bThe /bbConfrontation /b

~Lyra~

“I am never and I mean never allowing you to go to any f*****g party again. You hear me?! I don’t care if it’s ba /bbirthday, a wedding, a gender reveal or Jesus Christ himself hosting it in your mother’s backyard. You’re

done. You’re grounded. Go. To. Your. Room. Now.”

Tasha just stood there, blinking like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her glossy lips parted

slightly.

“Are you serious right now?” Tasha finally said.

“You can’t do this, Dad!” Tasha shouted, eyes zing as she stormed down the hall toward him. “You bcan’t /bbf/bb*****/bg do this! Can’t a girl live a little?! So what..I came homete! Am I hurt? No! Did I crash? No! I’m fine!”

“I’m not twelve anymore,i” /ishe snapped, throwing her arms out. “You don’t have to lock me in ba /bbf/bb*****/bbg /btower

every time I step outside!”

Damon didn’t flinch. He just stood there; chest rising slow and hard, every line in his body tight with restraint.

His jaw flexed. His eyes didn’t leave her face, even as I shifted behind him like a ghost in oversized cotton.

“You don’t get to question the rules in my house,” he said. “You don’t get to vanish for hours, ignore your

phone, and then walk in like nothing happened.”

Tasha scoffed. “So what now, you’re going to ground me because I went to a party and had fun? That’s your

idea of parenting? Keeping me in a cage while everyone else lives?b” /b

“You came home smelling like vodka and sweat,” Damon said, voice low but lethal. “Your skirt is up to here.”

He lifted a hand sharply. “And you almost put yourself in danger, Tasha. You don’t even know the kind of men

that wait for girls like you to slip.”

“I wasn’t in danger!” she screamed. “I was with friends!”

“Friends don’t let you disappear!” he barked. “Friends don’t leave you drunk and half–dressed, stumbling through the dark. You think I haven’t seen what happens to girls who take that one wrong step? You think I’d

survive it if something happened to you?!”

But Tasha didn’t back down.

She didn’t apologize.

She didn’t even blink.

She stepped forward, close enough that she had to tilt her head up to look him in the eyes.

And then..she snapped.

b“/bbf/b**k you, Dad.”

Damon bfroze/b.

But Tasha didn’t stop.

Her mouth twisted binto /ba grin. Not the sweet kind. Not bthe /bbratty kind.

The dangerous kind.

bIII /b

O

The Confrontation

“Yeah. You heard me. bf/b**k you. And guess what…”

Her voice dropped into something sharp and slow.

“I had an orgy.”

Damon’s expression didn’t move.

But the air did.

The entire hallway dropped ten degrees.

bPoints/b

“I f****d six men,” she said, louder now. “Six. In one night. On one couch. Do you wanna know their namesb? /bHm? Should I list them alphabetically?”

Oh.

My.

God.

She didn’t just say that.

She didn’t just say that.

Oh fb**/bk, she did.

I literally stopped breathing. My mouth was open, my brain was ringing, my legs were straight–up jelly. My toes curled into the floor like that would somehow ground me to realityb, /bbut it didn’t help.

Nothing helped. Not the shirt I was drowning in, not the thick air choking the hallwayb, /bbnot /beven the walls, because I was sure the walls heard it too.

Tasha just said she had an orgy.

With six men.

Six.

And not quietly. Not in a whisper. Not in a drunk–girl–giggle–while–l–confess kind of way. No. She yelled it. She screamed it at her dad like she was trying to burn the whole bf*****/bg house down with her mouth.

And all I could think was Oh my god, she’s dead. She’s dead. Damon’s going to kill her. He’s going bto /bbsnap /bher neck and drag her into the basement and I’m going to have to help hide the body because technically I was a witness and I’m also in his shirt and also his c*m is still in me and oh f**k I should not be standing here.

I should’ve run.

bI /bshould’ve run the second she bsaid /b“bf/bb**/bk you, Dad.”

But I didn’tb. /b

Because bI /bwas frozen.

Because my legs weren’t bworking/b.

Because my bbrain /bbwasn’t /bbworking/b.

bBecause /bwhen bshe /bbsaid /bbit/bb–/bborgy/bb–/bbmy /bbstomach /bbdropped /bblike /bbI’d /bbbeen /bbpushed /bboff /bba /bbcliff/bb. /bbAnd /bbmay /bbheart/bb? /bIt was bstraight/bb–/bbup /bbpunching /bbme /bbin the /bbribs/b. bLike /bbboom/b. bBoom/bb. /bbBoom/b. bbh /bbare /bbyou /bbhearing /bthis?

The Confrontation

Damon didn’t move at first.

That was the scariest part.

He just… stopped.

Not like paused. Not like thinking. More like calcting murder.

And I could feel the shift in the air. You know when someone’s about to explode, bbut /bthey’re holding bit /bbin /bso tight the whole room starts to shake with silence? That was Damon. Still, Rigid. His eyes locked on her blike /bhe couldn’t believe what she’d just said. Like she’d spat in his face and then lit the house on bfire /bbjust /bbto /bprove

a point.

Then she kept talking.

She. Kept. Going.

“I liked it,” she said, with that devil–smile of hers.

And my knees buckled. Actually buckled.

I grabbed the wall beside me like a dramatic little Victoriandy about to faint and the only reason I bdidn’t /bcopse was because Damon was between us and thank God for that.

Because I don’t know what I would’ve done if Tasha had taken one more step.

I don’t know what he would’ve done if she said one more word.

Oh wait–she did.

She started talking about a guy with a tongue ring.

A tongue ring.

I nearly threw up.

