Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Nightmare: noun : An experience, situation, or object having a monstrous character that produces a sense of anxiety or terror.

Alternate definition: A situation in which you awaken from a trance in your place of employment and find yourself, and the person you hate the most in the world, both inside the same woman .

See also, ‘kill me now' or ‘My Personal Apocalypse.'

I slipped out of Lila's drenched cunt and gathered every piece of shattered pride that I could find, as I removed myself from my position between her forcefully spread thighs. While gazing on her sex ravaged body was ordinarily a shameful, guilty pleasure I would never admit I committed after every full moon, under April's Pink Moon, the only thing to grace my field of vision was the golden gaze of Marcus Emery. We kept our eyes locked, likely because neither one of us wanted to look at the reality of what our little spat had just become.

"Fuck." I shouted into the night as I rose to my feet. My whole body was shaking with rage, furious that I'd taken that bait and made this mistake yet again.

The worst part? This time, I couldn't blame Marcus. The trigger for the Aries transformation had been near impossible to trigger in me for over a decade. None of this would have happened if…

If not for the fact that I'd been jealous when I saw her with him. The whole day, from the way I'd felt her coming undone while I was trying to teach my first class, to the way he'd been touching her during Astrology Club, to the enthusiasm with which she was writhing in his lap on the back of that fountain.

I shifted into the Aries because I was jealous of their relationship. That easy, unchallenging, acceptable relationship, where my psychopath of a half-brother was able to be with her openly and as honestly as he wanted.

I swallowed down the absolute horror that filled my soul at that line of thought .

Insane. That had to be the magic draw of her existence talking. I'd never wanted Lila in earnest, and I never would. She was a student for the devil's sake. Maybe the reason my body hit its trigger was because I was jealous of their freedom, not their entanglements. Jealousy didn't have to be personal or sexual, after all. Just a feeling. Envy could exist in so many contexts, and I knew with certainty that hiding in plain sight had always been a struggle for me.

That was it. I was jealous of their honest emotion, not her misguided affections.

Deep breath.

I started to relax as rationale and logic returned to my brain in slow spurts. I took my time finding my center under the quiet, comfortable spring night. To my surprise, in what must have been a full ten, maybe fifteen minutes that I stood there in silence, not once was I interrupted by taunting.

At long last, I met Marcus' eyes again. He was standing on her other side, breathing heavy, his gaze distant, and his mind in a clear spiral. Maybe we were more similar than I gave him credit for, because even the cool, collected, asshole that I'd come to know and loathe was beside himself by the scene.

"S-so." Marcus began on shaky vocal cords. "Fuck," he finished without anything of substance. In his defense, ‘fuck' felt like a very complete sentence right now.

"Are we officially done with your fucked up little game of monster and mouse now?" I managed to sound much more stern and composed than I was .

"We're done." He agreed as he looked over his shoulder at the obliterated fountain. The Dragon's massive stone head was scattered about the courtyard in more pieces than I had time to count, while the spout was erupting like a small geyser. "Can we blame that on the werewolves?"

I snort laughed on accident. He had an unmatched ability to avoid and redirect. "I'll talk to High Warlock Wong He's got a soft spot for the antics of Zodiac half breeds. I'm sure he'll understand..."

Marcus heaved a sigh before he looked down at the real problem at hand. "I guess this is my cue to take her back to her room and tuck her in." He picked up her glasses and some scraps of his torn clothing then began meticulously cleaning the lenses. The amount of time and care he put into the little things was so curious to me.

I screwed up royally when I left her on that table a few months back, and I would regret that for the rest of my life, but Marcus never would have even considered bailing on the situation like I had. In all of his devil may care cruelty and scheming, at the end of the day, he was the type to make sure even her smallest needs were met. He was considerate about the strangest things, while completely apathetic and sociopathic about the most egregious ones.

He dropped to a squat and gathered up her cell phone and her discarded blouse. He took the time to dress her in her shirt, even though it didn't reach far enough to cover everything, then he lifted her into his arms like she was something precious to him.

Because she was something precious to him.

As much as I didn't want to talk about the events of the night, there was something I had to address. "You know what the Aries trigger is." I stated plainly, allowing him to lead the conversation.

Marcus swallowed, and I could feel a vague sense of dread in his aura. "You also know what it is." His voice was barely more than a whisper.

We stared at each other, the question ‘so why did YOU shift?' heavy in the air between us. The question, however, was not ‘why did I shift?' for either of us.

"I think, before we enter the month of the Taurus, we're going to need to find some common ground. This isn't going to work anymore." I managed with a sigh, not forcing him to expand on those unspoken feelings.

"Common ground?" He looked at the still shifted, unconscious young woman in his arms. He laughed sheepishly. "I don't know if it gets a lot more common than this." His expression was complicated and difficult read. I couldn't tell if that was a joke or an honest, unfortunate statement. "We'll talk about it later."

"Later." I agreed.

Marcus used his vampire speed to take her back to her dorm unnoticed. He could do the same to get home, so as not to risk exposure.

I, conversely, shifted fully into my incubus and launched myself into the sky.

As I set my flight path towards home, I knew this school year was about to take a horrible turn.