“You think this is guns blazing? You ain’t seen nothing.”

  She hopped away like a rabbit and headed for the door. “Hurry and get dressed. We need to be at your mama’s, and you’ve got a lot to tell me.”

  I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest once she was gone. Our whole interaction just went down as if I hadn’t been gone for any time at all. It was weird. Of all people I expected her to the angriest, but she was just…Bella.

  I spotted them when I came out the bathroom, fresh from a shower.

  It was enough of a surprise to stop me dead in my tracks.

  “Where the hell does he get these?” I wandered over to the dresser to take a closer look.

  “I asked my uncle where to find some yesterday.”

  I slightly jumped at the sound of his voice. I hadn’t seen him standing in the doorway, too distracted by the sight of my flowers. It felt like forever since I’d gotten these, and at one point I thought I never would again.

  I was such an idiot.

  Who would give up a man like him?

  “I’ve always liked them,” I admitted.

  He walked over to stand beside me, his mint scent assaulting my sense of smell.

  “Is that why you just sounded sad?”

  “No, that was because we wasted so much time being stupid.”

  “You did that.”

  I whipped my head around and glared at him.

  “I was joking.” He raised his hands up in mock self-defense and laughed. “We didn’t waste time, Lils. We’re still young. This shit wouldn’t have worked any better if it were easier.”

  “So, you’re saying you would do this all over again?”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  Would I?

  I was nothing more than a naïve girl when I made a promise to a beautiful boy with a tragic smile. He’d grown so much since then. Jaded. Unhinged. So had the darkness within him. But he was so fucking incredible in my eyes. If I had to do this all over again, knowing what I did now, I’d still choose to run away with him.

  I only wished I could fill the void he had inside him and make everything better. Things didn’t work that way, though.

  If all it took were wishes to alter the lives we lived, no one would ever have to go through anything bad. The only one who could heal Samael was himself. I would still be here, reminding him he didn’t have to face his struggles on his own.

  “I’d do it again. Maybe skip the part where I almost became someone’s livestock, though.”

  He grinned and took my hand, weaving our fingers together. “You remember the promise we made?”

  “You made me bleed for it. I’ll never forget it.”

  “Think you can keep it now?”

  “I will,” I affirmed, reciting the words in my head.

  For worse or for better. Always fall together, never fall apart.

  Oddly, this made me think of a story I read when I was a younger.

  Maybe it was being back here that conjured up the tale again. I had an answer to the question now, too.

  We were poetry, the kind that bled and wept—a tragically beautiful ode. It didn’t matter how hard we fought or the pain we inevitably caused; we loved harder. Neither of us could be without the other. We couldn’t escape whatever invisible chain kept us bound together.

  So, which one of us was Icarus, and who was the sun?

  Well, I think it worked both ways. We were drawn to one another, knowing it could be deadly, but if one fell, we’d go down together. My mother had said it best. Our love story wasn’t a fairytale or anything to be envious of, but it was ours.

  Epilogue Two

  Two weeks.

  That’s how long I’d stay here before going home. Lilith had no idea we’d be relocating to a new location—somewhere better and safer than the lodge.

  Bella sidled up to me, following my gaze. “Aren’t you going to join them?”

  I watched Lilith and Cam talk, side by side near the bonfire. My mom and Blue sat across from them, checking on me every few minutes.

  “Nah. They should have some time together.”

  “Hm. What’s the deal with him?” She nodded her head in the general direction of Jin.

  “Nothing. He’s being himself.”

  “A statue is himself?”

  “For the most part. Why are you bothering me?”

  Almost everyone seemed to be here aside from Addy. She’d barricaded herself away somewhere, and Nyx hadn’t come back from doing a well-check yet. Her fuck buddy had gone with her. Thank Satanas for his blessings. I couldn’t deal with him trying to make small talk with me.

  “Stop being so unapproachable and smile,” Bella reprimanded jokingly.

  “You can go away now.”

  She laughed and came even closer, turning serious with her next question.

  “Why did you never tell her I was in on everything?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I called you Malum and realized she didn’t know. I had to smooth it over during breakfast. You could’ve told her.”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going to tell Lilith a lot of things.

  I wanted to open up to her.

  That didn’t mean sharing shit that would potentially hurt her. I couldn’t predict how she’d react to knowing Bella had been in on my plan since being taken from the abandoned gym; therefore, I wouldn’t say anything. I didn’t want my cousin to be potentially hurt, either.

  “Let me be the bad guy. I’m used to it.”

  She frowned, shaking her head.

  “And a heads up, Amo and Aurora will be here in two days with some friends of Lilith’s. I wanted to let you know he was coming so you didn’t get blindsided.”

  From my peripheral, I saw her blue eyes studying me closely. With a slight sigh she stepped back. “You’re not a bad guy, Mal. You’re the opposite.”

  She walked away, stopping halfway back to where the fire was when she saw her mother approaching with her little brother.

  “You made the right choice.”

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough.”

  My father came forward, shedding the cloak of the shadows as if they were his second skin.

