Chapter 1
MAEVE
The first thing I notice is the smell.
Sharp. Sterile. Wrong.
Not blood. Not rot. Not the reek of death from the box at my door. But my body doesn’t know the difference—it only knows danger.
My chest convulses, my vision fading in and out, but my mind’s eye is locked on the same picture of his lifeless eyes.
Pale. Green. Watching. Claiming. Burning me alive.
The door opens, and another wave of bleach-white, sterile emptiness fills the room. It yanks me out of the dark and into blinding white, and, before I can think, I’m already thrashing, choking on a scream.
They’ve dragged me back here without my permission.
They’ve taken me from my home and forced me back into the caged confines of the Mythical Compound.
The walls in the hospital are too white, too clean. The type that hides blood and blinds you before the knife comes down.
My chest is too tight. My chromius hisses and cries, but she doesn’t help me.
She can’t.
Instead, my animal is hunched up, hiding away from me. Unreachable from the pain, from the trauma. From him.
My throat burns. My lungs won’t work. All I can see are his eyes. Pale green. Haunting. Dangerous.
They’re watching me. Undressing me.
Searing themselves into my soul.
“No—no, no, no, no—” My voice sounds broken, jagged, even, and is practically unrecognisable. The elongated vowel seems to echo around the chaotic room.
The blanket cinches like rope. My wrists burn where cuffs should be—the tug at my arm is only tape from the cannula—but my brain doesn’t care.
They’re trying to kill me.
Adrian is going to kill me next. I just know it.
This time, I’m not making it out of here alive.
“We need her to breathe,” a familiar voice says, but I shake my head side to side, trying to avoid where they’re going to touch.
I don’t want to breathe. I can’t let them force me into doing another thing I don’t want to do. Not again. Never again.
I’d rather they just killed me. Let the panic take hold, let it stop my heart, and I can just be done. Done with life. Done with this cage. Done being a prisoner in my own body.
“Telling her to breathe isn’t going to fucking fix this, is it, dickhead?” Another voice snarls. The low, rough edges cut through the pain, through the panic.
I know the voice. I recognise it.
It’s him.
Lucifer.
He’s close, but not close enough to touch. He won’t push past my boundaries, not when I’m terrified like this. Has he kept me safe? Can he keep me safe from his uncle?
I don’t scent Adrian, but I know that I’m here, in his confines once more. After finding my stepfather’s head in a box on my doorstep delivered by my creepy, obsessive stalker, there’s not a chance that he’d allow me to stay in the pride.
And the familiar sterile reek means he’s already hospitalised me. Once again, poor, pathetic Maeve can’t control herself properly and had another breakdown where they’ve needed to sedate me.
But if that’s the case—why do I feel so weak?
Usually, when I’m unconscious, he and Helen touch me, to boost her strength. But this time, that hasn’t happened. I don’t feel the usual influx of power.
Have they… have they realised I’m not worth it?
“If she doesn’t calm down, we’re going to need to sedate her.” This voice is more clinical, and it’s one that I don’t recognise at all, but it sounds far closer to me than Lucifer’s did.
Something brushes against my forearm, and I scream. I can’t help myself. My throat rips with the sound of it, and no matter how much it burns, I don’t stop. Let everyone hear what they’re trying to do to me—let them hear my fear.
My wrists tear at invisible cuffs, desperate to be free, but no matter how much I tug, they don’t move. Probably since they’re not actually there.
My legs kick uselessly against the thin mattress. He’s here. He’s always here. They’re letting him touch me again. I can feel his hands holding me down, smell the sour alcohol on his breath.
“Please stop, Daddy,” I sob, thrashing against the bedding, hating the way everyone and everything touches me. “I’ll be good. I promise.”
Somewhere far away, a voice breaks through the panic—it’s furious and sharp, but somehow so fucking familiar.
“Maeve, look at me!”
But I can’t. All I can see are green eyes, searing into me, as he forces me to do his bidding.
“Maeve, pretty princess, look at me,” Lucifer demands, but I won’t.
I can’t.
If I look at the imp now, he will taint Lucifer’s perfect face with false imagery of his own.
Right now, all I can see is him.
And I don’t want to open my eyes again.
I don’t want to have to look at him.
I don’t want another memory. Another flashback.
I don’t want my mind to be raped the same way my body was.
“What colour are my eyes, princess?” Lucifer murmurs, and he sounds closer now. He’s not touching me, not invading my space, but it feels weirdly comforting to have him here in the midst of my breakdown.
“Blue.” I choke the word out and rest my head against the wall. I’m exhausted. I’m drained.
Dirty.
Filthy.
Broken.
I’m so fucking broken.
