Page 4 of Unmasked Prophecy

The room is dark, shadows stretching across the walls. I stare up at the ceiling for what feels like an eternity, praying my heart will stop pounding and trying to remind my body how to breathe. I sit up, dragging my hands down my face, trying to ground myself. But the pounding won’t stop. My chest feels like it’s caving in.

Lily.

She haunts me, because I know that while I’m here, she’s out there alone, and there isn’t a single thing I can do to help her. I throw the covers back and stand, grabbing the hoodie off the floor. The clubhouse is quiet—most of the guys are now passed out after a wild night of sex and drugs. It’s an entirely different world to the one I know, and yet I find a strange comfort in it.

The door creaks as I push it open. Cold night air slaps me in the face, and I welcome it. It’s quiet out here. Still. For a second, I let myself breathe. I let myself remember that I’m still alive and, so far, I have survived the unthinkable. Now, all I have to do is finish this part of my life, to complete this journey, so I canfinally understand what life feels like outside of the horror I have lived.

"Look like you’ve seen a ghost."

The voice comes from the shadows, thick, husky, so familiar and comforting. I turn, heart spiking and cheeks growing red as I see Talon stepping into the soft light shining from an old streetlamp outside the compound. Holding a cigarette between his lips, completely shirtless, he is the picture of danger, and everything inside me begs to find out more.

"You always lurk in the dark?" I mutter, pulling my hoodie tighter around me and staring down at my bare feet.

He inhales deeply before moving the cigarette between his fingers. "You always bolt outta bed like you’re runnin’ from the devil?"

How accurate his words actually are.

“You have no idea just how close that statement is,” I murmur.

He leans against the railing outside the line of rooms, arms crossed, eyes locked on me. Watching. Always fucking watching. There’s a storm behind his eyes, and I know that he has lived a life equally as dark as mine. There is something about the way he holds himself that I can relate to. A deep kind of agony that so many don’t understand.

"Bad dream?" he asks, voice low.

I let out a sharp breath, glancing away. "Something like that."

He nods, not pushing. I like that he doesn’t push.

"You think they’ll come lookin’?"

My stomach twists. “Of course they will. There isn’t a place in this world my father couldn’t find me.”

“He scares you.”

It’s not a question. It’s a statement.

An accurate one.

“It’s not him that scares me; it’s what he’ll do to me that I know I’ll never recover from. As a person, my father is calm and collected, his voice a warm mix of arrogance and dominance. He doesn’t have to raise his voice, because he knows that everyone around him will come running the moment he speaks. That’s the kind of man he is. So, no, it’s not him I fear as such...”

He stares at me. “He won’t touch you here.”

I give him a pained smile. “I like your confidence.”

His eyes narrow and his face hardens. “Nobody comes ‘round here and walks away without feelin’ the wrath of the club.”

I like that he thinks that. “You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

“And they don’t know what I’m capable of," he growls. "They show up here, they’ll leave in pieces.”

I believe him. That’s the scary part. I have no doubt this club would fight in a way that should scare me, and yet it doesn’t. I feel safe with them around, and in a twisted world, they could be seen equally as monstrous as my father, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Not to me, anyway.

“It’s not just me I’m worried about,” I say, forcing the words out. “It’s what they’ll do if I don’t come back.”

His brows pull together. He’s confused.

“They’ll hurt them,” I whisper. “The ones I left behind. They’ll make an example out of them. They’ll make them bleed for what I did.”

His jaw tightens, and he flicks his cigarette into the dirt. “Then we find a way to make sure they don’t get the chance.”

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