Fatal Conclusions (Book 3, the Fatal Trilogy Series)

Chapter 1.

"We are here."

I can still hear his words echoing in my mind every morning when I wake up.

We are here.

I am here. 

Losing everyone who meant anything to me that day gutted me. I'd thought before that I'd known pain, loss, and desperation, but now I laugh at the idiot of a girl I was back then.

This is worse than anything I've lived through before.

Ten fucking times worse.

I still have trouble believing it all happened. The last months of my life all broken down into little highlighted moments in my mind. Sometimes they help pull me through, sometimes they just remind me of all that I've lost.

I think maybe that's what's the worst part of this all.

From the moment I was born, I was unwanted. I was no one. I lived life casted in shadows of my own making, knowing the sting of caring for people who don't feel the same for me. I craved affection, wherever I could get it. I let that craving and my instinct to put others before me in the hopes that they'd somehow come to love me get me into positions that I could have so easily avoided.

I knew the pain of losing friends.

My best friend, my first love, my first deep cutting heartbreak.

I lived so long under the burden of my secrets and hidden life. I let that darkness in me pull me down so deep that I nearly let a monster destroy all that there was left of me.

But my evil sadistic therapist turned tormentor didn't break me, not like I thought he had, no matter how hard he tried. Pieces of me stuck. Pieces of me that I did everything in my power to keep safe.

I built up walls around myself so thick and high that no one could get close enough to me to make me care. I had been so lonely but I knew it was better for me and everyone else involved if I kept my darkness to myself.

Dr. Ellison Cochran had been only my most visible monster. So many more lurked beneath my skin and festering inside of my mind. I brought bad things to people. People who got too close got hurt. And if it wasn't them getting hurt, it was me hurting myself to keep others happy.

I'd had enough of it all.

The pain and loneliness were tolerable as long as I kept that one promise to myself: don't let anyone in.

Moving to Kettle's Bell was never supposed to be a long term thing. I was supposed to stay and work for a few months tops, then move along, careful not to touch my cursed hands on anyone. Affect no one.

But then I'd met him.

Daimon Kross was everything I craved and couldn't have all wrapped up in one sinfully sweet package. He saw my walls and came through with a sledgehammer, forcing his way into my life and heart.

Choosing to love him was as easy as breathing.

I needed him.

And he needed me.

He broke me apart, taking out all of the barriers I'd carefully crafted, and he took those pieces of me left hidden deep inside and he put them all back into place. He showed me what it was like to love and be loved.

He also opened me up to things I'd never known.

Werewolves weren't just a story to scare kids into not wandering the woods at night. They were real, and I was one too. Daimon and his pack took me in, giving me a family and a home for the first time in my twenty-one years.