Adrien #2
Then the world narrows to the seraphic sound of her pleasure spilling and echoing around the place like some ritual being taken right here.
My hands roam over her body, desperate to assemble this moment piece by piece, to brand it into my nerves so I can never lose it again.
But there’s nothing.
The altar dissolves together with my bride lying on top of it and the stained glass fractures into blinding white.
And then—
I realize I’m waking up. My head throbs and bitterness sits at the back of my throat, replacing her entirely.
I force my eyes open.
The world swims slightly, tilting sideways. I roll onto my stomach and press my palms under me, pushing myself up from the bed with a guttural groan.
Why the fuck do I feel like a bus ran over me?
My limbs feel delayed, like they belong to someone else and I’m borrowing them badly. I push myself up to my knees in a failing attempt to get off the bed. My hands fumble helplessly over the sheets, over the pillows, but it’s empty. I’m alone. The bed is fucking empty.
She was just here. She fell asleep in my arms. I locked her in so this never happens again. I made sure she couldn’t run away. I made sure none of us will wake up alone again.
No. No. No.
The panic suddenly spikes higher.
Did I take something again? Did I slip? Did I fall into that synthetic trance, digging another hole through my own imagination?
No, I fucking didn’t. I didn’t. Not like that and not for weeks. I haven’t taken anything except the prescribed medication.
And yet my head feels scrambled and foggy.
I’ve woken up like this enough times to know exactly what this is. The chemical aftermath. It just doesn’t make any sense right now. I haven’t slipped.
My attempt to breathe normally and calm the incoming panic attack is a complete failure. I scan the room for proof that I haven’t gone fully crazy.
Light seeps through the balcony doors—it’s daylight. And it’s her room. In our manor. My hand clamps onto the pillow she fell asleep on with her hair still wet from yesterday’s shower. My grip is desperate as I drag it to my face and inhale like my life depends on it.
Almond shampoo, faint, but still there.
Good.
Her clothes are still lying on the floor in the same disarray she left them in yesterday.
She was here. She slept in my arms. Just moments ago.
So calm the fuck down.
I clumsily push myself upright, trying to decode what happened. My eyes fall to the empty glass on the nightstand, the one I drank from before falling asleep with her and my mouth falls open when the realization hits.
Did she drug me?
She fucking drugged me.
That cunning, manipulative little vixen drugged me.
The anger burns cleaner than the panic did.
There’s her little notebook she scribbles in right next to the glass and it’s open. I grab it, squinting my eyes, but my blood is already boiling before I finish reading her little devious morning note.
I’m sorry, but I need to see him and you wouldn’t let me.
At least now we’re even.
“Fuck!”
I shoot up from the bed, the room around me spinning, so I slap myself once, twice.
Wake the fuck up.
The terror is so sharp it slices straight through the comedown. My body sobers itself out of pure fear and survival instinct. I grab my pants from the floor with shaking hands and pull them on too quickly, nearly losing balance again, then I force my legs toward the door.
Now we’re even.
What the hell does she mean by that?
Even for the drugging? Or… or for leaving her?
Please let it be the drugging. Please let it just be the drugging.
My mind splits into frantic internal prayers, each one fighting to be the loudest.
Please don’t run away from me. Please don’t go to him. Please don’t let him touch you. Please don’t let him look at you.
Please, please, please just come back.
I take the stairs two at a time, the dizziness fading not because it’s gone but because fear is stronger and I hear footsteps behind me.
“Adrien,” Kas calls to me, but I keep going. “What’s happening?” He keeps asking when I don’t respond or turn around.
Just as my feet hit solid ground under the staircase, I find her standing in the lobby, unmoving.
My breath halts mid-inhale, holding itself.
There’s a smudge of blood on her cheek. But it doesn’t take long for me to notice that it really is just a smear of blood, absolutely not belonging to her.
Relief collides with rage so violently inside me, it makes my jaw clench. Then our eyes clash.
It doesn’t feel like a stare, it feels like impact, because the air between us is rapidly filling with something dense and combustible—betrayal, fury, fear—pouring off both of us until it’s thick enough to choke on. Everything around is suspended.
She touched him. It’s his blood.
My jaw clenches so hard the pain awakens every fucking nerve in me.
She finally moves. Barely. Just the slightest movement of her head, slowly moving from side to side, like she can’t believe what she sees.
Or what she saw.
