HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 154

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty Four

I didn't sleep at all.

Seconds ticked by, but they felt more like hours to my hyper-wired brain, and because of that it felt like the hours I spent staring up at my ceiling were more like actual days, maybe even years. I was exhausted, don't get me wrong, but my eyes wouldn't shut.

I literally could not fall asleep.

Not after receiving an entire package's worth of polaroid pictures depicting yours truly. I'd sorted through them after my initial panic attack had worn off enough for me to get up and go inside. Buck had been happy to see me and totally exhausted himself so, after a few conversations about his day with Echo, he'd sleepily shuffled out of my apartment to go God knew where.

My goofy vampire boyfriend was already asleep when I'd checked on him, still a little sick and feverish, but after tucking him in a little, I'd made my way to the living room and set the envelope, letter, and polaroids down.

I'd spent about an hour sorting through them, committing each image to my memory and even scenting them, trying to get whiffs of the person who'd delivered them to my doorstep, but there was nothing.

No scent aside from lavender and a hint of citric lemon, like perfume... or cleaning supplies.

Some of the images seemed rather harmless, despite the huge creep factor. There were a few random ones of me walking around outside and hanging with Katrina. There were others of me and my dad, walking together, sitting together, and one depicting us sitting in the black RV. 

Then there were the others.

Pictures of my caprine legs. Of my horns. There was even a picture I recognized, the one taken in the hospital after I'd charged the entity--on the floor, looking up at the camera with a pissed expression and blinding yellow eyes, framing my creepy rectangular pupils eerily. 

But there were two pictures in particular that curdled my blood because of what they implied. Those two scared me half to death when I saw them. The first one had clearly been taken inside my apartment while Echo and I had been completely asleep. 

It had been taken at his bedside. 

It showed me sleeping with Echo, both of us naked, my mouth hanging open, sweaty curls falling everywhere as I cuddled him like a big body pillow. His legs had been threaded through mine with the barest amount of the twisted, sweat-saturated sheets covering our legs.

Twisted together intimately, cuddling even in our sleep. 

Even now, laying in bed beside him with birds chirping outside and the early morning sun peeking over the horizon, I still had that photo clasped between my fingers under my head. I'd stared at it multiple times, sick to my stomach, because I knew when it had been taken.

"The night we first had sex," I whispered, heart in my throat. "Someone was watching us."

I couldn't get over it. I was creeped out and, admittedly, terrified out of my mind.

Because the second picture that scared the shit out of me hadn't been a stealthily-snapped polaroid at all. Unlike every other photo in the envelope, the scariest of the images had been taken right out of Sebastian's house. You see, it was a family photo featuring everyone.

Sebastian and Aerin... Nikki, Erika, Ralph, Agatha, and Tobias Robertson... Diana, Cassidy, Richard, Jun, Kyle, Leo, Louise, and Kip... Tiffany, Woodrow, and their three children, Rosie, Adam, and Kimberly... Chi, Saint Thomas, Dr. Rogar Einstein and his wife Rebecca... all of the dragons--Feng-Feng, Anurak, Huang, Shen, Jiao, and Fucang... and my whole pack.