Page 147 of Psycho Beasts

“There, there.” I dried her tears and squeezed her gently with my still-very-broken arm. “She does it to all of us. It’s how she says, ‘I love you.’”

“Really?” Jess narrowed her watery eyes, clearly unconvinced.

“I have no idea, but that’s what I tell myself.”

We all cried harder.

That was how the guys found us. They stared at the pile of sobbing teens atop my broken self and wisely chose to not say anything.

They weren’t idiots.

Instead, they sighed heavily and slid down the wall. The four of them sat on the ground and waited patiently.

I meant to talk to them about our random, intense sex marathon, but after a good hour of crying my heart out, I felt remarkably better and snuggled into a deep, healing sleep.

Chapter 26

Sadie

REVELATIONS AND BAD DECISIONS

I woke up to gloomy rain and an empty room.

Groaning like a feeble old man, I pushed myself out of bed, only for the room to spin and collapse around me.

With shaky, bruised hands, I used the wall to keep myself upright.

From the wobbling in my limbs and lack of excruciating agony, it seemed my broken bones had healed.

What was left was a patchwork of aches and pains that had me stumbling and bumping into furniture.

Someone had changed me into overly large sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I paused and sniffed—the material had a delicious cinnamon scent.

Xerxes.

The clothes dwarfed my frame and hid the extent of my injuries.

After slamming into the door with an athletic thud, I tripped into the hallway.

The wall kept me upright as my blurry eyes tried to orient the shadows thrown off from the grand chandeliers.

A gnarled golden monster snarled at me from across the hall, and I jumped in surprise, heartbeat heavy in my chest as I stared down the foe.

After an embarrassingly long time, where I waited for it to make a move, I realized it wasn’t going to attack.

Because it wasn’t a monster at all—well, at least not in the way I’d been thinking.

I’d been having a standoff…with my own reflection in the hall mirror.

The numb had picked an impressive champion.

Whoever was responsible for the voice in my head was clearly not the brightest.

I made the endless trek down the ridiculously long hall. Seriously, who needed this many rooms in a house? It was ridiculous.

“Lucinda? Aran? Jax?” I yelled softly as I hobbled.

My bare feet slapping across the hardwood was the only sound.

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