  “I agree with him,” Uncle Romero cut in, approaching from the opposite direction with Cobra at his side.

  Great. It was my lucky fucking day.

  My dad laughed, picking up on my annoyance.

  “You’re going to be good to her,” Cobra stated.

  “I always have been. To both of your daughters.”

  Yeah, it was a dig at him. I didn’t care. Who the fuck was he?

  Romero laughed softly. “The more I’m around you, the more I like you.”

  Cobra grinned, catching me off guard for once. “I just wanted to hear your response. I’m not going to lecture you.”

  “He doesn’t need it anyway,” my dad replied.

  I sensed a bit of hostility there. Dad was right, though.

  I wasn’t going to listen to a speech on how to treat Lilith. I valued her more than anything. It’s what had me anticipating the day I would leave here and take her home.

  She couldn’t see what I did. The way she saw herself hurt my fucking heart. This empire I created wasn’t solely mine. It was ours. I would stick to the shadows and she could sit on the throne. I just needed her by my side.

  I would make sure she didn’t ever have to compare herself to anyone else, because they’d all be fucking beneath her.

  We’d made it through some fucked-up situations together. We’d learned to thrive in a world of darkness. Darker times were ahead of us, but it was better to face the abyss together than apart. At least now we wouldn’t be doing it alone.

  MISFITS

  Cam’s story is up next!

  Add to your TBR!

  Please note: Cam’s story is excessively violent and contains extreme triggers, not limited to sadism, cannibalism, DP, heavy drug use, and dub-con.)

  Want a sneak peek at my next (not yet announced) villainess?

  Check out a short excerpt—>

  MISFITS

  *?*

  Vomit dripped from my naked chest to the ground, where my blood continued to pool. My cracked ribs made the tiniest expansion of my lungs pure agony, like I was breathing kerosene.

  My arms felt as if they’d tear from their sockets at any second. The chains digging into my wrists wouldn’t loosen no matter what I did, and struggling seemed to imbed the hooks in my back even deeper.

  Laughter and the scent of Bud filled the air. They were celebrating their slaughter. Their endless decapitation. They were ruthless with it.

  My friends and family lay around me dying or in pieces. Some were still trying to fight back, but it was pointless.

  We’d lost.

  It was over.

  Our entire faction would be wiped out by morning. The home we’d protected and worked so hard to ensure thrived would become these fucking monsters. Another day of war in the Badlands.

  Tilly’s corpse was still being raped somewhere behind me. I could hear the grunts and slapping of skin against her lifeless flesh.

  I didn’t want to see any more.

  I didn’t want to hear this.

  But I couldn’t look away either.

  Even as Tyson mouthed the words and begged me. My vision was blurry from a mix of tears and lightheadedness—I still wouldn’t look away from him. I knew it was degrading, the ultimate form of humiliation before they inevitably killed him, but he was the last connection I had.

  They rammed the end of the rake in and out of his ass, the wood cracked and bloodied.

  His screams had stalled a while ago, and the sight of the blood seemed to excite them even more. His eyes were wide, the whites rolling as they went deeper and harder. When the man with the leather mask entered the garage, I knew it was the end for him. I almost sobbed harder from the sheer relief. I begged silently for them to hurry up and kill him just to end his suffering.

  He approached Tyson while looking straight at me. His companions made sure they held him down—as if he could go anywhere after what they had done to him.

  Leveling the bloodied machete above Tyson’s head, he began to hack away. I shut my eyes now, another burst of bile threatening to spew from my mouth. The sound of wet, tearing flesh…I couldn’t block it out. I tucked my chin to my chest, knowing I would be next.

  Misfits:

  Coming late 2021/ Early 2022

  DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND

  Periculum: Unus

  Chapter One

  They say that some of the best memories can come from a bad idea.

  I can personally vouch for the truth in that. But you know what else is true? The consequences that will be waiting to remind you of all your dumbass decisions.

  You’d have thought I’d learned this lesson eons ago, yet here I was, reaping everything I’d sown.

  Painfully.

  Too many shots of tequila combined with too few hours of recovery made for a deadly combination.

  I knew better than to drink the way I had the night before, even if I did have a laundry list of valid excuses to do so.

  Unfortunately for me, this never worked out well. I had never been the kind of person who could drown their sorrows at the bottom of a bottle, though I envied those that did. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to remedy the mess I was. Not to mention I had shit tolerance and wasn’t remotely attractive when I got drunk.

  Some girls had the ability to be cute while intoxicated. I became the equivalent of a dying fish searching for water…with a hint of newborn calf. Ugh. The thought of consuming even a single drop more of treacherous ethanol made me disgustingly nauseated.

  I’d brushed my teeth—twice—and could still taste it.

  While getting drunk off my ass may not have been the healthiest way to go about dealing with my mental and emotional turmoil, it had kept my sanity intact. That had to count for something.

  Although, it would be comical if liquor were the spark of me completely losing the plot, all things considered. My odds of making it through life entirely sane had the same probability of a coin toss. Heads, I’d be like my father’s side of the family. Tails, I would take after my mother’s. I had yet to determine which was worse when it came to those crazy fuckers.

