We've done this before. Well, not this exactly, but something like it. A few times.

At first, Emmerson's expression is curious when she comes out of the door of the gas station and sees me handcuffed to the mainline gas pipe. But her honey brown eyes quickly morph into the same glassy stare a bunny has when it senses a predator. Not all of us inspire that instinct in humans, but I do. Every time. The curse of my genetics. A long dead fight or flight impulse flickers to life in humans when I choose to reveal myself.

But with her, I really wish it didn't.

Ever since my cousins caught on to how hot my blood runs whenever Emmerson is near, they think it's funny to throw me in her path. To them, the joke never gets old. For me, it's wearing thin. She has no recollection of these encounters, and, with everyone but her, I relish in that power. Who wouldn't? Manipulate people and situations to my own tastes or be invisible. Able to blend into the background of a human's life.

Those skills are the reason my people have been able to live in this town for multiple generations. There are no limits to what my family can do. Protectors. Terrors. Observers. Every generation has had its share of each, but I'm still trying to figure out where I fit. A dab of each quality resides in me, each warring for dominance. Though I'm fully aware of what my parents want and expect. Shame they won't get it anytime soon.

"Here's what's going to happen," I say to Emmerson, and I give a gentle tug on the handcuff that's attached to the central gas line. A test. Definitely can't get free without breaking the metal. My other hand is loose at my side. They weren't strong enough to get them both. "I'm going to rip this pipe off. My friends will appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and throw a match at me. Flames will engulf me, but I. Will. Not. Die."

"You'll die." Her eyes widen, and her ash blonde hair that's pulled into a ponytail, sways in the breeze. She's lit by the lone overhead light of the gas station. She smells like coconut and chocolate, and I suspect she was eating a macaroon before she heard the commotion and came out here. Her shift is almost over, and I really wish my asshole cousins had left me alone.

I tried to stop Rig and Donovan from attaching the handcuff, but my powers seem to be weakening lately. Fuckers take advantage of my stubbornness. And my obsession with the woman in front of me.

"I won't die, and it's critical you remember that." Not likely, and I hate that my cousins enjoy this trauma porn. Hardly fair. Part of me wonders whether humans, despite what I've been told, retain the remnants of these episodes somewhere deep inside their psyche. No evidence of any lingering memory, and my parents have assured me these games are harmless. But when I see the blind panic on her face, there's a vice around my chest. In this moment, none of this makes sense to her, and it physically pains me to be the source of her confusion.

For the briefest moment, I consider sitting down and waiting Donovan and Rig out. If I don't play the game, the game gets boring. But if I wait too long one of my sisters might find me, and that'll start a lecture about how I could have easily defeated Donovan and Rig if I'd just accept my destiny.

Fat fucking chance. I'd sooner be powerless.

Which, honestly, might happen. No one seems to know. At twenty-two, I should have gone through the birthright ceremony last year. My stubbornness is leading to all sorts of new discoveries, much to my parents' dismay.

"Stop ogling her and get on with it," Rig calls from the shadows at a level only I can hear. A dog whistle.

"You should go back behind the till," I say. "Out of harm's way. It's going to get wild out here, and I won't have you see it."

"Don't break the gas line." She holds her hands out, and then she digs her phone out of her back pocket. "I'll call the police or the fire department or something. They can get the handcuff off."

I let out a little chuckle as she stares at her phone, dumbfounded. She smacks it against her palm and lets out a groan of annoyance.

No signal. If she wants to call, she'll have to go inside. We're walking frequency jammers, and if we actually think about it, we can cause an outage for miles around. As long as she's out here with me, she won't have a single bar. Most of the town has spotty signal. Phone companies have given up trying to figure out the problem. This town is the wifi and cell service Bermuda Triangle of the southern east coast.

Emmerson eyes my predicament and worries the edge of her lips. "That steel is thick." She comes closer and part of me wishes she wouldn't.

But the other part of me? It roars to life at her proximity. Seeks her heat like the only source of warmth in the arctic. Bury myself so deep she'd never get me out.

She wraps her hand around the metal pipe before staring up at me. She's not small in stature, but I'm above average in every way, and when our gazes connect, I sense more than see the shiver that runs through her.

My blood burns, and from the shadows Donovan's guffaw is an audible annoyance. He lives for my discomfort, and I have to clench my jaw and my hands to keep myself from doing something stupid. Tearing off the handcuff and the pipe. Setting flame to us both. Kissing her. Ripping off her clothes. Feeding the hunger to mate that surges through me.

My instincts are wrong. Skewed.

