His Trouble Maker

Chapter 135

Chapter 135

JESSICA

“Ah!”

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I hit the concrete hard, knees first, cheek after-his fingers still clutching the root of my hair like he’s not ready to

let go, like the floor isn’t enough, like | belong beneath it. | can still smell the cages on me-hot metal, heat-rutted

fur, shit and bile and birth, and something underneath all that, something that smells like

me.

| don’t scream. | don’t whimper. | just dry-heave against the floor until something pink threads out of my throat

and the taste of silver makes my gums throb. Theo finally lets go, fingers slow, like he’s peeling a prize off the

meat.

“Be good,” he hums against the shell of my ear, voice low like prayer, like fucking. “You're not alone anymore,

Jess.”

My breath stalls. My stomach folds in on itself. | twist, gagging, bracing on one elbow, and my eyes drag toward

the far corner-

He's here.

Riot.

Slumped. Chained. His face is swollen on one side, slack on the other. One arm’s bent wrong, the other limp in

his lap. His eyes-

God, his eyes are open. He's watching me.

Riot coughs, low, wet, like something inside him’s dying slower than it should. | crawl to the farthest corner,

away from the stench of his ruined breath, the sound of my own heartbeat fuckingraw.

“W-What..happened to him?” Trembling, | ask, not showing him any fear.

Theo squats low, gloved fingers curling under my jaw, lifting my face until I can’t pretend I'm not staring at Riot’s

ruined chest rising in thin, rattling swells, every breath a confession of failure.

“He wouldn't kneel,” Theo murmurs, thumb pressing hard into the hinge of my jaw until it pops. “He thought he

could keep you clean. Like you were ever anything but a feral little slit begging to be filled.”

My throat spasms around a sob | won't let out.

Riot shifts-only an inch, but it's enough for his chains to creak, for one hand to drag itself along his thigh. trying

to move, trying to crawl to me, even when half his bones are broken.

“You should thank him,” Theo whispers, and his breath is sour with wolfsbane and something fouler, something

that smells like the back of a throat swallowing screams. “He kept you alive. He kept you sacred. But there's

nothing sacred left in you now, Jessica. Just this.”

He drags two fingers over the seam of my lips, smearing the taste of his skin of the caves of all the male

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Chapter 135

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bodies that have pinneddown and called it devotion. | don’t look away. | don’t close my mouth when he

pushes them in, pressing over my tongue until | gag and the floor swims and Riot’s eyes flare wide, as if he’s the

one choking on my filth.

After he was satisfied, Theo shovedinto the floor and locked the cell before leaving us all alone.

“Jessica,” he rasped, a sound like meat tearing, like holy ruin, and it cracked something behind my ribs.

This is the man that ruinedand yet, looking at him right now makeswant to call the moon goddess to

perish all the evil in this world.

| reached for him, even though every cell screamed no, because his chains were still rattling, because his pulse

was still crawling under the meat of his throat, because he was dying.

“Theo,” | tried to say, my tongue thick with sickness, “he-he did this?”

Riot didn’t answer with words-he didn’t have to. His look was a wound. It poured. Pityless, soaked in rot, slick

with all the things we’d becto each other in the dark: heat-bonded, death-bound, two beasts suckling on

the sdesecrated myth. | should have turned away. | should have backed off, swallowed it, scrubbed it out

with silver if | had to, but-

He moved. Barely. A twitch, a jolt. His chain scraped the wall with a hungry little kiss and my whole spine

convulsed like I was still in heat.

“Don’t ccloser-Jessica-don’t-" he rasped, the words torn through something collapsing in his chest. “Jess-

no. Don’t-don’t letsmell you.”

| stopped. Mid-crawl. Elbow buckled, hand flat on the piss-stained concrete, breath seizing because | knew what

he meant.

“I'm not—" | tried, but my body betrayed me, a pulse low in my belly givingaway, heat like a bruise swelling

up behind my navel. “I just wanted to see-if you were-"

| moved anyway, dragging myself on forearms, on elbows, my cheek splitting open again against the piss- slick

floor, knees too raw to hold weight,.

“Riot, please,”

Theo had taken everything else and leftfull of things | couldn’t name.

“Don’t,” he tried again, but his chains rattled when I got close, like his body was trying to lunge even if his voice

was trying to saveand when my fingers touched his ankle, bare, filthy, hot with fever, | felt something how!

behind my teeth-not a scream, not a sob, but heat, raw and holy, like Riot’s dying body was a god and | was its

last worshipper.

“You look terrified,” he said.

“I'am,” | breathed, my fingers curling in the meat of his jaw. “What the fuck is this... Riot?”

“Stop,” he said, softer now, a ruin cracking in the wind. “You don’t know what you're asking for.”

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But | did—I did, or | thought | did, or | needed to pretend | did, because the only thing worse than knowing was

not knowing.

“Tell me,” | whispered, curling my fingers harder into the wreck of his jaw.” | need to know everything.”

Riot laughed.

“You want to know?” he wheezed, voice all bone and rot, his good eye gleaming fever-yellow. “You want the

plan, princess?”

He sucked in air, slow, like it hurt him to givethis.

I've never really looked into Riot’s eyes because I'm terrified of what | see from it but now, all | can see is

acceptance of fate.

“He’s not building soldiers,” Riot hissed. “He’s building altars. You. Me. All of us-gutted, blessed, fed to the heat

until it sings through our marrow. He’s not making a pack. He's making himself the alpha.”

| blinked, once, slow, like maybe | could shut the words out if | sealed my eyes hard enough, like | could unhear

them, but Riot’s voice had already crawled down the wet pipe of my throat and lodged somewhere deep.

“That’s-" My lip split on the word, bottom jaw trembling as if my bones wanted to cry even when my face stayed

blank, a mask of dumb animal comprehension. “That’s-impossible.”

“Is it, Jess?” Chain snapped taut as he shifted-just one shoulder wrenching forward. “Is it impossible?”

| wanted to deny it, to spit, to snarl, to make myself blind or dumb from everything that had happened but

there's no denying or running from all of this.

“You have to helpget out of this place.”

Riot laughed-short, sharp, cruel. “Out?”

| crawled closer, knees bleeding from the stone, hips grazing the floor with every breath, and that’s when he

shifted again, spine bowing sharp as a broken bowstring.

“Undo the chain,” he growled, raw-voice wet, voice feral, voice godless.

My fingers froze above the lock, heat from his skin soaking mine, the stink of him-salt, fever, rot, blood- blessing