  I weaved around a couple walking through the lobby of the resort, readjusting my shades and tightening my grip on my suitcase.

  “I think I’m dying. Hangovers are so underrated,” Melantha grumbled from beside me, tugging her beanie down further.

  “I haven’t felt this shitty since that party we attended the day we graduated high-school,” Gracelyn agreed.

  Both of those statements resonated with me. Deeply. I hadn’t wanted to get out of bed unless it was to sit around butt naked, stuff my face with a fry-up, and chug gallons of Powerade. That sounded like pure heaven right about now, but we had a flight to catch.

  Feeling a soft vibration against my thigh, I pulled my cell from my pocket and swiped down to see the text. I was expecting it to be one of my parents or my abuelo. Weirdly, there wasn’t any number displayed.

  Even weirder was the text itself.

  Unknown: Something wicked this way comes…

  I stopped walking, brows furrowing as I read the message two more times before typing out a quick reply.

  L: Who is this?

  Almost immediately, a box popped up. Sender Unknown.

  Message cannot be sent.

  “You okay?” Mel called back to me.

  “Yeah. Sorry.” I fixed my face into a smile and started walking again, slipping my cell back into my pocket.

  “To hell we go,” Mel sighed, shouldering open one of the doors that led outside.

  “Can we at least be on the plane before you start being all negative?”

  “Is there a difference between doing it now or later? You know exactly how things are going to be when we get back.”

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Gracelyn refuted.

  “I know we’re well overdue for our ‘precious’ societal debuts. We’re going to be dragged into the corporate office so our parents can explain exactly how they’ve mapped out our futures. They probably married us off to some deranged arrogant assholes already. The ones who organize their drawers and ties by color.”

  That sounded overdramatic, but sadly, she was right. It was the way things worked in our world. However, I couldn’t openly agree. That would open the door to a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. We’d attempted that already, which was how we’d wound up in our current condition.

  Talking about it led to thinking. Thoughts came with feelings, most of which were bitter, angry, and conflicted—for various reasons. My new plan was to immerse myself in denial until we were back home. “Let’s just wait and see what they have to say, and then we can go from there.”

  She ignored me.

  “Do you think they’ll offer us pamphlets or use a full-blown PowerPoint to really get their message across and explain all the ways they ruined our lives?”

  My lips twitched as I fought a smile. “There’s a deadly disease that causes people to only see the bad side of things. My abuelo likes to refer to this as pessimism.”

  “Your grandfather is the ringleader of this whole ordeal. And I’m not a pessimist.”

  “She’s a realist,” Gracelyn joked, forcing her voice to be deep and masculine.

  I started to laugh, the sound coming from my throat akin to an angry toad’s battle cry. “Shut up.” I playfully swatted her arm.

  “Ow.” She poked out her lip and feigned being hurt, making her hazel eyes go big and round.

  “I can’t take you bitches anywhere,” Mel chastised, laughing quietly. “There’s our shuttle.” She pointed to a sleek white bus idling nearby.

  We approached at the same time two older women did, allowing them to go ahead of us.

  As we waited, the sun continued to sink lower in the sky, slowly draining the light.

  I glanced back at the resort and withheld a sigh. This would be our last time traveling leisurely. Indefinitely. I could count on one hand the number of times trips were taken for luxury versus ‘business.’

  Melantha began climbing onto the shuttle. I followed, and Gracelyn brought up the rear.

  “Sit anywhere you’d like,” the driver instructed in an upbeat tone, his bushy mustache lifting as he smiled.

  I thanked him with a small one in return and then skimmed the interior. The seating was set for two per row, and there were already a few people up front.

  Ignoring the stares aimed at her colorful hair, Mel breezed by all of them, wholly unbothered.

  It was always done in one fun color or another. This time she’d gone with a deep violet, peacock blue, and white ombre bangs. She was one of the few individuals I knew who could rock it.

  Mel could pull off anything, really. She had a classic kind of beauty. She’d always reminded me of those retro pin-up girls, complete with a small diamond Monroe piercing.

  She wound up claiming three seats that were midway from the back. Directly to the right of them were a cluster of four guys that, with a passing glance, appeared to be in their early twenties, so around our age. Behind them, sitting by her lonesome, was a pretty redhead with ear-pods in.

  Not the biggest fan of confined spaces, I placed my suitcase in the baggage cubby and then claimed the seat nearest to the aisle.

  Gracelyn squeezed past me and sat by the window, leaving Mel no choice but to sit behind us.

  “How long does it take to get to the airport?” Grace asked.

  “Thirty minutes?” I guessed, pushing my sunglasses up to rest atop my head.

  “For future reference, I was going to ask if you needed help, but you looked like you had it,” a husky voice snaked across the aisle.

  “Huh?” I glanced over, nearly doing a double take as I got my first real look at who was beside us. If life were a cartoon, my jaw would have dropped through the floor. Somewhere in the back of my mind the Weather Girls began to sing about raining men.

  “Your bag,” the guy closest to me said, nodding his head towards the luggage cubby.