Page 10 of Lethal (Wellard Asylum #1)

She’s wearing her hair down again today, and the thick, dark chocolate strands, with their copper highlights, catch the light, giving her an almost ethereal soft look.

It ruins me a little, causing tightness to appear in my chest that I don’t enjoy one fucking bit.

It’s the kind of softness this place was built to devour, and that monsters like Wren and I prey on.

The type of detail that shouldn’t matter to me, but does, because it’s human, and her.

Vulnerable. Beautiful. Mine. Ours. She is all of those things and so much more.

She is an enigma, a puzzle I need to decipher.

I’ve imagined, over and over, what it would be like to wrap that hair around my fist, as she sits across from me with her perfect posture, that silver pen, and her too-careful movements.

The ones that are nearing obsession level for me.

“You wore your hair down today,” my voice comes out nonchalantly, without any emotion.

She tries to hide her surprise when I mention it, her dark eyes briefly widening, before she regains control of herself and hides behind her professional mask.

She’s used to being in control. But I see it, that flicker behind her dark eyes.

Like prey pretending it isn’t cornered. You’re mine, little toy, and you’ll always be mine.

I’m going to make sure you understand that real soon.

“Does that matter?” she asks.

I could tell her the truth: that I’ve memorized the way she breathes when she reads my file.

The way her nose wrinkles when she finds something distasteful, or that I know the exact number of freckles across her collarbone and cheeks.

In this instance, I can tell that her heart is racing, despite her appearing as though nothing is affecting her.

But I don’t. I keep all of that to myself, preferring to see how far she wants to take this game of hers.

“It suits you,” I say instead. “Looks… softer.”

She stiffens, her lips tightening into a straight line.

Good. She’s afraid of the razor edge she’s standing on, even if she won’t name it.

She opens her notebook, jotting down words I can’t read from my position.

That damn book acts like her shield. Does she really think that it can protect her from me?

“Let’s focus, shall we? Wren, can you look at me, please?

” Ah, the games we play are beginning once more.

Wren ignores her and begins humming a tune under his breath, as he shifts restlessly in the stiff, metal chair.

“A pocket full of poison, we all fall down...” She raises an eyebrow in his direction, but seems to collect herself before speaking her next words.

Her eyes turn my way, and I’m pinned by their intensity.

Ah, this should be good; it looks like my little toy has grown a backbone today. “Your crimes...”

“You mean the meals,” Wren interrupts, his eyes moving across the room, as if he can see something that the rest of us can’t. His lip curls into a sneer, as he growls low in his throat at an empty corner of the room.

The doctor’s eyes snap up, and a look of horror briefly crosses her face. “Excuse me?”

“You mean the meals,” I repeat my brother’s words, giving her a real smile, one that pulls on my cheek muscles.

When was the last time I smiled like this?

I’m almost giddy from the way her pulse is rapidly beating in her neck now.

Her pen halts mid-word. She doesn’t like it when we call it that, but that’s what they were to us.

People taste different when they die slowly and painfully.

The fear seasons them. The shame. The apologies.

The secrets they cling to, until the very last second, before they take their last breath, all add flavors you can’t find anywhere else.

“You and your brother kidnapped fourteen people. You tortured them for days, raped them, and dismembered them. Ate them, “ she says clinically, almost detached, but her voice trembles at the end, just enough for me to feel it, and it lights a fire inside of me.

That’s it, pretty girl, show me how angry that makes you. Let me see that fire burning within you.

I don’t bother to correct her on the body count, as that’s something neither I nor Wren will ever admit to, but it’s much higher than anyone thinks.

I lean in slightly, not too much, just as far as the stupid cuffs will allow me, to taint the air between us.

“You say it like it wasn’t intimate, a connection between us and them. ”

“Bash, I’m hungry, so very hungry ,“ Wren groans, as he rattles his cuffs against the metal frame of the chair.

His eyes narrow on her as he allows his tongue to lick across his lips, before baring his teeth in a feral grin.

She pretends not to react, and even her breath goes still, but her pupils betray her. Dilated. Hypnotized. Horrified.

