Prologue
Dimitri
The cold dawn crawled over the frozen landscape of the prison yard as I sat on the cement stairs that led from the cafeteria, watching the sunrise. My cigarette hung loosely from my lips as I exhaled smoke into the frozen air. I could smell the blood soaking my black and white striped uniform and see the crimson staining my hands and fingers. They twitched slightly wishing to be back around his throat again, just for one more kill.
The man didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her, let alone try to hurt her. That was why I had strangled him instead of finished the kill in my normal method. I didn’t like that he was breathing her air. I had wanted it to stop, sooner rather than later. Fury rolled under my skin and I chuckled softly, knowing that she would be furious if she ever found out I’d killed him for her. I couldn’t help it though. Anyone that posed a threat to her was instantly walking death row. It was a compulsion to kill for her and the worst part? I had absolutely no supernatural heritage to blame it on. I couldn’t blame it on the bloodlust shifters experienced. I couldn’t blame it on the inherent insanity most magic users experienced. I couldn’t even blame it on a vampire’s need to consume blood. No, I was a human in Wicked Blaze Correctional. A place that was so bad it had to exist in a completely different realm because it housed the worst of the worst.
That wasn’t how I had ended up here though.
No, I had followed her here. I’d been following her for years now, ever since she had first graced my dark life with her burning rage. Since that suspended moment in time, I had been watching her. I had been keeping her safe without her knowing. I had avenged every person that had done wrong to her. I didn’t need her to know or to have her gratitude, I just needed her. I would call it pathetic but that would signify that I fucking cared about my mental well being. I didn’t.
I had been hours away from killing myself when she’d appeared, like an angel that offered me redemption in the form of a reason to continue. A reason to live. Some, well most, would call it obsessive. Maybe, insane. Totally mental. I just defined it as my reality.
I’d grown up in the supernatural community my entire life, despite being human and living on Earth realm. I hadn’t been adopted by a loving family but instead dropped and abandoned at the only place that would take me. An orphanage that housed supernatural children. They had assumed I simply hadn’t come into powers yet because why else would someone go out of their way to drop me there if I wasn’t supernatural. By the time I reached fifteen, it was clear that I was very much human, but I’d been exposed so they placed me with a foster family that constantly beat on me. After all, I was a human living with shifters, dominance reigned supreme.
Eventually, I had reached my breaking point. I no longer had a reason to live and no one seemed to want me to. It had been a Tuesday afternoon, around noon, and my plans had been set in stone for that evening. Then our teacher had announced we would be getting a new student. That wasn’t very unusual and the school itself wasn’t specifically a supernatural one, it had a combination of clueless humans and predators. Then, at the door, a divine angel had walked in and hit me like a fucking inferno. A searing sun in my universe.
The only regret I had was that I hadn’t been able to slice through the skin of the man that had put her here. I would though. Mark my words, he was a dead man walking. He’d locked her up here thinking she would be destroyed but instead the woman had risen to the challenge. I turned myself in the minute I’d heard she was being sent away for some bullshit arsonist charge. I had skipped right over the human legal system and gone straight to the board of witches in the nearby coven. I’d admitted to my recent killings, human and witch, and they had locked my ass up faster than I could finish my admittance of guilt. Apparently, they hadn’t thought thirty-four killings in one year was nearly as much of an accomplishment as I did.
I was a serial killer.
I was a stalker.
I was a man that had one purpose and it was to live for the woman locked inside the same walls as myself.
“You’re smoking break is over,” A guard snapped as I rolled my eyes, standing up and walking toward him. He didn’t bat an eye at the blood covering me. That was the least awful thing he’d seen this morning, no doubt. Wicked Blaze Correctional wasn’t like any place you have ever experienced. The only fucking rule was that you didn’t leave the grounds until your sentence was over. The guards were happy if you killed one another because it was less work for them.
I was really tall so I had to duck under the door frame slightly to enter into the building, my vision instantly assaulted with a sea of black and white uniforms scattered around the cafeteria for breakfast. Voices quieted as I walked past and I had to stop myself from smiling. I may not be a supernatural creature but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a predator. That I wasn’t death. It was smart to avoid me but even smarter to avoid her. After all, she was the one I would actually kill for.
My eyes traced the room and I instantly found the figure I was looking for. Springy chocolate and onyx curls surrounded her ivory face that featured soft pink lips and large arctic blue eyes. The woman had the face of an angel. It was deceiving, but not only because of the tight sexy figure she had, causing me to think anything but angelic thoughts. Today she wore a half top, showing off her tiny waist that I could span my hand across and her breasts that were pressed against the white shirt that matched the long pants she wore. I wondered what her reaction would be if I decided to fuck her in the middle of this room? She would probably incinerate me.
Valentina. She had the face of an angel, a body built for sin, the heart of a sociopath, and a brain that any serial killer would be jealous of. I would know. She was a vicious little thing that had grown only more lethal in the past six months. Drake had fucked up by putting her in here. He had assumed she would die. Instead, she had become a hellish, sexy, nightmare that was bent on getting the fuck out of here and seeking revenge.
“Dimitri,” Valentina’s voice was light and upbeat as those gemstone eyes lit up with a devilish light at my appearance. She just assumed I had killed someone. If she’d known it was for her she would be pissed. Both of her friends looked around refusing to meet my gaze. “You look good this morning, did you change something?”
I smirked at her commentary, reaching her and pulling out a chair so that I was facing her from where she sat on top of the table. An exhausted voice echoed from near us, “It must be his sunny fucking disposition.”
My little druid, Valentina, came from one of the darkest lines of magic on Earth. Even now as she turned her head to look at Milo with an amused smile, the darkness radiated off her. It was an inferno of black and red that attempted to sear everything around her. As usual, I was instantly turned on whenever I was around her.
“Sunny is exactly how I would describe it Milo,” She chimed.
Milo was insane. No that wasn’t a joke. The asshole probably hadn’t slept more than five minutes in the past six months. On Earth, he had admitted to having been diagnosed with insomnia, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, and a bunch of other fun shit that the humans had deemed him worthy of. I knew exactly what was wrong with him though and it had nothing to do with any of that bullshit. The man was insane because his magic was screwed the fuck up. He was an Ink Mage but he had the ability to influence dreams to the extent of making people feel as though they were stuck in their own worst nightmares. I wasn’t scared of Milo but cautious was a good word I would use to describe how I felt. It was like dealing with a bomb that had been put together wrong. It would no doubt blow the fuck up but you just didn’t know why or when.