Is my passion because I didn't do the ceremony? Is this my punishment? To have a constant want that can't quite be tamed.

She's human. This compulsion is impossible. Can't explain it. The fire raging, blazing through my veins like an inferno, should only happen around one being. One. Not this one. Someone else. And it does. This is how I feel around the other one too. Or I used to. I've refused to see her for the last year.

My animal attraction for Emmerson unnerves me, and it fascinates Rig and Donovan, who are the only ones who know what happens when I'm around her. Ever since my first visceral reaction, I've avoided her, but Rig was with me at first contact, and once he told Donovan, these games became the result. To them, my yearning is comical, but that's not even close to how I feel.

Because along with the fire in my veins is a hurricane of protectiveness, possessiveness. Among my people, these instincts keep us alive, ensures our survival.

Fuck. Guard. Procreate. Defend.

But none of those serves a purpose in any human relationship. We're supposed to co-exist. My family is a mythical entity that lives beside them, in harmony with them, that they know almost nothing accurate about.

Whatever is surging between me and Emmerson, it's unnatural.

"What's your name?" she says, and her voice is thick with the same need taking hold of me. When we keep our distance, she can remain relatively herself, but the longer we meet, the more her essence ebbs, as though it leaks out of her and is replaced by something only I provide.

I've told her my name many times before. Whenever we've gotten this close, she's asked me, in the same voice, in the same way. Doesn't stop my body from springing to attention, straining toward her. If I did what I want right now—what my body is pleading with me to do, what her tone of voice is begging for—she'd never remember how I conquered her. Which is what sex would be. She can't consent. The imbalance of power is insurmountable.

We can jam more than a cell signal, and I'm worried I'm turning my needs into hers through the sheer force of my instincts. I want so badly to fuck her that my craving is enough to fill us both.

What would Rig and Donovan even do if I lost control? We're forbidden from mating with humans. Against the code. Against the lines of succession. Against the laws of nature.

She might even die.

Isn't that what we've been warned? We stick to our own. Sex with a human is tantamount to murder.

That thought is a dash of cold water, just enough to clear the haze. "My name is Aidan," I say. "Aidan Shoreditch."

"Shoreditch," she says, as though I'm speaking a language she can't quite grasp.

Sometimes when we're close like this, I wish she could just be her. Whoever she'd be if my blood wasn't singing such an intoxicating tune to hers. Maybe she'd be witty. I've seen her laughing with her friends. Or studious and serious like she appears to be when she leaves her college lectures. Normal.

But that's why we can't be with humans. There is no normal. They're just this. A shell of themselves. Entranced.

"I know a Shoreditch," she says slower than normal as though she's pulling the words out of her consciousness.

Several, probably. My people live among them. Some of us even pass as human in this little east coast college town. The further each family member is from the epicenter of power, the less they have to pretend to be human. They almost are.

"Go inside, Emmerson," I say, careful to keep my voice even and measured.

"How do you... How do you know my name?"

I let out a soft chuckle and search her pretty, expressive face. "Sometimes I wonder if I've always known it." There's so much more I could say, but Rig and Donovan are within hearing distance. No need to give them more ammunition. Not feeling the need to be chained to anything else within her line of sight.

Fucking dickheads.

"Inside," I remind Emmerson.

She walks back toward the entrance, and when she's opened the door to return to the till, I breathe a sigh of relief and heave on my attached wrist. The metal groans and creaks before breaking open, and the scent of gas invades the air around me.

As soon as the cuff is clear, I take off at a run toward the station. Not sure why I didn't think of it before, but if they light the pipe, the whole station could blow. Their stupid fun might get her killed, and I can't be sure I wouldn't tear them limb from limb for it.

Emmerson is poised in the entrance, as though she's forgotten why she was outside or why she needs to go inside. I grab her around the waist and throw her over my shoulder, sprinting away from the building.

"What—?"

From behind us, there's a massive explosion with so much force that it lifts me off the grass, airborne for at least a hundred feet, and I stumble when I make contact with the ground again, but I don't let Emmerson go.

Everything in me is screaming: Protect her. Protect her. Protect her. It's the wrong instinct for the wrong person, but you can't fight nature, even when it's unnatural. She's unconscious against my back, and I keep running all the way into town, to safety, to the life she's meant to live without my interference.

Rig and Donovan are fucking idiots. I need to get new relatives.

Here we go. The grand experiment. If you're here, let me know what you think. Since I have no plan, your thoughts might steer me more than normal!

Update: No set schedule

Started June 21st, 2022