Page 31 of The Devil Takes

My cheeks burned.

I could feel the way Brett was staring at me as he flopped onto his mattress, but I didn’t look at him. Neither did Dad, ignoring the other alpha like he was worth little more than dirt. I squirmed. This could go so wrong in so many ways. I wasn’t sure why I’d thought this would be a good idea when it was so clearly so, so bad.

“My roommate gave stuff to me,” I blurted quickly, praying to whatever god was listening that Brett would pick up on my words and play along. Maybe he’d be a good liar? I hoped optimistically.

Dad turned around to look at me and I dropped my eyes quickly, staring at the unshaven bristles on his neck, my pulse thrumming, temples slick with nervous sweat. He had more salt than pepper in his beard now. Not that he’d ever been without it, not as long as I could remember him.

Mom had called him a silver fox.

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but when she said it, it’d always seemed like a good thing.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.” My gaze snapped to his face, the feeling of oh-shit-oh-shit only growing louder, my ears beginning to roar. This was different. This wasn’t tentatively-happy Dad. This was something else entirely.

Danger, danger, my pulse screamed.

Danger.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Dad’s eyes were hazel. They blazed, flickers of orange twisted with vines of poisonous green. Maybe once upon a time I’d thought his eyes were pretty. We shared the same color after all. But now, as I met his gaze, all I saw were the flames of his anger twisting them into something unrecognizable.

Looking at him felt wrong, wrong, wrong.

He could sense the danger too, feeding off of it as he huffed out an unhappy noise, our stare down lasting an eternity even though it probably only spanned a few seconds.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean…” I wasn’t even sure what I was apologizing for. For the fact I was lying to him, maybe? For the disappointed curl to his lips? For the way I never seemed to live up to his lofty expectations? Because I’d apparently made him feel like he wasn’t good enough, his fragile ego so easily shattered.

“You didn’t mean, what?” He asked, voice surprisingly soft.

I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. It took me too long to realize he’d been angry because I hadn’t looked at him, and my response had been all wrong. Shit. Shit-shit-shit.

Brett was staring at us.

I could feel the weight of his eyes as they bore holes between my shoulder blades. I should be embarrassed, I knew that. Realistically, I should be worried about what Brett thought of me, especially since in a few short months we’d actually be living together.

But I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I was an ant under a man’s shoes, just staring at the foot about to smash me.

“You throw away the shit I bought you?” Dad’s voice was deceptively calm.

Danger, danger, danger. My head spun. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t bought me anything since probably the time I was sixteen and hit puberty. And even then it’d only been a few pairs of shoes over the years as my feet sprouted inches we didn’t have the money to pay for.

“No, Dad—” I couldn’t help the way my hands began to shake. I squeezed them into fists, the urge to flee buzzing through my body. Flee, always flee. Never fight back. It never did any damn good. Then he’d…fuck. Then he wouldn’t smile at me anymore. Fighting back meant losing his forgiveness, and his forgiveness was the only thing that made weathering his storms worth it.

My knuckles turned white, nails biting into my flesh till the sting grounded me. “I wouldn’t do that. I swear I still have all my stuff—”

“Then where is it?”

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I couldn’t fucking tell him it was sitting peacefully in my real fucking dorm room.

Brett was silent, even the sound of his breathing nonexistent.