22. Darkness Devours

CHAPTER 22

Darkness Devours

WREN

The curtain betrays her every shift, as she moves through her room. My phone captures each turn, each pause, but the low light reduces her to blurred grays. She deserves better. Better equipment. Clearer shots.

Three steps back gives me the perfect angle between streetlight and darkness, but it's still not enough. Not nearly enough.

She pauses near the window. Searching.

Click . Another shit photograph. The resolution is too low to catch the way her breath fogs the glass, the subtle tension in her shoulders. I need better equipment. Soon.

Her silhouette retreats, then returns, brushing against the brittle barrier of metal and glass between us. My thumb swipes through the images, deleting the worst. Even the best are inadequate. They lack the visceral pull of watching her in real time. But they'll have to do. For now.

Click .

"You done?" Monty's voice carries from his car.

"No." My screen fills with her image—her throat tilted back, shoulders tense, each frame a pale imitation of reality. But there are moments caught worth keeping. Worth studying. The exact second fear flooded her eyes in the ballroom. The way her skin flushed when I caught her against that tree.

She's in there discovering my marks—not just the one on her throat, but every scratch and bruise from the woods. Each one a signature she can't deny. Can't rationalize away. The memory of her skin bruising beneath my fingers makes me take another step closer. The phone's camera won't capture the way those marks darken. Won't show how deep they go. I need to see them in person. Need to add more .

Her silhouette crosses the window again. I imagine her fingers tracing where my mouth claimed her throat, pressing against the bruised skin. Testing its tenderness. Remembering .

My phone's pathetic flash would just bounce off the glass, betraying my position. But soon I'll have the right equipment. Night vision. Perfect zoom. Everything needed to document her every move.

"Seriously, man. We should go before someone sees us."

The shadows shift. She's moved to her bed. I find a new angle, one that shows more of her room. More territory to map. To claim. The photographs are grainy, distorted, but they give me something to review later. To plan with.

Each one I take joins the others. Her dancing, her running, her futile attempt to hide. Is she reliving it all? The way she fought the music before surrendering? How she ran when I gave chase? The exact moment my teeth met her skin and she gasped? A perfect sound I'll draw from her again and again.

In the ballroom, each click made her flinch, yet she kept dancing. Fear sharpened her movements until she forgot everything but the music, my commands, the floor beneath her feet. Like she was dancing just for me.

The photographs show her transformation—frame by frame, resistance melting into something else entirely. But they miss too much. The subtle shift in her breathing. The way her pupils dilated when I moved closer. They’re all details I need to preserve.

A light turns on elsewhere in her apartment. Time to withdraw.

"Let's go."

I turn away, but my thumb keeps moving across the screen. Memorizing every detail I managed to capture. The curve of her neck when she turns. The way her hands flutter like trapped birds. How her silhouette stretches across her bedroom wall. A hundred imperfect images, but each one feeds the hunger growing in my chest.

The drive passes in silence as I scroll through tonight's collection. The ballroom series shows her gradual surrender to the music. To me . The woods sequence freezes moments of her flight—hair wild, clothes torn. Then the ones where I bared her breasts. I lick my lips. Fear makes her more beautiful than ever.

But these last shots through her window ... Snapshots caught in moments when she couldn’t hide from the lens. These are the foundation for what's to come. Even with the phone's limitations, there's enough here to fuel my planning. My anticipation.

Nico waits on the front steps when we pull up, his fingers tapping against his leg. The movement irritates me. Everything irritates me except the glowing screen in my hands, even if half the shots were unusable.

"Show me the pictures," he demands, reaching for my phone.

"No."

"Come on, you always share. Remember that cheerleader last month? How she broke down in the cafeteria?—"

"I said no ." The temperature between us drops ten degrees. Something in my voice makes him step back. "These are mine."

"Christ, Wren."

I scroll through the photographs I’ve kept, finding an early spin, before she lost herself to the music. A worthless scrap that shows nothing of importance. Nothing real. The graininess of the image makes it easier to share. "This is all you get."

They lean in to look, but retreat at whatever they see in my face. We've always shared everything—photographs, videos, hunts, tears, breakdowns. Every victory divided equally between us.

Not anymore. Not with her. Never her. These imperfect captures are mine alone until I can document her properly. Every detail. Every angle. Every unconscious movement preserved.

"What's the plan?" Nico follows me inside, trying to reclaim familiar ground.

"Watch her. Make her know we see her." My phone screen lights up with another photograph—the exact moment she realized she wasn’t walking out of the house as easily as she thought. The fear. The defiance. Perfect, even through the phone's cheap lens. "I want her reliving tonight with every breath. The hunt. The capture. The claiming."

"And then?"

"Then I take her apart." My reflection grins back from a darkened window. "Piece by piece, until there's nothing left but what I want. Until she stops pretending she doesn't want this too." And I'll document every second of it. Every transformation. Every surrender.

"We always break them together," Monty says quietly. "That's how this works."

"Not anymore." The stairs can't carry me fast enough to my room, to solitude with her captured moments. Even pixelated and poorly lit, they call to me. "This one's mine."

"What the fuck?"

"If it bothers you, find your own toy. You know how to play without me."

The lock clicks behind me. Each image spills across my screen—her dancing, her running, those moments she thought were private. I zoom in on her throat in every photograph, fighting the grain of the digital noise, imagining how the bruise will darken by morning.

Tomorrow she'll enter school wearing my mark. She'll try to cover her throat, tilt her head just so. But I'll know it's there, reminding her with each movement that she belongs to me now. Others will see it too—proof that someone has claimed her. That she's no longer untouchable. I'll need better ways to document her reactions, her realizations, her slow acceptance of how her life is changing.

The school's floor plan fills my laptop screen. Every hallway has become a possibility. Every empty classroom a new opportunity. I’ve already cross-referenced our classes to see which ones we share, along with the routes in between where our paths might cross. I don’t have to figure out when she’ll be alone. She’s always alone.

The dance studio will be her first refuge, but I’ve already claimed that space. Marked it like I marked her throat.

Where else might she try to hide from me? Library? Back stairs?

The screen's glow paints patterns across the walls as I memorize every possible path to her. Between classes. During lunch. After school. Each location is assessed not just for privacy, but for lighting. For angles. For how best to capture what's to come.

My collection will grow. Photographs. Videos. Moments stolen in dark corners. Sounds drawn from her throat when she can't hold them back. Every piece of her will be mine, preserved in perfect clarity. No more amateur attempts with a phone camera. No more grainy shadows and missed moments.

She's mine. And soon, she'll understand exactly what that means.

Tomorrow I’ll begin until nothing remains but her and me, and the darkness we'll share.