Call You Mine (Servite Academy)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

DAMON

“ I ’m going to ask you this once more. Who are you running from, Princess?”

“My husband,” she said.

That was it, the moment my entire world came crashing down. Everything went black, a sharp ringing in my ears as her voice echoed in the empty room. Husband. One simple word that meant the end to this passionate affair between us. Because that’s all it has been, an illicit affair between me and a married woman.

I knew there was something she wasn’t telling me, but this, this I never imagined. It would have been be stupid of me not to suspect there was someone else after the way she showed up at my door, covered in blood and open wounds, with fear brimming from her gorgeous eyes. The way she clearly was running from something, always afraid and looking over her shoulder. Then came the messages, the texts I assumed were from a secret lover she’d left behind. When she wouldn’t confess, I figured maybe it was her mother who was harassing her, sending her the packages that visibly made her skin crawl.

I left it alone. I tried my hardest to stay away from her, to hold on to some control of the situation when I felt things shifting between us. But I couldn’t. My restraint ran thin every time she touched me to seduce me. Every time I kissed her, felt her beneath my fingertips, tasted her, it grew thinner and thinner until it finally snapped, creating a domino effect that would soon come crumbling down. I could feel it in my bones, in the depths of my soul. Every crack, every break. With every look, the slightest touch, she came closer and closer to pulverizing the wall I set up between us until it could no longer stand on its own. Because I allowed myself to drop it down and let her in.

I gave into temptation, the sexual tension so palpable between us was impossible to ignore and I no longer wanted to deny it. I agreed to her stupid friends with benefits scheme, even though I knew it would never work. I did it all because I couldn’t continue living without claiming her. Without tasting her on my tongue, caressing her body with my hands, feeling her sweet pussy tighten around my cock as she lost herself and came for me.

Soon enough, as expected, we acted like a proper couple. Spent every night together in bed, hung around our group of friends, going places together although we no longer had to pretend. I brushed off the uncertainty and trusted that she would eventually tell me when she was ready.

It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. For someone who needed to control every aspect of his life, I took a chance, let fate have at it and it fucking backfired.

I released her, the anger coursing within me from her betrayal felt all too familiar.

She came to me for a reason, and now I knew what it was. Wynter was running away from a man, not just any man—her husband. And she had the fucking nerve to stand here and tell me she was having my baby. God, the universe has some fucked up sense of humor.

My silence was deafening. I could see the panic in her fear-stricken eyes. The regret she felt for her treachery, though only because she’s been caught and her so-called plan was coming barreling down.

How long was this ruse of hers going to continue if she hadn’t gotten pregnant? Because I’m one hundred percent certain that if I hadn’t discovered her pregnancy, she would have never confessed to being a married woman.

Wynter is fucking married, yet she stood there trying to tell me she lo…I couldn’t even think the word, let alone say it out loud. I couldn’t even get myself to think about it. The rage flowing through my veins was uncontrollable. I was an untamable, raging fire and she was the unruly bitter cold. Both of us were dangerous and volatile in different ways. Yet she was the only one who could extinguish my ire and I the only one who could ignite her passion. Together, we were indestructible.

In one second, she destroyed me. Destroyed what could have been us.

Everything I thought we had was a fucking lie. She played me for a fool, something I swore I would never again be after what I’d gone through with Scarlett, then falling into Clarissa’s trap. The joke was definitely on me now. I did this. I let my guard down, even though every instinct in me told me not to. Every part of me knew this was a risk I shouldn’t have been willing to take, but I couldn’t stop myself. Wynter became a drug I needed, a high that was too powerful, too euphoric to ignore. She was mine, branded by me in every single way, though all of it meant nothing now.

What started out fake was even more counterfeit than I thought. Every part of this foolproof plan turned out to be flawed beyond repair. What we had, what I’d accepted was real after that night I tattooed her, the same night she’d become tattooed on my heart, was a fallacy of my making. I needed to get Wynter Servite out of my head.

Wynter rushed out of the bar and I let her go. I couldn’t get myself to move. I was frozen in time. Everything around me was moving in slow motion, yet I couldn’t do a damn thing but stand there like a statue and watch the woman I thought I loved walk away from me.

