Page 7 of Freed By Wrath

The worst part?

I don’t even know what I’m chasing anymore.

Her? The version of her I built inside my head? Or the feeling I get every time she walks into a room and my entire body decides to betray me?

Fuck it.

I just know I need to see her.

Just once more.

Even knowing she’s just a normal woman with flaws and bad habits and a fiancé.

Yup. That’s it. I have to see her with him, see her happy, hurt myself and this obsession, and put this to rest.

I adjust the mask on my face, one I stole straight out of Isaac’s room—Kinky bastard— and catch my reflection in the mirror hanging in the front hall, making sure I won’t be recognized at first glance, and mostly, that I won’t attract the wrong pair of eyes tonight.

If Queen S realizes I’m here, she’ll hunt me down before I’ve had a chance to do what I came for.

Not happening.

I came to disappear into the crowd, find Serena’s cousin, and finally get her the fuck out of my mind.

I catch my reflection in one of the many cracked mirrors decorating the party, this one draped in dangling red spiders. My dark green eyes stare back at me, framed by a smooth black leather mask that covers the upper half of my face. A pair of horns curls upward from my temples, cutting through my blonde hair, short at the sides and longer on top, where it sticks up no matter what I do to tame it.

The rest of me is forgettable. Black jeans. A fitted black T-shirt. Combat boots, and, of course, my general don’t-give-a-fuck attitude, along for the ride.

A small silver stud catches the light in my ear, and ink curls up the side of my neck—a bunch of flowers Fabien dared me into getting after one too many beers.

I left the car three blocks away and walked the rest.

The street outside the estate was lined with families still doing the rounds—kids in cheap plastic costumes, parents holding flashlights, a toddler dressed as a pumpkin being carried because their legs gave out. Normal Halloween. The kind that happens on every street in Greenbrook while Serena throws a five-thousand-dollar product launch forty feet away.

I used the side entrance. The one by the hedge that the catering staff prop open between runs. Nobody checks it. Nobody ever does at Serena’s parties, and she’s usually too busy performing at the front door to think about the back.

It doesn’t take long before I’m moving through the party, my gaze sweeping the crowd for the little trouble that’s been stuck in my head for so long.

Then a flash of red catches in my peripheral vision, and I know I found her.

My eyes land on her… and God… she’s stunning.

My palms turn slick. I swallow hard, my throat suddenly too tight as my eyes drag over her, greedy and helpless, taking in every inch I can from across the room.

I move closer, careful to stay far enough out of sight that I can watch her without risking her noticing me.

She’s standing near the edge of the crowd, a glass dangling loosely from her fingers, doing that thing she does where she’s technically present but somehow always somewhere else.

I recognize it immediately.

I’d catalogued it years ago, without ever meaning to, on the handful of occasions our paths crossed.

She disappears, not physically, just… quietly. Like she’s learned how to fold herself smaller until nobody expects anything from her.

That night, she didn’t do that. Even before.

Truth is, I’d noticed her long before that Halloween.

In town, everyone noticed Serena; it would’ve been impossible not to, but Valerie was different.