By the time I stepped out into the neon-soaked street, my mind was in pieces.
Those strange floating comments kept appearing and disappearing in front of me, enough for me to piece together the outline of something ridiculous and insulting:
This world was a novel.
I was the vicious female side character. The one who loved a man who would never truly choose her. The one who would eventually turn twisted, jealous, and cruel after the heroine appeared.
What a joke.
I was Chloe Prescott, only daughter of the Prescott family. I had money, a name, a spine, and a temper. Why would I ever stoop to competing with another woman over a man like Shen Yili?
Before tonight, I hadn’t known what he really was. That much I could admit. But now that I had seen his face beneath the mask, all I wanted was revenge.
I was still chewing on that thought when I realized it was late.
Too late.
Tonight was the night my condition was supposed to flare up.
By the time the familiar restlessness began spreading through my body, it was already bad. My skin prickled. My breathing turned shallow. The city lights around me seemed painfully bright, the sidewalks too empty, the night too wide.
I braced one hand against a wall and pulled out my phone to call for a ride.
That was when I noticed him.
He was half-sitting, half-collapsed near the curb, beneath the weak spill of a streetlamp.
At first I only saw blood.
Then I saw the rest.
He looked young—eighteen, maybe nineteen. His dark hair curled slightly at the ends, damp and messy, shadowing half his face. He wore a white shirt ruined by blood, the fabric torn open enough to reveal the hard rise and fall of his chest. Even sitting there half-conscious, he was all sharp lines and lean muscle, his body tense like something feral trying not to show weakness.
One hand braced against the pavement. Long fingers. Veins standing out.
He looked wrecked.
He also looked indecently beautiful.
There was something almost cruel in the contrast. Blood, bruises, exhaustion—and underneath all of it, a face so striking it bordered on unreal. Young, delicate, dark eyes bright with pain. The kind of face that could look innocent right before it bit your throat out.
I stepped closer without meaning to.
My red heels stopped in front of him. I looked down at the shadowed outline of his body beneath the torn shirt, and my already feverish skin seemed to grow even hotter.
I wanted to touch him.
Then I saw the blood and changed my mind.
So I lifted one foot and nudged his chest with the tip of my heel.
“What’s your name?”
He took a slow breath and raised his head.
The full force of his face hit me all at once. He had the soft, clean features of a boy who should still have been in school worrying about exams, not bleeding out under a streetlamp. His eyes were wet and startlingly black. His mouth parted as if he wanted to speak but had forgotten how.
He looked at me the way a starving stray dog might look at a hand reaching toward it—wary, needy, dangerous.
No.
Not a dog.
A mad dog.
The kind that had been beaten, cornered, starved, and hurt so badly it would tear anything apart the second it got the chance.
He finally answered in a hoarse, soft voice. “Evan.”
Even the voice was misleading. Gentle. Low. Almost obedient.
Something about that made me smile.
Then he moved.
His filthy hand reached out and wrapped around my ankle. Cool fingers. Sticky with blood.
Instead of disgust, I felt a strange calm slide through me.
Shen Yili had always felt warm. Orderly. Controlled.
This boy felt cold.
Wrong.
Crooked in a way that matched something in me.
He tipped his face up and looked straight at me. “Please,” he murmured. “Help me, sis.”
He was begging, but his hand stroked slowly over my calf as if testing me.
A pulse of heat went through my body so sharply that I frowned and kicked him away.
“You’re filthy.”
His expression changed instantly. A flicker of shame. Then his lashes lowered.
“I’m sorry.”
A black SUV pulled up to the curb right then. My bodyguard got out first.
“Miss Prescott.”
The boy—Evan—closed his eyes when he saw other people coming, as if bracing for the blow.
I looked at him for one more beat, then smiled.
“I’ve never owned a dog before,” I said.
Especially not a mad one.
I flicked my fingers at the bodyguard. “Put him in the car.”
Whether he wanted it or not, I was taking him home.