Page 33 of Dominion

She didn’t fucking know the depravity running through my veins. The need to hurt and be hurt. The need to destroy and be destroyed.

She didn’t know any of it, and I didn’t want her to. I wanted her to remember me as her protector, as the person she loved. As the one person she could count on before Ash came along. I knew that she would be okay even without me. She had him.

She didn’t need me anymore.

And Ash… Ash had Skylar, and I knew that was enough. It had to be enough because I couldn’t stay with them. I couldn’t tarnish their lives with my own existence.

“Dylan,” Ash’s gravelly voice spoke from behind me, his chest pressed to my back. I wished I could enjoy this one moment.This last moment I was allowing myself to have with the two of them. “Don’t even think about it,” he murmured loud enough for only me to hear. “I know you well enough by now, and you’re good, Dylan. You’re part of us. Without you, this doesn’t make sense.”

Why could he not see it? I was going to ruin them. The darkness that lived inside me was enough to shatter their worlds, and I didn’t want that. I loved them enough to want to stop that.

“Dylan, if you think I’m gonna let you go just because you think you’re not good enough for us, you have another think coming,” Skylar scolded, her words carrying the weight I wasn’t ready for. “If you try to leave, I’m leaving with you, and Ash will too.” Ash followed her no matter where she went. No matter what happened, he would always be there for her. I found solace in that thought, knowing that whatever happened, she would have someone to protect her, to love her, to show her the world.

I saw the way he was with her over those couple of months when she didn’t know I was watching. I saw the way he looked at her, the way he made sure that she was okay. Even when he thought he hated her, he still loved her, because you had to be a fool not to love a person like Skylar.

She might be perfectly imperfect, but she was perfect for us, perfect for Ash. They would forget about me eventually. They would continue living their lives with only the memory of me living inside their minds. I hoped they would remember me as the person I could’ve been, not the person I was.

I brought so much misery into both of their lives. If only I had been stronger, if only I had stood up to my father earlier, none of this would’ve happened. The knowledge I had was enough to bring down the entire Order to its knees, and I was going to use it. I would redeem myself and make sure that these twopeople I loved more than the life itself had the future they always dreamed of.

And if their happiness meant the destruction of me, then so be it. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have anything to live for. There were no other people in my life that would miss me, that would mourn the disappearance of an asshole who brought everything bad to this Earth.

The sicknesses spread over my system from the moment I was conceived to the mother who didn’t want a child and the father who only wanted a pawn.

I just couldn’t let them know. I couldn’t show them what I planned to do because I knew they wouldn’t like it. They wouldn’t want me to do it. Ash would try to reason with me, to show me a different way, and Skylar… Skylar would break if I even mentioned it.

So I didn’t. I wrapped my arm around Skylar and took a hold of Ash’s hand with my other one, reassuring them with words laced with lies that I would stay. That I wasn’t going anywhere.

But as we stood up, all three of us were emotionally exhausted from the day, from this life, I saw Cillian standing at the stairs, staring straight at me. I could see the understanding because he knew. We both did.

I was about to break their hearts to heal their lives.

9

ASH

Lies hada way of biting you back when you least expected it and, trust me, I knew all about it. Half of my life was filled with lies—both the ones that were made by me and the ones created by other people I trusted, trying to trick me into doing things their way.

But each and every time, the truth somehow prevailed, and no matter what I or anyone else did, it always screwed you over more than if you initially told the truth.

Dylan was lying out of his ass.

I couldn’t imagine what was happening in his head right now, what kind of thoughts raced around, each one more painful than the previous one, but he was slipping away from us. Seven days ago, he promised Skylar he wouldn’t go anywhere, and while he was still here physically, he was far, far away mentally. I had no idea what to do about it.

He wouldn’t talk to us.

He wouldn’t let us in, and I was at a loss for words. I had to try and push through this impenetrable wall he created around himself. We were falling apart, all three of us. While I tried holding on to the fact that we still slept in the same bed, thedistance between us was killing me. It was killing them as well, but no one was talking.

Even now, as we sat at the table, eating the dinner Zoe made, every single one of us was lost in our own worlds. Cillian tried bringing the mood up, but his jokes fell on deaf ears, and no one laughed even when he did. I knew better than anyone what would happen if we didn’t talk about the Red Manor and the things that kept us awake at night.

Misery loves company, and, in our case, it had three different choices of people that could keep it company. Sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, we looked like an advertisement for one of Tim Burton’s movies. The way Skylar kept pushing her food around her plate sent another zap of worry through my bloodstream. She was always a tiny thing, from the first moment I met her, but right now, the clothes that once fit her properly, hung loosely on her petite frame. The bones I could feel underneath my fingers every time I touched her weren’t so tangible a week ago.

She was slipping through my fingers—both of them were.

I felt eyes on me, and as I looked to my right, I caught Zoe’s gaze, her eyes flickering between the three of us as she ate. We didn’t need words to understand each other right now.

She’d been traveling between Santa Monica and here for the past couple of days, and I could only imagine how exhausting it was. I itched to get out, to do something, to put things in motion, but it was as if time stood still. We were stuck in this weird limbo where I knew we were supposed to be recovering from the horrible ordeal we went through, but it was obvious that it wasn’t helping.

The twitchiness in Skylar’s hands only meant one thing—she was using again, and this time it wasn’t just a little bit to take the edge off. She would disappear during the day, doing whatever the fuck she was doing.

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