How could I love something that didn’t exist?

When she muttered those two words that hit me like a knife to the chest, I didn’t understand how to react. Wynter was pregnant. A fucking baby. Wynter was having my baby. I couldn't help but chuckle out loud to myself. Me, a father—there’d been nothing more ridiculous to me. How the fuck was I supposed to be a dad? I never knew mine, and I was better for it. Growing up there was rarely a day I imagined what my life would have been like if I’d known him. It wouldn’t have changed anything. He would have still been a deadbeat who probably would have screwed me up more if I’d known him. But then I met Nico, and for the three months I knew him, he was the closest thing to a father I’d even known.

That still didn’t mean I’d have a fucking clue what to do.

I couldn’t be a father, not the kind any child needed. Trust me, she was better off without me. But didn’t that make me just like my father? Would fear and fury make me turn into the fucking bastard?

As I watched Wynter walk out of the bar and my life with my baby in her stomach, that’s exactly what was happening. I was turning into my deadbeat father by letting it happen.

I wouldn’t become him. I couldn’t do that, though I also couldn't be what she wanted me to be, what she needed me to be.

I cradled my face in my hands and screamed as I ran my fingers through my hair and pulled, before charging through the bar and out the door. There was glass shattered everywhere. I knew I’d have to come back to clean that up or at least tell Jade what had occurred here tonight before she came in to open in the morning.

Once outside, I searched for her, looked around the empty parking lot, and found nothing. She hadn’t brought her car tonight and I couldn’t figure out why. I ran down the street from the bar until I found her pacing back and forth down the quiet and empty street. It was dark, the street lamp above her flickering in the night, dimming the same way the light in her was disappearing.

“Get your ass back to the bar Wynter,” I demanded, unable to see her out there all alone. “You can’t be out here by yourself.”

“Go fuck yourself, Damon,” she spit back at me, venom on her tongue as she spoke like I’d been the one to ruin shit tonight. She didn’t listen, so I went to her, grabbing her by the waist to tug her toward me, but just as I did, a car came speeding at us, breaking just before it nearly hit us.

Ace leapt out of the car and ran straight to me as I dug my fingers deeper into Wynter by protective instinct. Scarlett came next, distracting me for a moment as she, very pregnant, waddled out of the car toward Wynter. “I’m sorry Wynter, I tried. He wouldn’t let me leave without him.”

I didn’t see it coming, my eyes on Scarlett and the way she was staring worriedly back and forth between Wynter and me. Ace rushed into me, the element of surprise in his favor, and slammed his furious fist into my jaw. It didn’t take long for me to get a hold of myself and what had just happened. I went after him, just as hard, and the two of us slammed our fists back and forth into one another like it had been long overdue.

The pain didn’t register. My rage clouded my entire being as I threw myself at the fucker, slamming my fist into his pretty face repeatedly, until we were both drawing blood.

Since the day I met Ace Servite, I have hated him. Everything he stood for called to something in me that made me so angry. So much power, yet he was played like a fucking puppet and hurt people I cared about. And now he was getting between me and my woman.

Beside us, I faintly heard Wynter scream, but I couldn’t really tell if it was her or what she’d said. Blinded by my fury and the way absolutely everything in me hurt, I kept swinging, not caring what part of him I hit. I just needed to get this out of me and fighting, slamming my fist into something, was the only way I knew how.

The metallic twinge of blood sat on my tongue, but it only kept me going.

Both Wynter and Scarlett were screaming for us to stop, but neither one of us listened. We couldn’t see Wynter as she came closer and begged us to stop. “For fucks sake, stop!” she cried out one last time before everything went completely quiet—the moment my blaring fist slammed right into her beautiful unsuspecting, and undeserving face.

My angel, I’d just struck her and ruined any good let in me. Not that there was any, really. But I ensured my descent to hell with that searing touch on her skin.

