Darkness of Mine (Of Mine #3)

1. Freya

FREYA

N o one ever tells you how much a broken promise hurts. It doesn’t feel like any other break where the pain is isolated to a certain part of the body, where if you just rest long enough the bones slowly knit themselves back together. No, this pain is all consuming. I hurt everywhere.

I lie in bed, like I do a lot these days, and take stock of the damage. The pit of guilt in my stomach. The hollowness in my chest where I think my soul might be slowly dying. The heaviness dragging at my bones until the collagen and marrow crumble and disintegrate.

This isn’t the sort of break I can put back together, and I don’t know whether it’s my broken promise that hurts so much or River’s.

I promised I was done running but he promised he would chase me. It’s been over a month now since Zach, my half-brother and a certified psychopath, forced me to turn my back on the men I love in order to protect them. Over a month and there’s no sign of River, Eli, Oz, or Jude.

Admittedly, I’ve hidden myself away in what’s possibly the most secure location in the whole of the United States, but part of me still dies every night I go to bed—and there’s still no River.

It hurts too much to think about, so I sink into the numbness, searching for an escape. Except whenever I go too quiet, the memories come back. I try to force the flashback away but it’s too late, the images playing in my mind like an old home video.

“One, two, three…” the knife stops spinning and clatters against the concrete floor. I scowl at it.

Allie leans forward from where she’s sitting cross-legged across from me and picks up the knife. She rests the point of the blade against the concrete and flicks her wrist. The knife spins like a twirler top.

“How are you so good at that?”

Allie shrugs. “It’s just practice. I’ll teach you.”

I perk up at that. Dad’s out for the day, which means Allie and I are locked in the basement together.

We’ll probably be here all weekend, but I don’t mind.

I love the days I get to spend with Allie.

I don’t get so scared when she’s here. She’s only two minutes older than me, but she’s declared herself my big sister and I know she’ll always protect me.

I pick up the knife and try to spin it, but it just clatters to the ground again. “I can’t do it,” I huff.

“Sure you can, you’ve just got to flick your fingers a bit harder.” Allie scoots over so she’s kneeling next to me and gets me to hold the handle. She shows me the action in slow motion and this time, when I spin it, the knife twirls a little longer.

“I did it!”

Allie grins back at me, my mirror image. Right down to the still raw cut poking out of the collar of her pink stripey t-shirt.

My breath catches. The thin bloody cut blurs and seeps across my vision as the memory twists. The haze of blood blinds me but I know I’m not in the basement anymore. No. The bed beneath me is too soft. My small hands grip the comforter. I don’t have to see to know I’m not alone.

The bed dips between my legs. My body tenses, sweat pricking my brow.

His breath hot against my face. I screw my eyes up tighter.

“Hey there, Little Star,” he whispers. “Are you ready to play our game?”

The scream stuck in my throat wrenches free, and I shoot upright in bed. My t-shirt clings to my damp skin and I drag a hand through my hair. Fuck.

I can’t seem to go a single day without getting sucked into the past. It’s been that way since I left the guys and I have to remind myself that this is for the best. That me leaving was the only way to get Layla, Oz’s little sister, home.

That staying away from the guys is keeping them safe.

I can take the pain if it means they’re alive.

A knock to the door has me groaning. I collapse back onto the bed and pull the covers over my head, blocking out the slate gray stone walls of my room.

“Carmen says you have to get up,” Rebekah calls from the other side of the secure door. I’ve quickly come to adore Rebekah but it’s a bittersweet relationship because I can’t see her without thinking of Oz and the night we saved her from the Dying Angels.

Normally, Carmen sends her rescues to safe houses around Montana, but for some reason Rebekah’s different. She and her little brother live here, in Carmen’s HQ, so at least I’m not the only stray.

Rebekah’s fist pounds the metal door again.

I stay quiet and pretend I’m asleep. For a moment, I think it’s worked but then a series of beeps warn me the door’s lock is being overridden. So much for security doors keeping people out. Carmen decided I didn’t get that privilege after I spent one too many days locked in my room.

I pull the comforter off my head and roll over to see Rebekah poking her head inside. Her blonde hair is pulled back into two French braids, a style she started wearing after seeing it on Carmen. Yeah, Rebekah’s hero worship is in top gear.

My gaze zeroes in on the brand on her forearm.

It’s similar to the one my mother has except the angel wings burned into Rebekah’s skin are broken and gnarled.

It’s the mark of the Tainted. Those girls Jeremiah deems unpure.

Anger burns away some of the exhaustion from my involuntary walk down memory lane.

“You know,” Rebekah says, cocking her head, “if I don’t manage to get you up, Carmen will just send AJ.”

I close my eyes. “AJ doesn’t scare me.”

A long silence sits between us, and I open my eyes again to find Rebekah perfecting the raised brows of a disbelieving teenager.

“Fine, they scare me a little bit. Just maybe like this much.” I pinch my thumb and forefinger together.

“Didn’t they pour ice water over your head last time?”

I shiver. “What do you think the chances are AJ is possessed?”

Rebekah smirks. “I don’t know but your chances of finding out are getting higher by the second.”