I wonder if she dreams of blood now, of us alone with her, in a place she can’t escape from. If she wakes up wet and afraid, and doesn’t know which came first. “You’re shaking,” I say gently, biting the inside of my cheek to contain my smile.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispers, just loud enough for us to hear.

No, that’s not the word for what this is.

Fear is not what I’m craving from her, at least not in this moment.

No, right now, I want so much more, I want everything she has to give, and even then, it might not be enough. Only her soul might suffice.

“I can feel it when you walk in the room,” I tell her.

“I can sense your mood, whether it’s been a good day or a shit one.

You tell yourself you’re here to fix us, to study us.

.. but some part of you wants Wren and me unchained.

You’re curious if you would survive us, if you would be the exception to the Carnevil Brothers’ curse. ”

She blinks once, twice, her lips opening and closing without a sound.

She doesn’t deny it, and that fills me with satisfaction.

“You’ve started dreaming about us, haven’t you, Doctor?

” I whisper. The silence stretches between the three of us.

Delicious. Wren is now completely focused on her, his cockroach forgotten.

She’s about to run, hide, or fall. Her walls are crumbling.

I can sense it. It’s a beautiful sight to see her disarmed.

“What pretty lips you have, Doctor. I dream of them nightly too.” Wren licks his lips as her eyes ping pong between us.

We are so close, I can feel the strain against her defensive walls.

She wants to be ours, I know it. Just one more strong push and she’ll fall right into my trap. I wonder if she’ll crawl for me?

Halstead’s sharp voice cuts in, through the intercom in her office, like a blade, rupturing the moment, with no regard for the progress that we have made here today.

“Miss Vaughan, I believe your time is up, and you are required elsewhere within the facility, urgently.” Of course, it is; that motherfucker needs a knife to his throat.

One, I would gladly give him, if only I were let loose.

Halstead just moved to the top of my kill list, and if he’s not careful, he’ll never step foot outside of Wellard Asylum again, which might not be a bad thing for the world.

“No, I was having fun! I don’t want to go back to our room!” Wren whines like a petulant child, before turning and snarling at nothing. “She’s mine, you can’t have her, and I won’t share with you, just with Bash! Only Bash gets to have her too!”

She rises too fast, trying to pretend none of this touched her, but I see the flush creeping up her throat, and the trembling of her fingers, as she clutches tightly to her notebook.

She moves instantly to the door and opens it wide, beckoning the orderlies to come and take us away.

No! Just a few more moments, I was so close, I can feel it.

I will not be deprived of my chance to have what I desire most.

My eyes never leave her, not even when the orderlies enter the room, and begin the process of chaining us.

I don’t resist their rough holds, or give them any reason to be violent with me, not that they need one.

My eyes meet hers before she tears her gaze away from me.

I don’t need to move to follow her. I’m already in her head, already under her pretty, pale skin, embedded deep, just like she’s under mine.

She goes to turn her back on us as Wren is forced from the room, kicking and screaming about being hungry, and wanting to eat the Doctor’s eyeballs.

Just before I’m pushed out the door, I say it, the words that have been rolling in my head for days.

The ones that I need to see her reaction to. “Bring a photo next time.”

She freezes, her body whipping back in my direction as she takes a step forward, closer to the doorway.

There it is, the secret. The rot in her belly she thought no one could smell.

“I want to see what she looked like,” I murmur, my gaze sliding down her features, memorizing them in this moment, so later I can replay it in my room, “before he fed her to this place.”

She doesn’t utter a word, but she looks at me, really looks, as if she’s seeing me for the first time, and I know she’s starting to wonder just how much I know. The intercom buzzes loudly behind us once more, and she turns away as I’m forced out of the door and into the hallway.

She’s gone, but I can still feel her. Her scent, her heat, the rapid beating of her heart. The way her skin crawled, as if a skeletal finger dragged down her spine. In the corner of my mind, something dark and sinister crawls out of the cracks, and whispers:

She’ll come to you.

She’s already yours.

Just wait, soon, you will own her mind, body, and soul.