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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SELENE

T he ride back to the house is sobering. The high from chasing after Maxwell no longer lingers in the air. Onyx suggested we put that little mission on the back burner, and I couldn’t agree more. As lovely as it would be to spill his blood, it’s way too risky now, especially knowing that someone is definitely following us.

I don’t know what they saw that night. Maybe they didn’t see everything that happened with Ian, and only saw the other body that was there. Both of us had masks on, so it’s not like our faces were visible to the person lurking in the shadows.

Either way, we’re in a fucking sticky situation now. This is when the hunter becomes the hunted, the predator becomes the prey. And this cannot fucking happen.

There is too much at stake. We’ve come too far for this to all go to shit just from one little slip-up like this. And in reality, it all comes down to me and my lack of impulse control. If I could just stop being so goddamn careless and learn a little bit of self-control, this wouldn’t have happened.

Ian had to be dealt with, regardless. He had somehow followed the other guy there and found his body, which was on Onyx. I can’t put all the blame on him though. We got carried away with each other, wrapped up in our warped little game, and forgot the importance of taking care of shit first. We should have disposed of the body and cleaned up the evidence before indulging in our unholy obsessions with one another.

Onyx pulls the car into the garage, but when he gets out, he doesn’t even bother going into the house. I stay in the passenger seat, staring blankly at the wall. I understand his frustration and agitation with me right now, but I don’t think it’s fully directed at me.

We both fucked up, and now we both have to figure out how the hell we’re going to deal with this.

We have absolutely no information to work with. There isn’t a name pinned on the mysterious person following us. We don’t have a goddamn thing to tie them to the asylum, just a sound and a feeling. Having a license plate number would have been helpful, but even then, it could have been a stolen car.

We're completely fucked, and I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get out of this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Onyx heads out of the garage, his form disappearing as he walks around the outside of the house. I don’t have to ask to know where he’s going. He’s going to the place where I can always expect to find him when his mind is troubled like this—the only place he can find silence and sort through the madness in his mind.

I slowly climb out of the car, feeling the tension hanging heavily in the air. Instead of exerting my anger, I bury it deep inside and gently close the door rather than slamming it. Inside the house, the dogs stay silent; they’ve been trained not to bark. If anyone were to try and break-in, they wouldn’t expect to encounter two vicious animals because they don’t make a sound They don’t draw attention to themselves. They make themselves invisible, lurking in the darkness until it’s time to attack.

Perhaps it’s time to resort to true animalistic measures. It’s time to take a page from their playbook.

I walk around the side of the house, heading toward the patio when I hear the surface of the water breaking. As I pass the outdoor sectional at the back of the house, I see Onyx’s clothes in a pile by the edge of the pool. Instead of jumping in after him, I sit on the edge and dip my legs into the water.

Onyx doesn’t sink to the bottom at first. Instead, he gets into form and swims the length of the pool. His face breaks through the surface as he comes up for air before diving back under. Pushing off the side of the pool, he swims the length again with the same perfect form he had on the swim team back in high school.

I watch, mesmerized by the way his body glides through the water. He only uses his arms periodically, sweeping through the changing colors as he kicks his feet. Each movement is deliberate. There isn’t anything uncalculated about the way he maneuvers through the water, pushing his body to extreme measures as he takes the turmoil out on himself.

This isn’t unusual for him, but most of the time it happens in the middle of the night, and by the time I get down here, he’s already sinking at the bottom of the deep end. It’s not often I get to see him in action, actually swimming through the water like this.

When we were in the foster home, we didn’t have a pool, but Onyx was obsessed with water and swimming. I always assumed it was some kind of outlet for him, something that was harmless to others, when in reality he wanted to drown his enemies in the waters he swam through.

I used to go to the pool with him, staying for hours into the evening instead of going back to our abusive home, just watching him as he trained. Not long afterward, his swimming took a sinister turn, when he realized he could push his body even further by sinking to the bottom and holding his breath.

There was something so captivating about it. The first time that I saw him do it, I thought he was drowning, but then I noticed that he wasn’t moving. There was no panic or desperation to break through the water’s surface. He was at peace, floating at the bottom of the pool as he held his breath.

Anyone in their right mind would have panicked and dove into the water to pull him out before his lungs filled with the chlorinated water. Not me though. Luckily for both of us, I’ve never been in my right mind. Instead of diving in after him, I sat on the edge of the pool and simply watched him until he eventually came up for air.

It wasn't long before he had me in the pool with him. I understood the allure behind what he was doing, but I wasn't as invested in it as he was. I was invested in him though, so despite it not being my thing, I stayed and indulged in it with him.

