SW 1. Shadow Mate

1. Elron - Man on the sidelines

Sometimes I wished I wasn't so invisible. Mostly it was convenient, but faced with this intense longing for another being, it hit different. I was weak when it came to Sebastian Lemaire. Admitting it wasn't that difficult, living through it was.

I was pinning after him from the shadows, and he was pinning after his best friend quite openly. It was written all over his exquisite features. His pain was almost palpable. I wasn't sure that others noticed it. Surely, Marco didn't. The man who was to marry my sister tomorrow. The man whose downfall I helped orchestrating.

Everything was so messed up, that I didn't even know where to begin untangling all the events that went down recently. I might say that everything was fucked if I resigned myself to use such crude expressions. Well, everything except me. I wasn't fucked at all. I mean never. I mean, I was as big as a virgin as the day I was born. There was never a need to rectify that situation until I met him.

Hiding near the periphery of a room was my second nature. I watched as my sister's rehearsal dinner unfold. It was a small consolation that she hated every minute of it just as I did. My sister wasn't made to bask in the spotlight, neither was I. I could feel pity for her, but the stab of pain over losing her was stronger. I was losing her and fast to this marriage, to this wolf named Marco. Still, I couldn't hate him or my sister. Their mating was necessary. My sister's life depended on it.

So, I did the only thing that I could. I turned all my frustrations to that beautiful creature, Sebastian. I studied him as closely as I could. I wondered if anyone knew he was gay. There was not a peep about it on social media and trust me, I stalked him to hell and back this past week.

Maybe he was so much in love with his best friend that he didn't do it with anybody else. Which meant that he was just a big virgin as me. Judging by the way he sucked me off, that wasn't a real possibility. All his movements screamed shelf assuredness and experience. But I hoped. I knew that this was a stretch and a wishful thinking on my part, but still a man, even a demon's spawn had to have his hopes. That and his dignity, which I haven't have any at the moment. The fact that I was rock hard only from watching him from afar said that I had serious issues.

All I wanted was to this godforsaken rehearsal to end that I could crawl back to my hotel room. It was a miracle what Marco's stepmother pulled this week, I had to admit. The fact that she secured a whole hotel in the middle of Manhattan and not a shabby one was a feat in itself. The Lazzari mafia connections combined with my father's endless money worked in tandem to make sure their children had the wedding they deserved. And I didn't mean it in a good way.

Marco looked grim and indignant all the time and Everly retreated into herself more every time I gazed in her direction. It wasn't a good omen, but it was necessary to go through with it. Our lives depended on it according to my mother.

I already cringed at the thought that I would be forced to marry a girl, too. I had a little over a year until my twenty fifth birthday. That was the day our fate turned, according to my mother and we both had until then to secure a mate for ourselves. And not any mate, a paranormal being no less. Even imagining it made the bile rose in my throat. It had to be the thinking about the future that awaited me and not the vodkas I drank one after another.

Usually, I wasn't prone to get drunk. It had to do something with my mother's genes. I heard her whispering about shadow demons with my father, but my parents were the only ones, beside my sister who's mind I couldn't access. I could have if I had more time, but it was still too exhausting to do so. Other peoples' minds were open and easily accessible like opening an internet browser.

This demon theory was something to start with, but I didn't have the time to examine it closely. I hated to have untested hypothesizes and this one was constantly nagging me in the back of my mind.

When it was finally time to withdraw without gaining attention from my parents, I headed to my room. There was a small obstacle on my way to the elevators, which was a bar I noticed. The pull was too strong for me to resist, so I turned on my heels and plopped on one of thebarstools. It was blessedly deserted, only a bored bartender behind thecounter. The wedding guests were still in the reception hall, enjoying their dinner. I preferred it like this. It was a reprieve from all of it, and here I didn't have to watch Sebastian and his longing gazes darting toward Marco.