Beatriz Gil

I love having him look up at me with those angry, bratty eyes. I want to tame him. To watch the moment he realizes that he can fight me, but he can’t win.

His voice is clear and…burdened. As I stand and listen, I realize it sounds like he’s lived multiple times and gotten let down every time.

I just want someone to save me. Someone to make me safe.

Somehow, I can never keep myself safe. How is it that I am never safe? My chest hurts. No one is ever safe. Not even the ones I try to protect. I want Buff.

“You suffer so sweetly for me.”

Ronan is into me. Suddenly, it feels like the weight of the world is gone. Like people aren’t out to kill us. Like there is no injustice. Like I’m not alone.

“You know, sometimes, I want to punch you in the face... And sometimes, I just want to kiss the fucking attitude right out of you.”

I can feel Ronan’s heart pounding under his shirt. I want to trap it. Trap him down so it never stops beating. So he never leaves me.

“Such a good brat for me.” Logan strokes Ronan. “I love when you defy me.”

“I just want to make both of them safe. I want to make Ronan feel safe to be soft. And I want to make Dakota feel safe to be hard.

‘But if you have to pick between being fair and being happy…why don’t you pick being happy?’ He sounds….sad. “I don’t get to pick.” I stare at the bottom of the sink, the drain where everything gets washed away. ‘Maybe you do.’

Ronan and I are fucking bombs, just waiting to be triggered. It’s dangerous and destructive and fucking addictive.

Ronan Carter is passively suicidal. He doesn’t want to live, but he doesn’t want to die.

I don’t think Ronan wants to stay alive. And that makes me want to implode. And then, instead of imploding, I decide that Ronan doesn’t have to want to keep living. I’ll just force the will to live into him.

“So you,” I point at Dakota without looking at him, “are going to keep going. Keep sucking him off until he comes. No running.” I move to Ronan, who has sat back up. “And you are going to start living.”

“Please, Ronan.” I’m scared. I’m so fucking scared. But at some point, I either have to die or decide to live. Before, living was always alone. But maybe, just maybe, right now, I have someone else? That has to be worth something, right? Finally, in a quiet voice, I whisper, “Okay. Make me.”

They’re safe. My men are safe. They’re fucking safe, and I’m going to be the one to keep them that way.

I still feel dirty. Dirty and nasty in a way that I control. It’s hot and sexy and safe, and I fucking love it.

I dreamed of the impossible: of falling in love with someone who, at least in theory, would hold some power over my fate. Those hopes were delicate as glass—thin enough to shatter at the slightest touch of reality. But in that damp cell, surrounded by the quiet sobs of younger boys who had given up dreaming, they were the only thing that held me together.

The sight of that small, defiant spot of color on the gray floor, the thought of him having something, anything, that wasn't tainted by the Syndicate… it was worth it.

Corpses had a way of refusing to stay in the ground.

Ren was my anchor, my safety net, the one person in the world who'd chosen to save me when everyone else had written me off as expendable.

Touch meant danger. Touch meant someone wanted something from you that you probably didn't want to give.

He deserved time to heal, to grow, to figure out who he was when he wasn't defined by trauma and fear. He deserved the chance to be young, even if that youth had been stolen from him once already. And I deserved to burn in hell for the way I still wanted him.

“I don't think I'd be here, like this, if it wasn't for you. You… you helped me remember how to breathe.”

How do you tell someone you think about them constantly but you're terrified of ruining them? How do you explain that every time you look at them, you see the cell you pulled them out of—and you're afraid that's all you'll ever be to them? A reminder, wrapped in flesh and bone, of the worst time in their life.

He tastes like home and something uniquely him, something warm and safe and perfect.

“I like everything about you, Firecracker. The way you see right through all my bullshit and call me on it. The way you refuse to let the world make you small.”

“Thank you. For trusting me with this. For choosing me.”
“Thank you for letting me choose.”

I don't know what to expect from consensual sex. I have no frame of reference for this—for touch that asks instead of takes, for hands that worship instead of hurt.

"I want to show you what it feels like to be touched with love instead of violence, to be wanted instead of used. You deserve to know what it's like to come apart in someone's arms because you want to, not because you have to.”

