True Born

Chapter Eight

Welcome to Day 8 in the 10 Days of True Born! This is my little love letter to all the Wattpad fans and readers out there ahead of the official release of True Born Book 1 on May 3rd (when it will actually be available in stores!). Thanks for being awesome. Enjoy!

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I don't know what time it is when I wake, shivering and confused. I'd been in my sister's skin, living through her memories: rounds of testing, the long, snake-like syringe invading me, pulling from my body sticky, microscopic lumps. Then I was watching in dull-eyed horror from the bed as Jared ripped the room apart, his face a feral mask. From Margot's perspective, he is a beautiful angel of death. All she can think is how peaceful it will be once he finally turns and rips into her.

That isn't even the part that has me crying.

The dream transports me. I am in Margot's skin. Her hands rest on her bedroom window as she watches a riot mushroom outside our gate. Bodies smash into the fence. Limbs sever from torsos in the panic and press of the crowd. This is it, a voice says. Through Margot's eyes I stare at three figures standing just inside the gate, like they're holding back the crush of humanity. It's me, flanked on one side by Jared and on the other by Nolan Storm, a set of antlers rising from his head like a massive crown. Suddenly I'm bodiless, a massive tidal wave ripping through the city street, a tsunami that will swallow everything and everyone in its path.

Wetness tracks down my cheeks. My eyes tiptoe through the darkness until they bump into a strangely familiar sight.

"What are you doing here?" I don't mean to sound so scared as I bolt upright.

Then again, Jared sits not more than three feet away from me, in the armchair near the small glowing fireplace. In my room. Alone.

Arms crossed, he cocks his head and stares like he's heard an insect whine. "Boss was worried about you," he finally says. His eyes are bright green pennies in the dark, pupil all but disappeared.

"He sent you to watch me sleep?" I say it with as much contempt as I can muster. Jared doesn't even bother to reply. He continues to stare at me.

"You were having a nightmare," he tells me, as if I didn't know.

I sigh and curl up my knees. "I've been having them all night." He nods as though he understands. Since he doesn't seem to be going anywhere, I lean over and switch on the lamp to make conversation. "What time is it?"

"A little after one, I think."

"When are we going home?"

"Soon." Jared clasps his hands between his legs, clearly warming to this topic. "Couple days, I guess. Boss wants to make sure Margot is okay."

I somehow resist the urge to tell him Margot will never be okay again, and neither will I. "Will our parents be back by then?"

"Not sure." Jared scratches his chin. "If they aren't, I think the plan is to be a little less remote than we signed up for."

Whatever that means. I take him in then, really look at him. He's changed his clothes but that's about it. The blood-soaked shirt and pants have been replaced by a pair of dark trousers. He's in a powder blue, long-sleeve shirt. I'm shocked it doesn't have a cartoon scrawled across the front. His blond locks are tousled. But more than the blond, ashy stubble on his cheeks and the deep rings of exhaustion around his mouth and eyes, I notice the strange expression. Like a lost little boy.

He gets a good gander at me, too. I must look silly in the oversize white shirt Storm lent me, my hair a nest of dark curls.

Jared clenches the arms of the chair as though he's physically holding himself back. "You are such an unbelievable pain in the ass, Princess. You know that?"