Page 8 of Stolen By the Wraiths
This was a test. An offering of trust from a creature who trusted no one. My response would define everything that came next.
I settled on the opposite end of the narrow bunk, giving her as much space as the cramped room allowed.
"What did you want to tell me?" I asked, my voice lower than I intended.
I watched her face in the subdued lighting. She studied me for a long moment, her gaze analytical, as if trying to solve a complex equation. It was obvious she was taking in the geometryof my face, the way the traceries pulsed with a soft light, the predatory focus in my eyes that I could not completely suppress.
And I like it. Something deep within me almost purred at her attention.
"I lived with a family once. The Hendersons." The words came out, brittle and thin. "Before them, there were others. Placements, they called them. Families paid by the Consortium to house kids from the Meridian program. Most of them lasted a few months. One lasted a year." She picked at a loose thread on the blanket, her gaze fixed on her own hands. "But the Hendersons... they were different. When I was ten, I thought I'd finally found a permanent home."
The pleasure in her company was overlaid quickly by a familiar heat that tightened the plates along my jawline, an involuntary response to a perceived threat. Not to me. Not this time.
But to her.
I saw the way her nostrils flared slightly, catching the change in my scent.
"Tell me about them," I said quietly.
"They were kind at first. Mrs. Henderson made cookies and helped with my homework. Mr. Henderson taught me to fix engines in their garage. They said I was part of the family." She gave a short, bitter laugh that held no humor. "I believed them. For three whole years, I let myself believe I was wanted."
The air in the small space crackled with tension. Her pain was a live thing in the room, and my body reacted to it as a direct threat.
"What happened?"
"Mrs. Henderson got pregnant during my third year. Suddenly, there wasn't room for me." The old pain rose in her throat, but she pushed through it, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. "They called a social worker. Said they weren'tequipped to handle the responsibility of two kids. That I had adjustment issues. That I was difficult to place."
I watched her, my own hands clenching into fists at my sides. I saw the tension in her shoulders, the rigid control she held over her expression. She was recounting the deepest betrayal of her life as if it were a mission report.
"You were thirteen," I said, each word deadly quiet. For human children, that wasn’t fully grown. No where near capable of understanding such a betrayal.
"Fourteen by the time they processed the paperwork and found a new placement." She finally looked up, and her eyes were like chips of ice. "The social worker used all the right language. Said I had trust issues and behavioral problems that made me a challenging case."
"They threw you away for reacting normally to the trauma they caused," I said, the words a low growl. "That's not your failing—it's theirs."
Her breath stuttered. Something shifted in her eyes—shock, then a dawning understanding, as if she’d just been seen for the first time.
"You were a child," I continued, the rage building inside me a hot, clean fire. "You deserved to be protected. Not discarded."
She found herself drawn closer on the narrow bunk, pulled by something she couldn't name. The atmosphere between us was charged with possibility. This close, she could see the individual patterns in my traceries, pulsing in time with my heartbeat, the way my eyes widened when she leaned into my space.
She looked at my arms, at the silver lines shifting beneath my skin. "Do they hurt?" she asked, her voice a mere whisper.
"No. But they show everything." I held my breath as she reached out, a part of me bracing for rejection.
"Vain used them against you, didn't he?"
Her insight was a physical blow. "He taught me to be ashamed of them," I admitted, my voice rough. "To see them as a tool for manipulation, a weakness to be controlled. He marked me with that shame just as surely as the Hendersons marked you."
I met her gaze, and in that moment, I made a choice. I slowly pulled my shirt over my head, an act of radical vulnerability. The traceries flowed in intricate, mesmerizing designs across the hard planes of my chest and stomach. "He wanted to own this. To control it. He never could."
She stared, a quiet awe on her face. It wasn't a moment of lust, but of profound connection. She reached out, her fingers tracing the plates along my jawline.
They were warm, shockingly alive beneath her touch. The contact sent a current of information through me that my body understood long before my mind did.
"So what happens when you look at me?" she asked, her voice a challenge, a test. "Do you see another asset? Another tool?"
My control wavered visibly. For just a moment, a raw want pulsed through me, hungry and focused entirely on her. A tremor ran through my hands, a desperate urge to pull her close.