Not from jealousy. Not from shock. From pure survival instinct. Like, my whole body was screaming abort! abort! We are in danger! Do not listen to this girlb,/bbconfess /bher sins at full volume when your thighs are bstill /bsticky with her father’s DNA!

And then..he moved.

Not a normal step.

Heunched.

Damon was across the hallway in one breath, hands mped on Tasha’s shouldersb, /bbface /binches bfrom /bbhers/bb, /band suddenly it didn’t feel like a house anymore. It bfelt /blike a war zone.

And I was caught in the middle.

Naked.

Shaking.

bWearing /bbthe /bgeneral’s bshirt/b.

“bWhat /bbdid /bbyou /bbsay/bb?/b” he basked /bbher/bb, /band boh /bfb**/bbk/bb. /b

bThe /bway bhe /bbsaid /bbit/b.

The Confrontation

I couldn’t breathe.

He wasn’t yelling. That was the terrifying part.

He was calm.

Too calm.

Points

Like he’d already murdered her six imaginary boyfriends in his head and was now working his way to deciding

if she should live or die.

And poor Tasha… she blinked.

Like it had finally hit her.

She said it out loud.

She said it in front of him.

She said it while I was in his fb*****/bg shirt and still couldn’t look her in the eye.

I don’t know what she was thinking. Maybe she thought she was invincible. Maybe she thought saying something outrageous would hurt him the way he was hurting her. But oh my God, I swear on everything I

love..she had no idea who she was dealing with.

Because Damon wasn’t just a dad.

He was a loaded weapon disguised as one.

And right then?

He didn’t look angry.

He looked disappointed.

The worst kind. The kind that turns into destruction.

“You’re not my daughter tonight,” he said.

I gasped.

Out loud.

I couldn’t help it.

Because that wasn’t just punishment.

That was exile.

I watched Tasha’s face crumple like paper in a fire. Her lips parted, her whole body stilled, and for the first time since I met her, she looked like a child. Like a girl who had just realized her words had consequences

she couldn’t take back.

“What?” she whispered.

That’s all she managed to whisper. One word. One syble. But it sounded so smalling out of her. So weak. Like she was a little girl again, and he’d just ripped the floor out from under her.

But Damon didn’t blink.

His jaw was locked. His eyes were lit from within. And then he said the words that made my stomach twist

O

The Confrontation

into a full–blown panic knot:

“Get out of my sight, Tasha. Before I do something I’ll regret.”

S**t.

His voice wasn’t loud.

It didn’t have to be.

It was the kind of voice that made your knees buckle and iyour /iheart m against your chest because you

knew the man in front of you wasn’t entirely human anymore.

And oh God. His eyes.

They were glowing.

Not like metaphorical glow, not like poetic glow.

Glowing.

Amber. Wild. Alpha.

The wolf was right there, just beneath the surface, breathing heavy through his chest and looking for a

reason to snap.

And Tasha must’ve seen it too, because her face twisted in pure fear. Real fear. The kind you can’t fake. The kind you feel in your spine when instinct tells you you’re about to be devoured.

She staggered back.

Her lips parted like she wanted to speak.

But nothing came out.

Just a sharp inhale. Then a whimper.

And then she turned and ran..barefoot down the hallway, choked sobs spilling out of her as she vanished into

her room and mmed the door behind her.

Gone.

Silence.

Oh God. It was just me now.

Just me and him.

I was still standing by the wall like a statue that had witnessed a murder.

My fingers were trembling. My shirt–his shirt–was sticking to my back from how hard I was sweating. My

legs were soaked, still soaked, and didn’t know if it was from him, from me, or from the sheer panic pooling

down my thighs.

He turned.

Slowly.

And looked right at me.

Not at my thighs.

O

The Confrontation

Not at the mark on my neck.

Not at the shirt clinging to my hips.

Right at my eyes.

“Did you know about this?b” /bhe asked.

His voice was quieter now. Too quiet. That dangerous quiet.

Lfroze.

Like actually froze.

+8 Points b /b

Not the cute movie kind where the girl gasps and puts hand over her mouth in dramatic ishock/i. No. I froze like my nervous system short–circuited. Like my brain just threw its hands up and said, “Welp, this is it. This is how we die. Hope the coffin’s pink.”

Because Damon was looking at me.

Staring. Into. Me.

Like he could hear my thoughts. Like he could see every single dirty secret crawling out of my pores and spilling down my thighs. His face was calm, but it wasn’t calm. It was Alpha calm–that terrifyingb, /bcold, eerie stillness that onlyes right before a storm swallows your whole world and spits out the bones.

And he asked me again.

“Did you know about this?b” /b

Just like that.

Seven words.

But I swear it felt like a sledgehammer to the chest.

Because how the f**k do you answer that when your best friend just confessed to her father that she participated in a six–man gangbang and you’re standing there in his shirtb, /bstill dripping his c*m, with his bite mark glowing red on your neck like a neon sign that says TRAITOR?

My mouth opened. Nothing came out. My thoughts were tripping over each other like kids in a fire drill.

Say no, Lyra.

Lie. Lie through your teeth.

You’re already halfway to hell, just sprint.

I mean, what’s one more sin?

bI /bbknew /beverything.

bI /bshould’ve lied.

I breally/bb, /bbreally /bshould’ve blied/b..

bBut /bbmy /blips had a bdeath /bwish.

b“/bbYes/bb,” /bbI /bbsaid/b. bLike /ba bgoddamn/bb,/bb***/bbt/b. b“/bbDammit/b. bI..yes/bb./bb” /b

f**bk /bbI’m /bbdead/bb. /b