17. Octavia
17
Octavia
“ S tupid.” Swing.
“Controlling.” Swing.
“Bull headed.” Swing.
“Manic, psychotic, bastards!”
I scream each word, swinging my bat, destroying everything in their room. Bastian’s hiding spot for all his favourite weapons is still the same place, and the wooden bat covered in barbed wire screamed my name, tempting me to pick it up and permanently damage something that belonged to them like they did to me.
Nothing in my life has been in my control. Not my clothes, my hair, my make-up, what I eat. Nothing . I try to take control of my body in any way I can with what little means I have. They took that away just a little more with something permanent—another thing someone controlled.
“Fuck you,” I screech, swinging my bat against a huge wooden chest, hitting it repeatedly until my joints burned. Black feathers fall out of the cracks I’m making, floating in the air around me.
“What the…” I mutter, a feather flying into my face, tickling my nose. The feeling of déjà vu swamps my veins, the image extremely familiar.
“Wow. Now this is what I call a tantrum. What the fuck did they do, little mouse?”
Ghost’s deep voice makes me jump, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. He's right behind me, silently entering the room, his footsteps so quiet that I didn't even realise it.
“I am not having a tantrum,” I seethe, taking a few steps back. Dorian would scold me for that move. ‘Never show them any weakness, even when you’re so terrified, you think your heart is about to stop.’
I’ve never been fantastic at that. I was born wrong in more ways than one when it comes to this family. Prey in a family of predators, they always used to say, but they used to promise that they would be my demons in a world of monsters.
My demons. Huh.
“You really don’t call this a tantrum?” Ghost extends his arms, swooping around at the mess I caused.
Clothes are scattered everywhere on the floor, the wardrobes and drawers splintered and shattered. Their mirrors are smashed, Dorian’s chair has chunks taken out of it where the barbed wire caught it. The mattress on the bed is destroyed.
It’s not like I hate their names on my body. In fact, when I think about it, a warm glow seeps through my stomach at being branded, being owned by them. But it should have been my choice. Still, I might have gone a bit overboard on destroying all their stuff, especially the two things I left on the tattered bed.
I took Bastian’s favourite knife and hammered it until it was bent into a weird shape, rendering it unusable. Before I destroyed the knife, I used it to stab and rip the pages of Dorian’s favourite book: a signed first edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Shit, I took it too far.
“Someone’s looking nervous. Poor little mouse scared?” Ghost taunts as I bite my bottom lip, staring at the unsalvageable items.
“Shut up,” I snap, pointing the bat at him. “And stop calling me a mouse. I’m not a child for you to torment.”
He tilts his head to the side, examining me. It’s not in a creepy, pervy way; he’s not checking me out, more like sizing me up.
“You’re right, you’re not a child anymore.” He takes a few steps forward, placing a hand on my shoulder. I hold the bat under his chin, pushing it up, but he stays unbothered, maybe a bit amused.
“You’re not the scared little mouse you were as a child, but do you think you have what it takes to survive in this bloodline? To survive them ?” He purses his lips, shaking his head. “I’m not sure.”
He lets me go with a jolt, and I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut because I don’t know the answer to his question. I don’t know if I can survive it all, but I do know I will die trying if it means I get to have them, no matter for how short a time.
Ghost grabs the chest I was smashing on the floor, still just about in one piece, and eyes it with disdain, grunting as he picks it up. As he gets to the door, he turns, giving me a look I can’t quite figure out.
“I didn’t do or show you those things when you were younger to torment you.” He blows a strand of platinum blond hair out of his eyes, the small wrinkles around them deepening.
“Then why did you?” I ask, frowning. I always assumed he did it because he was a deranged bastard like everyone else.
He sighs heavily, looking me up and down, but again, not in a creepy way. “I was trying to make sure you made it into adulthood within the bloodline. To make sure you survived , Octavia.”
He pauses for a second, and it looks like he’s about to say something else, but two throats clear loudly, interrupting us. He twists to find Bastian and Dorian glaring at him. Bas has his arms crossed, clenching his hands, while Rian raises an eyebrow, a challenging gaze in his eyes.
Ghost turns around once more to me, a small smile on his face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile. “Luckily I wasn’t the only one trying.”
He bows his head to me once and walks past my brothers, leaving me more confused than ever.
“What was that about?” I mutter, unsure if I’m asking them or myself. The question doesn’t matter, though, as they don’t answer me.
Dorian and Bastian slowly walk into the room, their shoes crunching on broken glass, kicking bits of wood and clothing out of their path, their attention on the items I left on the bed.
“I didn’t mean to,” I say straight away, taking a step closer but halting as they pick up their items.
