Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
A hand comes to my shoulder. “You fucking with your mother?” Dad squeezes tightly, bending to my level. “I don’t recommend selling girlfriends on the podium, son. Especially ones we may need soon.”
He doesn’t get it. She is hopeless to me as she is. I want the crazy, the fucking Lunatic of Luna. She is hiding too deep inside to come out, and as far as I know, based on the past three years, she’s healed now. No version of her will be able to force that girl back to the surface.
I am done.
“I don’t need her anymore.” His face turns to me from the corner of my eyes. “I’m done with her.”
I tap my glass on the table, lifting my gaze to Vaden. Always on guard, he watches our exchange carefully.
“And what exactly do you mean by that?” Dad asks, lowering his voice. “Her disorder is irrelevant—” He pauses, and when I give him my full attention. I see the mechanics turning in his head.
A strangled laugh leaves him. “You little shit. You’ve been trying to draw her out?”
Dad is rarely pissed off, but when he is, you can bet it is because of something I’ve done. “Priest. That’s a dangerous game you’ve been playing, and not at all what we told you to do. You were to train her the same way we did you so that she didn’t have to go through it the same way you did.”
“You gave me the one girl that I’ve ever cared for.” I follow the green in his eyes. “The one girl who protected me the same way I her. The one girl who stood in front of our moms to tell them that she killed the member of Kiznitch, when really?” His smirk turns to a frown as realization sinks in. “It was me.” I turn back to the stage. “I owe her. She was pushed out of her own organization all because I wanted to see what a human looked like from the inside.”
“Jesus, son.” Dad exhales, his arm slipping around my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
I need a distraction. As soon as Dad leaves, I find Vaden once more. “Care to play a game?”
“Hmmm…what kind?” he asks, eagerly sitting forward and not caring at all what it looks like to the people around us.
My finger taps against the table. “How about we start something new.”
“Hmmm…” War murmurs from beside me. “Not sure I trust where this is going.”
Good. That means his instincts aren’t as shit as they seem when Halen’s not around.
“Go on.”
“A hunt. Similar to what we’ve done to her already, only, we use our enemies to find her.”
“This to see if it triggers her?” Vaden asks, holding close. “Yes. But it can’t happen yet. First, we need her to fear them.”
Neither of them get a chance to answer because Mom swats the back of my head, fluffing up her dress and taking a seat on the chair beside mine, right where Halen was.
“Why?” Unlike Dad, she doesn’t lower her voice, and unlike Dad, she’s been pissed at me often and never hid the fact.
“Why what?” I slide my glass across the table.
“Priest D’mon Hayes. Don’t try to play coy with me. You forget I made you.” Her fingers come to my chin, and she forces my eyes onto hers. Mom’s aging exactly the way she wants to. With her best friend Botox and side-piece filler. Pretty sure she’d hit me if I mentioned it again, since the last time I asked why there were doctors here pumping fat into her and her friends’ faces, she almost chased me out of the kitchen with a butcher knife. “Son.”
But on the same coin, I never need to hide from her.
Mom knows everything about me, including the dirty parts that I try to hide. She never mentions them, never tries to polish them with gold and glamorize them. She’s allowed me to be the unpolished version of myself in all its ugly gore and simply loves me anyway.
“Because she’s no use to me. To us.”
Mom’s eye twitches.
Dad told her everything, so she knows about Luna and why she is with me. She knows it was me who killed the Axton Brother of Kiznitch. I saw it in her eyes that very day that Luna—Darling—was bleeding out in the snow, telling them it was her who did it. She helped after the fact. What we did that day continues to turn my vision red. She took his organs out with a glint in her eye that I thought only existed inside me. We laughed.
Joked.
She removed his scalp and wore it as a hat while singing the lyrics to a Slipknot song. I drew the line when she cut herself to see if her blood was the same color as his. Crazy bitch.
Mom hesitates, placing her hands on her lap. “Selling her to your enemy is not the answer. You can’t help what happens once she’s there.” She turns over her shoulder, enough to gesture to me but not enough to show her interest.