The most important thing was always being there for each another, and I was too obsessed with Onyx to ever consider turning and walking away. We followed each other down the darkest of halls, always playing into the desires of whatever the other wanted.

Now, the game has shifted. It isn’t even a fucking game anymore. This is real fucking life now. This is a matter of life and death.

And I can promise you that when it comes down to it, it will never be Onyx and my death.

Whoever dares to threaten us, to destroy everything that we’ve built—they will be the ones to die.

Instead of sinking to the bottom when he finishes his laps, Onyx swims over to me. His head breaks through the surface as he grabs the edge of the pool beside my leg. I watch his chest rise as he sucks in a deep breath before pushing his wet hair away from his face, with small droplets falling down and landing on his cheeks.

“Feel any better?” I ask him softly, pushing my feet through the water as I kick them back and forth.

Onyx stares at me, his bright blue eyes shining under the sun hanging in the sky above us. “Fuck no.” His nostrils flare as he takes another deep breath. I tear my gaze from his, watching the shifting hues of colors around his body in the water. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Did you want to go down to your place, where you think best?” I question, leaving any judgment out of my voice, because there isn’t any to have. I know what Onyx needs sometimes, but I don’t know what else to suggest right now. “I will join you, if you’d like.”

Onyx shakes his head, the droplets from his hair landing on my legs. “I don’t know if that’s going to help at all,” he says, his voice low and the sincerity thick in his tone. “I honestly don’t know what the fuck we’re supposed to do right now.”

“I know,” I agree with him, nodding slowly. “We’re in a situation that I don’t think we’ve ever been in before, but I think I might have an idea of how we can handle this.”

Onyx tips his head to the side, brushing his hair back once again as the water drops down the sides of his face. “How the fuck are we supposed to find this guy?”

“I don’t know exactly, but just hear me out,” I start, pausing as I figure out how to word this without sounding like I’m completely batshit crazy. “I think we need to do what we trained the dogs to do, you know, in case an intruder breaks into the house.”

Onyx’s brow furrows. “You’re telling me that we need to be like those fucking beasts in there?”

I roll my eyes at his abrasive attitude. “Just listen. We trained them not to bark, right? So they just hide. Instead of stalking out their prey, they wait for it to come to them before attacking. They don’t do anything to draw attention to themselves.”

“Okay,” he says slowly, rising from the water as he lifts himself to sit beside me. “Go on.”

“We know virtually nothing about whoever is following us. What we do know is that we need to stop them. That person is currently the one who is on the hunt. They’re searching for us, stalking and watching us like we would with any of our victims.”

“So, are you suggesting we just do nothing instead?” Onyx’s eyes fix on mine, narrowing as his lip curls up in disgust. “No, we have to be proactive. We have to get ahead of this shit before it comes and bites us in the ass.”

I purse my lips, tilting my head to the side as I stare back at him. “And how do you suggest we do that? If you have any ideas, anything at all that you can bring to the table, I have no problem hearing them out. I’m honestly open to a better suggestion than mine because I don’t like the idea of doing nothing any more than you do.”

Onyx glares at me, his expression dark as he sighs. “I don’t have any ideas. We don’t even know what the motherfucker looks like, so how the hell am I supposed to have an idea of where to start.”

“So, don’t shit on my idea when there literally isn’t a better one. We have to wait for him to seek us out again, to find us, and then that’s when we can take action and attack. Until then, we don’t have any leads or know where the hell to even start.”

“Are we supposed to go about our normal business?” Onyx asks, finally getting on board with my idea as he realizes that our options are limited. “Wouldn’t that be too risky to keep doing the shit that we were doing?”

Reaching down, I grab the bottom hem of my shirt, lifting it up as I peel it from my body. Onyx’s eyes are on me, growing darker as I rise to my feet and strip out of my clothes.

“We don’t do anything for now. We need to bide our time, let him come for us. And then when the time is right, we’ll draw him out and into the asylum. When we know he’s going to take the bait and follow us without a second thought.”

Onyx stares at me, his mind processing my words as I turn away from him and dive into the water. Holding my breath, I dive down to the bottom, touching the floor with my fingertips before swimming back to the surface. As I break through, I open my eyes, seeing Onyx as he climbs back into the pool.

“We need him to think that he’s in control, like he’s the one holding the cards and we’re playing into his hands.”

“Like what you do with me,” he muses out loud, a sinister smirk forming on his face as he moves into the deeper water, swimming directly toward me.

I bite down on my lower lip as he swims around me, circling his prey. “You going to show me otherwise?”

Onyx pauses in the water, wrapping one hand around my throat and the other on my hip as he pulls me flush against his naked body. His erection presses against my stomach, and I instinctively wrap my legs around his torso as he tightens his grip around my neck.

“I’m going to show you who has the real control here.”