Ace was the first to react, leaving me to run to his sister's side. But I couldn't move, couldn’t breathe—my lungs burning like they were being torn apart. What had I done? My hands shook, my entire body vibrating with fury and shame. Until I went completely numb, numb at the sight of my girl, my baby on the floor because I had put them there. Blinded by my ire, I had done the worst thing I ever had done in my entire life. I had just fucking hit a woman—not just any woman, but the one I loved—the one carrying my child inside her.

If this wasn’t a fucking sign from the universe, I don’t know what was. Was this our future? Would this occur every time I lost control? I was a monster. That was no secret. A fucking temperamental and volatile beast. A dragon by nature—made to maim and destroy.

Wynter didn’t deserve that, and neither did her innocent child.

“You’ll stay the fuck away from her, Drake,” Ace shouted out, bringing me back to reality. “Or I promise I’ll fucking murder you myself.”

He didn’t have to threaten me. I would have gladly done the same thing myself. Ace wouldn't have to worry because after today, after this moment, I’d never see Wynter again.

My eyes couldn’t stray from hers. I couldn’t look away from the tears staining her eyes, the swelling underneath which was changing color. Black and blue, the same way I felt inside.

“Ace, please, let’s just go,” Scarlett begged him, tugging on his arm as he helped Wynter up. She got up, and they hesitantly dragged her to the car. Everything inside of me ached to stop her. I couldn’t live like this, not with the uncertainty her confession left me with. Who was her husband? What was his story? Why was she running? Had he hurt her? And the one I knew was tearing through every part of me—was the baby mine?

I got one last thing out before I completely succumbed to my madness. “You can’t leave me like this Wynter,” I told her, my voice so low I almost didn’t register it was really me who was talking. “I need to know.”

With one hand on the door handle of Ace’s car, beautiful clear blue eyes turned and looked at me. The sorrow in them made my heart shatter all over again. “Then ask Damon. One last thing you get to ask me before I disappear and you never hear from us again.” Her words hit me straight in the chest, although I knew I’d have said the same thing. “Before I disappear, and you never hear from us again.”

She was leaving, walking out of my life for good, but wasn’t that what I needed her to do? Then why did I feel like she’d just ripped my heart out, thrown it on the floor, and smashed it with the edge of her heel?

Lost in my thoughts, I couldn’t think of which question to ask first. There were so many things I wanted to know, but I knew it wouldn’t make a difference if she told me everything. I could never trust Wynter again. So I aimed for the truth. “Who is he?” I asked, the need to know who he was, the man who’d just stolen everything from me. But he hadn’t, really, because Wynter Servite never belonged to me—not when she was his first. Not when she still belonged to him.

She visibly swallowed back her tears, her fears, all the bullshit lies she told me every time I held her in my arms—the night she swore to be mine forever. “A monster.”

Losing Wynter was worse than I ever imagined it could be. Then again, it had only been a mere two hours without her, and my life already felt emptier than it ever had been.

Like a piece of me was missing, torn out of me and in its wake left a gaping hole that would never be full—never healed.

After Wynter drove away from me, I returned to The Silver Wolf to clean up the mess we’d made and lock up before texting Jade and letting her know I’d done so. I turned off my phone and left it in my car as I walked into my empty house, not wanting to be bothered by whoever would dare call. By now, I’m sure Scarlett had shared the news to all of our group and, in no time, they’d all be barging down my door and demanding to knock some sense into me.

It would be futile because there’s nothing they could say or do to convince me I wasn’t the one to blame for all of this. For hurting her more than she could have ever hurt me. Or maybe they wouldn’t.

Maybe they’d see my flaws clearer than they’d ever had. To think one of my best friends was siding with her, a woman who, until two months ago, she despised. That was the power of Wynter. Her charm was undeniable, her alluring nature too much for the average person to fight off. It must have been what attracted her husband. Her beauty is beyond compare. The elegance and sophistication she held in the palm of her hands, despite where she stood now, was unlike anything else.

Though the last thing she’d told me didn’t let me rest. A monster, that’s what she’d said of him, which leads me to believe she was running out of fear for her safety. Memories of the texts she’d received, the packages she was weary of—just like the one she’d gotten recently. I’d seen it in her bedroom, but at that moment I’d trusted her and hadn’t opened it myself, although the urge to do so was there. But right now. Right now, I need to know what it was.