"You're what holds us together, what makes us whole. Without you, there is no us.”

“This is what a mated, claimed Omega is supposed to be. Safe. Wanted. Fed from our hands and wrapped in our scent. Your only job now is to be healthy—to let us take care of you, spoil you, keep you so full of us that you forget what it ever felt like to be alone.”

How both the self-destructive and self-preserving desires could exist within me at the same time, I had no idea.

Tough little rabbit, ready to fight the wolf. Too bad for him, the wolf doesn’t care how much the rabbit fights back or tries to get away.

He was scared and called it rage—perhaps it was both.

“I don’t want you,” he said, and he didn’t.

“You’re allowed to want me.”

“I hate you.”

“You’re allowed to hate me too.”

“Why am I drawn to you?” I thought out loud, wondering if he had the answers that I didn’t.

“Because something in you is the same as something in me. Feral dogs seek feral dogs.”

He was hurting, like me. Maybe our pain wasn’t the same, but both did what all pain does—it isolated. It was why Jonah lashed out, why he glared and snapped at anyone who got too close. He’d been alone in his pain for far too long, like me.

“I’ve got you. You’ve been alone for so long, Rabbit, but you aren’t anymore. I won’t ever let you be again.”

I was burned and he was frozen and neither of us knew how to love at the correct temperature because we’d never known it. It would take time for us to learn how to touch each other in a way that didn’t feel like violence.

I wanted him to always be like that—needy and demanding, entirely unreasonable.

I’d always found his rage so beautiful, but it was so much more when it burned on my behalf. It was ethereal. It was sanctifying. It was holy. No one had ever cried for me before.

So this is what comfort feels like. This was what it felt like to be held by hands that would never harm me, to be touched by a soul that wouldn’t leave me.

The people I did know weren’t mean. Not always. They just didn’t know what to do with me. Most of them. But that was okay. I didn’t know what to do with me either.

“People could be cruel. They could be beautiful, but they could be cruel too.”

I wasn’t looking for the incredible buried in the ordinary.

I was often at war with myself over the little things. What was right and wrong. What was acceptable and what wasn’t. What my place was and if I belonged.

So he pressed his forehead against mine and breathed me in and there was that sun, okay? That sun between us, that bond that burned and burned and burned because he’d given it to me. Because he’d chosen me. And I got to choose him back.

“Why are you bringing her flowers?” I asked. “Because Mom said it was nice to do and would get her on my good side when I asked her if it’d be okay that I kept you for the rest of my life”

“And I’ve been waiting,” Joe said. “For him to look at me like I looked at him. And he finally did. He finally did. And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it stays like that. Because I want him for always.

I knew the day I met you that I would do anything for you. I would do anything to make you happy because no one had ever smelled like you did. It was candy canes and pinecones. It was epic and awesome. And it was home. You smelled like my home, Ox.

I wasn’t very good with Internet stuff, so I googled “what to do when your future werewolf mate/boyfriend/best friend courts you and brings you a dead rabbit.” First, there was a lot of porn. Then I found a recipe for Maltese rabbit stew. It was delicious. The stew, not the porn. The porn was weird.

You’re alive. If you can take another breath, if you can take another step, then you’re not broken. Battered, maybe. Bruised. Cracked. But never broken.

A shattered heart can be heavier than a broken limb.

But hearts are a funny thing; they beat strongly in our chests, even though they can shatter at the slightest pressure.

"The day I saw you, I knew things would never be the same. You’re all-encompassing. You dwarf everything else. When I see you, Ox, all I see is you.”

“Everything must be perfect. He’ll expect nothing less. I expect nothing less.”

“I couldn’t let him leave.”

“We tried to make this house a home.”

“Some truths are so terrible they must remain unspoken. Because if you speak them aloud, you can never take them back. They grow roots. They stay and they fester.”

“The darkness starts small and then grow, until your vision is monochrome.”

“Until death do us part.”

“The whole house is starting to feel different; darker, yet more alive.”

“Seems like I already got you your next sacrifice.”

“The house is weeping.”

“My teeth lie like marbles beside my broken skull.”

“Lies contaminate. Lies destroy.”