I groan and sit up. “Argh, fine. I’ll get up you little cretin.”

“Rude much?”

I glower at her.

“Hey!” Rebekah dodges the pillow I throw her way and lets the door slam shut behind her. “You’ve got five minutes.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

It takes most of my energy reserves for the day and the threat of AJ, Carmen’s terrifying bodyguard, hanging over me to not flop back onto my bed and curl into a ball.

I don’t bother showering and cleaning my teeth feels like too much effort, so I just gargle some toothpaste and water before chucking on sweats and a hoodie.

It’s one of Jude’s and I try every day to drown in the smell of it.

The cracks in my heart deepen as I inhale and realize his scent has faded even more.

Outside my room with a minute to spare I head down the metal stairs to the second floor. Though maybe floor is the wrong term.

I walk out onto the mezzanine that spans three of the four walls of what is essentially an enormous cavern. The steel grating of the balcony digs like blunt blades into my socked feet. I should probably have put on shoes, but I can’t bring myself to care.

I move over to the metal railing and look down on Carmen’s empire.

The ground floor is split into two sections. The left is filled with rows and rows of computers, more than a dozen tech savvy, punk fashioned hackers coding away.

The right is more spacious with people bent over tables or wielding blowtorches. It’s Carmen’s version of research and development. More often than not it ends up with something exploding, which frankly, given that most of the time she’s making tiny, super smart pieces of tech, astounds me.

Honestly, this place is insane. Apparently, Carmen bought it off a movie star who had it built into the side of the mountain while he was filming a supervillain show and got a little too into character. Then the show ended and he realized living off the grid wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Carmen doesn’t exactly live off the grid, more like on her own grid. This place isn’t on any map and from the outside all you’ll see is rock. She’s created her own secure internet system, and all of her hackers know better than to leave a trace.

“You’re stalling.”

I jump at AJ’s voice, my hand flying to my heart when I see them leaning against the railing next to me, one black boot crossed over the other.

“How the hell did you get there?”

AJ looks up from filing their nails with a file that’s closer to a small knife than a beauty care product.

Their gaze is dry. A fresh line cuts through the shaved side of their head, short maroon curls tumbling down the other side.

AJ’s the definition of a mystery so I don’t actually know what their ethnicity is, but their fawn brown skin suggests an Indian heritage.

“So are we going to do this the hard way or…”

I raise my hands and take a step back. “I’m going. I’m going.”

AJ keeps staring at me. I think they’re dead inside.

Downstairs, I find Carmen with the hackers, leaning over a young man’s shoulder as she explains something on his screen. She takes one look at me and calls up to her bodyguard. “AJ, stop scaring Freya.”

I stuff my hands in the pockets of Jude’s hoodie. “I’m not scared,” I say like a sulking teenager.

Carmen pokes her tongue into her cheek, which is what she does when she’s trying to hold back a laugh. “Sure thing, kid.”

Carmen refuses to accept that it’s been half a decade since she took me in for a year before I joined the police academy. To her, I’m still a kid.

“You wanted me?” I ask.

She grabs a Twizzler off the bowl of candy on the desk and takes a bite. “I’m worried about you. You’re either not sleeping or sleeping too much. You still barely come out of your room, and I think you’ve lost about twenty pounds since you got here.”

I pull on the mask I perfected as a child growing up with a serial killer for a father. “Anyone ever tell you you’re addicted to those things?” I nod at the red Twizzler between her lips.

She tugs off a bite. “AJ, all the time. Now stop deflecting.”

I shrug. “I’m fine.”

Rebekah chooses that moment to come over and hop up to sit on the edge of the glass desk. “She was in bed when I went to get her.”

“People who are ‘fine’ don’t sleep till 3pm,” adds AJ who has once again appeared from fucking nowhere. Seriously, I used to have better hyperawareness.

“What is this, an intervention?” I ask, falling back on my old friend sarcasm-as-a defense-mechanism.

Carmen sighs. “Sort of. There’s a therapist waiting for you on the computer in my office.”

My insides, which have been fairly dead all day, revolt. “Yeah, I’ll pass.” I turn on my heels and walk away, my body rigid with each step.

“Either you go, or AJ makes you go,” Carmen calls after me.

I don’t know whether it’s just that I’ve hit my limit for the day or if Carmen ordering me about reminds me too much of River but whatever it is, I lose my shit.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I say, my back still turned.

Carmen’s voice softens. “Freya.”

“No!” I spin around, kicking at the desk beside me so hard the computer shakes. “I’m fucking fine, Carmen and I’m not a child. I don’t need a fucking therapist, and I don’t need your help.”

AJ shifts in front of Carmen, the look on their face borderline dangerous, but Carmen waves them off. “Let her go.”

I’m still feeling petulant. Adrenaline and anger surge through my veins like hyped up blood and I’m fucking pissed Carmen called a therapist, so I slam the base of my fist into the computer screen, sending it crashing onto the concrete floor before stalking off.

I may be fucking breaking, but I don’t need to be fixed. Every broken shard reminds me of the guys, and I’d rather let those shards tear me to shreds than forget about them.