The usual warmth that overflowed inside my home just recently when Wynter arrived is now gone, and in its wake a bitter void is left. Just like the one inside of me.

I rush upstairs and toward her bedroom, eager to find answers. Once inside, I go through all of her things, pulling drawers out of her dressers, ravaging through all her belongings until I find what I’m looking for. Hidden underneath her lacy underwear is a flash drive and a card tucked away in a small envelope. The front of the envelope has one simple word written in cursive.

Carina.

I don’t understand it, don’t know what it means, but I know it was meant for her.

Grabbing the drive and the card, I head back down to my home office, quickly inserting the USB drive into my computer as I hold the small envelope between my fingers. Just then, a video appears before me. Choosing to watch what’s on the drive first, I set the card down and press play.

Bile rises in my throat the moment I realize what this is. It’s too much. I want to look away, to slam my fist into the screen, throw something across the room, to scream, but I can’t. All I can do is sit here watching the woman I loved with another man. It’s a compilation of sorts. Videos of the two of them from various angles at different times—galas, casinos, out to dinner in the city. He’s important that I could gather almost immediately, but he also wasn’t good.

No, he had a certain look to him—his demeanor gave off such negative energy that shouldn't be taken lightly. And the entourage who followed closely behind them in almost every shot was proof Wynter was trapped in something much worse than what I’d first assumed.

The next scene is one I can hardly keep my eyes on. Wynter’s in her room, wearing the same silver dress she had on the day she arrived on my doorstep. But this version of it was clean. Her hair was beautifully curled, pulled up in some sort of updo that showed off her long and delicate neck. The same man enters the room and approaches her, his steps slow yet calculated. I can’t read her reaction, the angle of the camera not quite reading her face, but her body grows stiff as the man speaks.

Wynter walks backwards, toward the bed until the back of her legs hit the mattress. He continues to advance, and just before he reaches for her, I pause it, unable to watch what I know is about to happen.

I throw my head back against my chair, desperation clawing at me from the inside. How could I allow myself to be taken advantage of by this woman? Not physically, that was both of us equally unable to keep our hands off of one another—the sexual tension and attraction between us was always there and we’d spent so long trying to convince ourselves we shouldn’t go there which made it all that more explosive when it finally did.

No, Wynter took advantage of my possessive need to protect. She came to me injured and scared, and immediately she knew I’d never send her way, not without trying to fight off every single demon she kept, every monster who threatened to hurt her, only she was the only one who broke me in the end.

Unable to keep thinking about how regardless of everything she did to fool me into believing something real with us was a possibility, I still wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything, which was dangerous as fuck because I knew she was bad for me. She made me lose my mind, lose all sense of whatever else existed but her.

Needing answers to quiet my thoughts, I open the envelope, slowly taking out the small card. I know whatever it says is going to throw me deeper down this rabbit hole of despair.

My eyes widen at the words written in red ink along one side.

I warned you, told you time and time again you didn't want to see the consequences of testing my patience. Yet you continue to test me, little girl. You think throwing your dog at me was going to keep me away, but I have something of much more value? If you’re reading this, I assume you watched the gracious video my dear Luke could get me. If you don’t want me to send your plaything a copy, I suggest you meet me. The address is on the back. Don’t make me wait too long, my dear girl. Every day I sit here waiting is another day you’ll soon regret. - XOXO Mummy

Disgusted by the woman’s blatant disregard for her daughter and cruel nature, I flip the card over and read the address written on the back. It’s here in Hillcrest Hills, a mere ten minutes from my home. The bitch never left, though I warned her too. She threatens Wynter with not heeding her warnings, yet the crazy, stupid bitch didn’t listen to mine. It’s been over a month since this package was sent to Wynter. I recall the day she received it at The Silver Wolf, yet I know Willa’s still there waiting for Wynter to show up.

Wynter might not tell me what I need to know, but I have to get answers, and now I know exactly where to find them.