But he’s stopped touching me for now, and that’s all that matters.
“His eyes are blue. Lucifer’s blue. Beautiful blue. Icy, gorgeous, bright. Not green. Never green. Not dark. Not bad,” I remind myself. “Never green.”
“Exactly,” he says, and I have no idea how he can read my mind. Am I saying these things out loud?
Am I betraying my mind by letting him hear my darkness?
“How many times do I need to tell you there’s nothing wrong with the darkness?” Lucifer asks, and he almost sounds amused. “Now, you’re doing beautifully, baby. Can you tell me what’s wrong with your arms?”
“Trapped. I want the cuffs off.” I know that’s me speaking, but the voice doesn’t even sound like me. The scratchiness in my throat hurts, the lack of emotion is scary, and the huskiness sounds like someone who smokes forty tabs a day.
I’m a fucking mess.
An ugly, fucked-up mess.
“There’s no cuffs on your wrists, little angel,” Draven says.
His voice causes me to freeze because I had no idea that he was even here. I bash my head against the wall, not on purpose, but the pain echoes through my skull.
I cry out, my panic clawing at my chest, and I can’t stop the overwhelm from taking over once more. I’m breaking down. I’m embarrassing myself in front of my boss.
Lucifer… he’s revered by my darkness, never once faltering or judging my pathetic attempts at coping with life. We’re in a mutually beneficial agreement, and he’s more than happy to deal with me if it means sticking it to his uncle.
But Draven? Perfect, beautiful Draven… he doesn’t need to see me like this. He deserves someone competent. Someone who can match his energy and smarts. He deserves better.
“The only thing on you is the cannula,” Draven adds. “It’s got your fluids because you’re a tad bit dehydrated.”
His soothing voice doesn’t have the usual effect. Instead, it just reminds me of what caused this panic. Of how desperately I wanted him there, to protect me. Of how much my chromius and I desired his ursarix’s brand of safety.
The box. The blood. The note.
The smell.
Oh, fuck, the smell. Putrid, decaying… it smelt like death.
My stomach lurches, bile rising in my throat. It burns, and I gag, unable to help myself. Someone thrusts a bucket under me, and I heave as my body forcefully tries to empty our entire insides into it.
There’s nothing to come up, though. Not really.
I’m empty.
“There, that’s it.” Lucifer’s voice is steady, but I hear the crack beneath it. “Get it out, princess. Just breathe through it.”
I can’t.
I can’t breathe. I can’t calm down.
I can’t be rational.
Sure, he’s dead. He’s gone from this Earth. He’s never going to be able to physically hurt me again.
But that doesn’t remove the trauma he’s caused. It doesn’t erase him from my mind. It doesn’t mean I can just get on with my life.
In my mind, he’s never going to be gone. His damage is never going to leave my soul.
A hand hovers near my shoulder but doesn’t touch. I glance up, half-wild, and meet Hadrian’s gaze—well, Hades to everyone who sees him like the devil he is.
Hades when he’s bristling. Hadrian when he’s kind.
Today, he’s both.
My heart stutters, and I can’t tell if it’s anxiety, repulsion, or embarrassment.
Likely a combination of all three.
His baby blue eyes are too much like Julian’s, and although they’re identical, the expression on his face is pure Hadrian. A grim smile, tension around his eyes, and a heavy weight seems to be pressing down on him.
“You’re doing amazing, love,” Hadrian says, nodding at me. “Do you think you could try moving over a little bit?”
Hades by my bedside, Draven at the window. Lucifer on my right. A nurse and a doctor at the bottom of my bed, near the doorway. Too many witnesses to an embarrassing breakdown.
Too many witnesses stopping me from doing something dangerous.
I focus on the medical staff. Both of them are tense, their scents clearly displaying their concern. And then I notice their uniforms.
Not the compound’s cold, clinical whites—whatever version of safe they pretended that was—but soft green scrubs with something infinitely better.
A tiny phoenix stitched over the heart, with the words The Amber Institute beneath it.
Atticus’s adorable emblem. His nerdy little play on words.
I could cry with relief.
I’m not back there.
I’m still safe.
Oh thank fuck.
Maybe… maybe these people don’t want to hurt me.
The nurse has long dark hair in a plait down her back, and the light green of her tunic is the same as her eyes. She’s about forty, maybe, and has a very kind aura.
A quokka shifter, I think, and I so badly wish I could see her shifted form. Her energy is so lovely, and it’s quite startling to feel the difference between her and the medical staff I’ve often encountered on the compound.
Even the male doctor has a calming presence. He’s a capybara, and I’m honestly pretty convinced that Atticus has got the coolest pride, full of the most amazing species.
And me.