Two silent tears slide down her face, carving wet lines over her cheeks, and she doesn’t break eye contact for even a second. She makes me watch it instead.
I gulp.
“What have you done to him,” she states, not really asking.
Her voice is stripped of volume and hysteria. It’s just pure disbelief and aversion.
I stay quiet. If I speak, the pride will slip out. I can’t hide it, not really. What I did to him sits in me like a trophy. So I choose silence instead.
More tears slide down her face, her brows knit together, holding everything else in. But I can’t stop looking at the smear of his blood on her cheek. The contrast makes something dark rise inside me. Jealousy so primal it feels prehistoric.
Her lips press into a thin, trembling line.
“Did you kiss him?” I grit out.
She doesn’t even acknowledge the question.
“What have you done to him!”
Even though I can feel her slipping through my fingers all over again, even though I recognize that exact fracture forming in her eyes, I can’t fight my own mouth. It just slips out of me.
“Nothing even close to what he deserves,” I reply. “But he’s still alive, just as you asked. You’re welcome.”
The words leave me steady, cold and unapologetic. I don’t even try to hide the lack of sympathy. Not for him and definitely not after what he did.
She scoffs, silently, the act pushing more tears out of her eyes and that finally dissolves every ounce of anger or betrayal inside of me. I can feel my face physically soften and my insides painfully melt under the only remaining emotion—fear.
The colossal, animalistic fear eating me alive right now and right here, in front of her. I exhale a shaky breath, waiting for any word coming from her, like a man standing before judgment.
She opens her mouth, trying to speak, but she looks like she doesn’t recognize me again. As if I’m only a familiar nightmare.
“I almost forgot what a lunatic you are,” she says, landing a punch into my stomach with those words. “What a monster you are,” she continues and the fear grows.
“Don’t say that,” I choke out, but it sounds weak and guilty.
“How are you different from him?” she asks, and the question slices cleaner than the insults.
Then her gaze shifts beside me, that’s when I realize Kasien is standing next to me the whole time, being a witness to this.
“And you?” she snaps at him. “Huh?” Her voice climbs, cracks, vibrates dangerously on the edge of something uncontrollable.
Different.
How different am I?
I would never hurt you. I would never strip you of freedom. I would never force myself on you like that.
The answers line up automatically.
We both stay silent, and as I recite those statements in my head, I realize that anything I try to tell myself is a lie.
I basically did every one of those things.
“You all just move me around. All of you,” she bites out. “Trying to shackle me.” Her gaze lands on me again, with a heart-stopping intensity, and there’s something devastatingly clear in her eyes now. “You’re all the same,” she yells through the sobs.
“Nat,” I force out, “you don’t mean that.”
I’m losing her.
Dorian bursts into the lobby, breath ragged, terror written all over his face like something has already gone irreversibly wrong.
“Lucien is gone,” he says, his eyes flicking between me and Kas, searching or waiting for a reaction.
“What the fuck, Natalya!” Kasien shouts at her, fury exploding outward in a way mine doesn’t. He doesn’t wait for an answer and storms past us, disappearing toward the basement.
“What have you done,” I snap at her, louder than I’d like to.
The fear of losing everything again claws up the inside of my throat and presses behind my eyes.
Meanwhile, she looks at me like I’m something diseased.
“You’re all jokes and cockiness,” she says, her voice shaking but sharp, “because you just hide how deeply deranged you are.”
Just like that, she continues to stab. Every word feels like she just sinks the knife deeper and then twists it.
“Everyone knows that,” she adds.
Another twist of the blade.
For a second, it doesn’t even feel like her speaking. It feels like something inside her has stepped forward, something darker and exhausted that has been waiting to say this for a long time.
She’s sobbing as she says it—the words hurt her too. I can see it. They tear through her just as they tear through me, but her mouth won’t stop.
“Nat please, don’t say that.”
Salty liquid coils at my lips as I try to speak but I swallow it down when I realize I need to take it. I told her she could take it out on me if she needed to. And this is just that. This is just the pain talking.
This isn’t final. It can’t be final.
She’ll get it out. She’ll empty it into me and then we’ll fix it. We always fix it. She’ll calm down. She’ll let me back in.
She loves me. I know she does.
“I’m so tired of deciding who is good and who is bad,” she says, desperation wrapping itself around every syllable.
“I’d never ask you to decide anything like that,” I say, stepping toward her. “Baby, I promise.”