Page 107 of Born for Lace

As he says that, nausea rolls in my stomach. I gaze into the steel-coloured eyes I have come to adore, seeing darkness and trauma. It wasn’t his fault. Can’t he see that? He didn’t choose to be a Shadow.

I stupidly let the thought free. “You didn’t have a choice, Lagos. No more than Spero does.”

“I did.” His eyes dilate, sending icy fear slithering down my spine. More predator than man in an instant. “I escaped when I was sixteen. I killed more men and women than I can even remember while I was in the training compound,preparing.I remember what they called them—Desensitisation Drills. But I could have stopped killing after I escaped. Couldn’t I?” I lower my gaze. He grabs my jaw and forces me to look up at him. “But I didn’t. I killedmore.”His pitch-black glare bores into me, warning me. His voice drops, but his whispers only seem more visceral. “I killed pretty things like you while my cock was still inside them—” His hand falls from my jaw. “Think of that when you miss me, little flower.”

Oh, Lagos. My lower lip wobbles and more tears roll down my cheeks.

Shallow breaths leave me as I try to fill my lungs again. I only seem to care about how these deaths affected him. What does that say about me? I used to think straight—he is a murderer with no respect for life. I remember thinking that, but now… I only feel the suffocating shroud of compassion and love for him.

I only want to hold him closer, to shake his self-loathing away. “You can’t make me hate you.”

His frown deepens. “The water is getting cold,” he states, his voice equally as chilly as the bath.

In heavy silence, he pats me down gently, and I dry Spero, and we get ready to lie down for the night.

ChapterThirty-Two

Lagos

Twenty-three years ago

I thrash my head from side to side. The sandstorm outside roars, roars, roars, building the ache in my cranium.

Behind my eyelids, I see…her.

The last girl. My last innocent kill. The one on the bed, with cum and blood dripping down her thighs and my finger marks marring her slim, white neck.

I hiss, wanting the disturbing vision to go away, desperate to be released from her, from whoever she was, and the incomplete memory of what happened. What happened? What fucking happened? I fucked her and killed her—that’s what happened.Why?Because of the coil. The coil. The fucking coil…

I come to… Tormented and half-conscious, my heart continues to break against my ribs. I’m in the back seat of the truck... Not in the room anymore. I realise this.

Half-asleep, I lift my hand to the side of my head, feeling the tender skin around my metal plate. It’s been there for five months now, but they removed bone and sliced into my grey matter— Healing is taking its toll.

It's gone; the coil is gone.

I open my eyes. The sight of the girl dissolves, but the self-loathing stays in its impenetrable fort within me.

“Lagos.” Tomar opens the truck door and slides in the front seat, his face filled with excitement at first. He stops, his expression dropping. “Another nightmare, brother?"

I blink the sleep away, clearing the vision of him, only then realising there were tears. I had fucking tears in my eyes.

I jolt up and wipe at my face, fixing my features into hard lines, defiant of emotion. “What do you want?”

“Well,”—he lifts a brow— “good first-light to you, too.”

“Leave me,” I snap.

“No.” He dismisses, and I try to focus and awaken. As I fully align myself with reality, I realise there is no sandstorm. There is no noise at all.

So used to the constant noise torture I endured at the compound, my mind fills my dreams and nightmares with riotous sounds as a default. Similar to any other standard of life: grass is green; water is clear; rocks are grey, and the skies fucking roar.

It's just more torture… More torment. I remember what they called it, Noise Conditioning.

Tomar twists to face me. “I have something to show you, my young Xin De Shadow.”

I drop my head back. “I’m only eight years younger than you, Tomar.” Vulnerability over his sharp gaze on my tears churns into anger. “Let me sleep!” I snap defensively. “I was dreaming about pussy, something you’ll never understand, or you’d weep, too.”

He hums, momentarily unimpressed that I taunted his beliefs. Archaic beliefs almost long forgotten—almost.

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