, stick out my tongue.
His eyes burn. “You’re a good fucking girl, Athens.” Then he kisses me like I’ve been marked. Like I belong to him now.
“I know,” I whisper when he finally breaks the kiss.
He grins. “Don’t get cocky now.”
“Who, me?” I smirk, pulling my joggers up like a brat trying to play innocent. “I mean… I thought you were going to fuck me, not just eat me like a cursed peach.”
Dash grabs my wrist. Heat blooms beneath his grip.
“Trust me,” he murmurs, dragging his lips across my cheek. “There’s nothing I want more than to slide my cock into those velvety-smooth beef curtains of yours.”
I blink. “Beef… what?”
He chuckles darkly. “Your pussy, Pumpkin. That pretty little slice of heaven you keep trying to act like I didn’t just ruin with my mouth.”
“Well, when is it gonna be the right time then?”
His mouth ghosts over my ear, his voice a sinful promise, “When I want you so bad it hurts to breathe, and I’m not holding back.”
“You’ll know,” he murmurs, dragging me against his chest before crashing his mouth onto mine, long, hard, and ruinous. His kiss isn’t sweet, it’s a brand. A promise carved in heat.
When he pulls back, his breath is ragged against my lips. “When the time comes,” he says, voice low and hoarse, “I’m gonna be a fucking goner for you.”
“If you say so,” I reply, but I’m already a mess, flushed, shaky, grinning like I’ve been marked.
“I’ve gotta go,” he says, reluctantly releasing me.
“Oh. Right.” I flop back onto the bed like a petulant brat, arms splayed wide. “Guess I’ll get up, too.”
His low chuckle scrapes along my skin, dark and dangerous in the best way. “Flopping back in bed doesn’t exactly scream productive. ”
“It doesn’t,” I smirk, stretching like a cat. “But maybe I’ll lie here for a while. Let the silence kiss me where your mouth just was.”
His gaze lingers. Heavy. Possessive. His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes before he turns and walks out the door, leaving me burning in his wake.
He’s always leaving me burning.
The rest of the day crawls. I grade papers that bore me, sketch out a week’s worth of lesson plans that make me feel more like a prison warden than a professor. Then I schedule a mani/pedi because the Devils are chaos, and sometimes a girl just needs clean nails and quiet revenge.
Maybe I’ll drag Karter along, he’d probably flirt with the esthetician until she faints.
But something else sparks in the back of my mind. A distraction.
“You know what?” I mutter aloud, already digging through the fridge. “I’ll cook dinner tonight. A little domestic damage.”
With Maeve’s help, of course.
Let the Devils come home to something they won’t expect.
Warmth. Control. Maybe even comfort.
Because nothing unsettles monsters like softness with teeth.