Chapter One
TOREN
To teach is to learn. To learn is to excel. To excel is to thrive. To thrive is to live.
Grief isn’t just an emotion—it’s an unraveling, a space where something once lived and thrived but is now gone. It carves through you, leaving a hollow ache where love once lived.
In the beginning the grief feels unbearable, it feels like an open wound that will never close.
The horrifying silence where laughter once lived.
Over time, the raw edges of that emotion begin to mend.
The pain will soften, but the imprint of their loss will never lessen. It’s a quiet reminder of what once was.
You never truly move on, you just learn to cope, the love you once shared doesn’t disappear, it transforms. It lingers in the echoes of laughter, in the warm embrace of old memories, in the silent moments where you still reach for what is no longer there.
Grief isn’t a burden that should be hidden.
It’s not a weakness, it’s the most honest proof that love existed.
That something beautiful once touched your life.
Grieving the loss of a ghost is both hard and mind-altering.
I never knew Emery Devlin while she was alive, I allowed my subconscious to conjure her ghost after seeing her the night of the crash.
She was my strength when I was weak. She saw the best there was in me and lifted me up, offered me solace in a place where none was to be had. Emery was my savior and my rock. Without her I wouldn’t have survived a year in Walter House—the prison I was forced to live in by my own father.
That place holds no warmth, the thought of having to stay there again with the ghost of her laughter taunting me as I walked through the halls, and the memories of the time we shared there plaguing me, haunting me every single day for two months.
I was forced to see myself in a new light after the memories finally returned and what I had become disgusted me. I allowed myself to be used as a pawn in a game I didn’t even know existed. I had no idea what the rules were, only that my family didn’t want me but the devil did.
My fury is like a poison that flows through my veins, it pumps through me with every beat of my heart.
It’s a current that continuously flows without restraint, always there and forever present.
Just waiting in the shadows for the right time to be unleashed so it can wreak havoc on those who fucking wronged me.
Lies were spun like a web, woven so intricately that you couldn’t tell it was all fiction until the last moment. I was blind to it all, forced into a cocoon they made for me. I saw the world through rose colored glasses, thought the best of everyone and saw the good in everything.
Rookie error.
I now know where I stand and it’s on my own.
The only person I can rely on and trust is myself.
I learned a hard lesson, believe half of what you hear and all of what you see—he taught me that.
I’m hardened from the scars of my past and won’t trust easily or ever again.
Every person I have loved has betrayed me. I was treated like I was dispensable.
I was a fool and stupid. I had no idea the nightmares that lurked in the background, the monsters I lived with and shared DNA with.
Xaden Devlin owns his darkness and sinful nature, but not my brother or father.
They hide behind their wealth and mask their evil nature with expensive clothes and designer cars.
My past haunts me every damn day. When I close my eyes, I see her face and feel the whisper of her touch against my skin.
Her gray eyes shine so brightly in my dreams, her angelic face is like a still shot forever frozen in time, never able to age.
Her eyes are always what draws me in, except they aren’t just her eyes or her face I see, it’s his.
He is the god of darkness. The shadows are his to command, shielding him from the light because they know he was born from the depths of hell.
He parades around like he is an enigma, a god amongst men.
His wrath is like a storm, ever present and coiled inside him just waiting for its time to unleash havoc on those whom he loathes and wants to ruin.
I watched him murder his own father in front of me.
The threats he made about taking my life and how he wanted to torture me didn’t seem so redundant in that moment.
I saw the truth in his eyes. He craves the kill, the bloodlust that courses through his veins.
He is a puppet to his carnal urges. Unlike most people, who fight against the darkness and devil inside themselves, he embraces it, embodies it and allows it to control him.
I knew that night after witnessing what I did that Xaden would kill me.
He would rob me of life and any chance I had of experiencing a future as payback for his sister dying.
I knew he lost his best friends that night because he told me, but I had no idea there was a fourth person who lost their life that horrible night until my memories came back.
The pendant I wore around my neck was all I had to keep me centered and now that I don’t have it, I feel lost. I keep repeating that stupid phrase, not because I miss my brother or anything like that, but because I need the normality to keep me grounded.
To teach is to learn. To learn is to excel. To excel is to thrive. To thrive is to live.
Nerves are my best friend these days. Two months ago another truth bomb was dropped on me.
Even knowing the truth I still feel sick thinking about how I used to pine over him.
I would live for a scrap of his attention or a sly touch when he would pass me.
I was the secret he kept so he wouldn’t lose my brother.
Looking back now, I was a fucking idiot.
I should have known then that he would never be true to his word and tell Masen that I meant something to him.
Kellan Kyle wanted me to be his dirty little secret.
He made me believe he was lost to reason and corrupted.
He let his best friend see him as a cold heartless bastard.
He let us all see him that way. That night at Xaden’s father’s house I burned so hot with hatred for him.
Cas offered me freedom, only for Kellan to try and rip it away.
I was prepared to take his life if it meant I never stepped foot in that hell again, the prison I was forced to spend a year of my life living in—Walter House.
I’ve been biding my time and trusting Kellan not to fuck me over.
I wanted to say he was lying and trying to play a trick on me, but the truth in his words rang out like the thunder that was rumbling around us.
What I’ve learned is that no one can be trusted.
Everyone lies and uses whoever or whatever they have to in order to save themselves.
I changed the rules of the game and made my own plan.
He may have wanted me to head back to Somerset and act like nothing happened but I refused.
I’m not going back there until I have my army.
Kellan tried to fight me on it but he had no sway over my decision.
This is my game now and I’m going to play it better than any of them ever could.
Life is complicated enough without mixing in lies, yet that is all people seem to do.
I’m a hypocrite. I point blame at everyone for lying yet I am holding the biggest secret of them all.
Kellan is the only person who knows and the fact Xaden hasn’t come and slaughtered me, is the only reason I know he hasn’t ratted me out.
Every day here at Crestview Heights University I am viewed as an outcast, laughed at and whispered about behind my back.
They know I am the Toren, the meme and the bitch who ruined lives in one single night.
I don’t blame them. I’m the new girl. The one who keeps to herself but spies on those I need to get close to.
The three girls I need to get close to are constantly guarded, there is never a time when they are on their own.
I’m attending CHU as an exchange student for a couple of weeks.
I shouldn’t be here but this is the only way I can level the playing field.
I need to learn how to play this game in order to beat Xaden and my father.
Losing isn’t an option for me now.
I have more to lose than either of them. If power is what they crave, then I’ll show them that a woman's scorn is more powerful than any amount of money they can amass. I will be the victor of this war. I lost the battle because I was naivé. Never again will I allow them to rule me or use me.
Today is the day I make my move and nothing is going to deter me, shit back home is getting worse and I can’t keep hiding out here. If I have any chance of finishing this, I need to woman up and show these girls I mean business and won’t take no for an answer.