Bastian gasps audibly, clutching the knife to his chest, rocking and soothing it like a baby. “Aww, my poor girl. What happened to you?”
“Bas-”
“It looks like this was done intentionally, angel. Pray tell, how did you accidentally do this?” Dorian places the book down gently on the bed before twisting towards me, pursing his lips, waiting for an answer.
I shuffle from side to side, the barbed wire bat still clutched in my hand. I can’t let go of it.
“I… I was angry. I wasn’t thinking straight, I wanted to hurt you as much as you hurt me,” I confess softly, feeling childish in my tit for tat.
“She will never be the same,” Bastian cries dramatically. “Ruined. My poor baby ruined, and I wasn’t here to watch her last moments. Oh, sweet, dark mother, I’m begging you to bring her back to life. Take away my grief.”
He twirls, falling gracefully onto the bed, the back of his hand on his forehead, still clutching the knife to his chest, only laying there for about a second before sitting back up, sending me a wink. Half my worry and fear disappears at his playfulness, and I let out a small giggle, unable to hold it in. Bas is never mad at me, no matter what I do. Dorian, on the other hand…
“You wanted to hurt us as much as we hurt you?” He phrases it as a question, but he doesn’t expect me to answer. “How have we hurt you, Octavia? By protecting you all your life? By being your constant, your lifeline, by making us yours as much as you are ours?”
The rage from earlier trickles in, and the more he talks, the more red I see. My grip on the bat tightens, my fingers flexing around the handle.
“By taking away a choice about my body. My body, Dorian, not yours,” I say, slicing the bat through the air. “That tattoo should have been my choice, as well as having a ring tattooed on my finger. You don’t get to decide that for me. Everything in my goddamn life has always been decided, but my body is mine .”
Dorian’s face morphs into a smile so fast, it has my emotions pausing. “That’s my girl.” He smirks, Bastian joining him with a matching grin.
“What?”
They take a step towards me, but I hold up the bat, keeping distance between us. My mind is doing somersaults.
“Easy, pretty girl. We wanted you to react this way. I didn’t think you would go for our second most prized possessions, but we wanted you to lose your shit on us.”
“Again, what ?” I shout, swinging the bat as they take another step.
“It was a test, I suppose you can say, as well as a punishment for breaking the rules. I needed to see you’d push back,” Dorian says, pushing up against the bat, the top resting on his chest. “You’re ours, little sister. We want to consume you, fucking devour you, but we don’t want to you to get lost in us.”
“We want you to get lost with us,” Bastian says. “Follow us down the path to hell, pretty girl.”
Okay. Okay . I can kind of see where they were coming from, but-
“Was there seriously no other way to take this little test without you putting your names on my ass like some fucking stamp?”
Fucking men!
Their heads swivel to gaze at each other as they shrug their shoulders and speak in sync. “No.”
“Of course not.” I sigh, lowering the bat.
As soon as I drop it, they slot into their spots, Bas holding me tight, letting me feel his hardness against my ass. “That was so fucking hot, seeing you with my bat. I want to watch you bash someone’s head in with it, covering yourself in blood, and then I’ll fuck you over their still-warm corpse.”
I shiver, partly in disgust and partly totally turned on. So fucked up.
Dorian takes the bat from my hand, peeling my fingers off it, dropping it to the floor. He brings my hand to his lips, kissing my ring finger with a look in his eyes that has my heart racing.
“We’re clear on the no tattooing Octavia’s finger until she agrees , right?” I say, a flutter of panic rising in my chest. Bastian’s arms slowly wrap further around my waist, and I try to take my hand from Dorian’s grasp, but he doesn’t let go.
“ Right ?”
Dorian laughs deeply, shaking his head, a haunting, feral gleam in his eyes. “I don’t think we agreed to that, did we, brother?”
Bastian laughs manically, lifting my feet from the ground in another bear hug. “Nah, I don’t remember agreeing to that. Especially not after she destroyed the two things that are almost as precious to us as she is.”
Wait, I’m the most precious thing to them? They said the things I destroyed were the second most, both of which I got as birthday gifts for their eighteenth.
“Tie her to the bed, Bastian. Time for our wife to wear our ring.”
Wife?
Bastian carries me towards the bed, and Dorian pulls red ropes from inside his jacket. It snaps me to life, and I thrash in his grip.
“Son’s of bitches. You bastards, I haven’t said yes yet!”
“Exactly, pretty girl. You just said yet, so that means you’re going to at some point. We're just jumping ahead a few chapters,” Bastian says before he nips my shoulder.
“Motherfuckers, that’s not the point.”
Bas throws me onto the bed, laying on top of me as I try to sit up and flee. He spreads my limbs like a goddamn starfish, all the while grinning in my face as Dorian ties me up.
I’m so going to get them for this.