Page 6 of Feeding Beauty (The Lost Girls #5)

“Have you ever thought that maybe I don’t need to feed?” Her words snap out, tight and fierce. “I was seventeen the first time. I lost control and someone died. After that, everything changed.”

That’s when her family paid a fortune to have a Dragon tracked down. The only one who could resist her power. Even her own parents weren’t safe around her hunger.

“Since then, I’ve been on a schedule,” she goes on.

“Tightly managed. Tightly watched. Between my parents and you, I've never had a chance to question it. You...you all treat me like a bomb on a countdown, and maybe that’s why I’ve never tried to stop.

Everyone made me too afraid to even try.

” Her hands ball into tight fists, and I vaguely wonder if she wants to take a swing at me.

I shake my head, heart pounding in my throat.

“What if I don’t need it anymore, Talon? What if I only ever needed it because I was taught to fear the alternative? What if I’ve just been...kept in a cycle?” She pauses. “Like an addict who was never given the chance to get clean.”

“Aura,” I warn. “You don’t want to know what happens if you’re wrong. If the hunger takes over?—”

“I know what happens,” she cuts me off. “I know better than anyone what it feels like to take someone’s last breath and still want more.

I live with that every day. You think I want to hurt people?

I think I’d rather die than lose control.

” She swipes at her eyes, blinking hard.

“But I’ve been dying a little every day because I haven’t ever been allowed to try. ”

Everything in me coils tight as I force myself to stay steady.

Her grief, her pain—I’ve always known it.

She carries it so close she’s had to befriend it, but she’s never shared this with me.

This haunting suspicion that she may be able to rise above her curse, that we are forcing her to be a monster.

I see it in her eyes now and I don’t know how I could have missed it. The resentment is clear as day. My stomach gives a sickening lurch.

“Your family and I have only ever tried to protect you, Aura.” I need her to understand.

“I’m tired of being protected.” The admission splinters from her, raw and unsteady. “I want to live. And I’m starting right now.” She lifts her chin in stubborn defiance.

“And what about you, Talon?” The words lash out, sharp and clean. “Aren't you tired of your duty? Chained to me all these years?” Her lip curls as if she’s disgusted by the idea. “You don’t have to stay, but I am. I’m doing this.”

“Chained?” Offense rocks through me, though I’m not sure if it’s on her behalf or mine. “No, Aura, I’ve never been chained. But I am bound to you.”

I made a vow of fealty. Of the few things I know about my own kind, a Dragon's loyalty isn’t something that can be severed. Once earned, it runs deeper than bone. It is bone. Unbreakable. Absolute.

“You’re not. You can go. ” The hallway seems to flinch at the whipcrack of her words. “If you hate this so much, if you think I’m being reckless and foolish and pathetic…go back. Or wherever you like. You’re not a prisoner. You never have been.”

She is the prisoner.

She leaves it unsaid but it radiates around us as if she screamed it.

“Aura—”

But she’s already turned, that storm of silken hair lashing behind her as she stalks toward her room.

I follow.

I don’t think. I just move. Like she’s a magnet I can’t resist.

She stops in the doorway. Her fingers grip the frame.

The room in front of her glows softly from the city lights filtering through the blinds. The sheets on the bed are rumpled. Her backpack leans half-unpacked against the wall. It’s not much. But it’s hers.

“And I like it here,” she says, her back still to me. “I like the mess. The weird smells. The tiny fridge. I like the fact that no one here knows who I am or what I’ve done or what I’ll always have to do to survive.”

Her fingers grip the doorframe harder.

“I like knowing that tomorrow I won’t wake up to silk curtains or be treated like I’m made of porcelain. Or worse,” she swallows hard, “like I’m something to be feared. And you, standing here, judging it—judging me —makes you no better than the rest of them.”

For a second, I think she’s going to slam the door.

But she doesn’t. She simply goes to bed. Slipping between the sheets, she turns away from me.

The door is left open.

Always open.

Leaving me here.

Burning.

I want to tell her she’s right. That this can be a new start for her. That she can forget where she came from, and what she is.

But I know better.

She thinks if she changes the scenery, she can change the story. But no matter how far she runs, she’s still carrying the very thing she wants to escape.

Her hunger. Her magic. Her curse.

This isn’t a place that will make her dreams come true simply because she wants it.

I see now my words won’t reach her—not when she’s this determined. But I’m not going anywhere. Even if I wasn’t bound by a vow of fealty, I wouldn’t leave her out here, exposed and alone.

I return to the lumpy couch, positioning myself as comfortably as I can. I fold my arms across my chest as I stare up at the stained ceiling.

She wants a life here. A future. Something beyond survival. I see it in the way she smiles at the mess of this place.

How long has she been letting these ideas stew and boil inside her? Too long to be subdued by logic.

Some things can’t be told. They need to be lived.

Aurora is going to have to find out for herself that this dream can only end a nightmare. And it very well might leave her shattered.

All I can do is be here to help her gather the pieces.

Even if she never lets me hold them.

An intense feeling of being watched suddenly cuts through me. I slowly turn my head and meet the glowing feline eyes of Lucifer. The cat is sitting there on the coffee table, tail twitching, watching me with unnerving intensity. Then his body tenses and coils into itself.

“Claw me, and you'll be medium-rare and full of regret.”

In one leap, he lands on my lap, nailing my balls with unholy precision . I jerk underneath the painful impact, and Lucifer lets out a pissed off sound over his landing spot moving. He scrambles up on the back of the couch, hisses at me, then disappears somewhere into the apartment.

I’m left clutching my boys and wondering who will break me first. Aurora or the damn devil cat.