The Voice

Getting out of Niall’s room and upstairs to mine without anyone seeing me was quite a challenge, considering I couldn’t just crawl across the ceilings or run as fast as I could without causing up a stir.

When I got to my room, I was surprised to find that Harley wasn’t in there. I listened carefully and heard why—he was playing with Kiley and Madi. That wasn’t normal for him, but I guess he sensed the good in the people here.

Noah tried to come in, but I had the lights out and the iPod playing so that I could fake like I was going to sleep. It was still hard to hide my eyes when I opened the door and explained I was headed to bed, but I managed to, and he gave me a quick hug before letting me go to get to sleep.

I felt bad about lying to him, but it was necessary in order to keep my secret. No one else needed to know right now.

Really, I shouldn’t have told anyone, but there are just some people who are going to find out one day anyways. Might as well get it over with.

Time continued to go by, but in order to pass the time quicker, I started getting on my social media accounts. Really, it’s quite funny how many people suddenly wanted to be my friend once they saw me audition for the Voice and make it. Today was Saturday, so that meant the Battle Rounds would be aired in two days—on Monday for Team Adam and Team Niall.

I was nervous about that, but I decided to let it go and leave it alone.

Even though I wanted to, I didn’t post anything or stay on long so that Noah wouldn’t realize I was lying. Instead, I set my alarm to make breakfast in the morning and then began playing a pointless game on my computer—Happy Wheels. So funny and pointless, really.

It got boring after a while, so I just laid down. Of course, it was hard to fight sleep in the dark, but I was able to remembering that one, Harley wasn’t in here, and two, Niall and I weren’t done talking.

Talking . . . .
*Niall* I knew better than to sit in my room all night, but what else could I do? There was so much going on inside my head that I felt paralyzed. Somehow, though, I got up and stayed put at the kitchen table.

Everit had always been different. Since first seeing her in Nashville, I knew she was different. Of course, the different I knew wasn’t the different in reality.

She . . . was an experiment.

Human experimentation seemed too wrong to be real, but it was. Not only did they experiment on her, but they also tormented her, scarred her so badly that she couldn’t even talk about it after how many years?

Her entire life had to be altered in order to escape. She had to burn her past and create a new one. How was that fair or right?

As hard as it was to swallow that she was different, the hardest thing to swallow was that there were actually people out there experimenting on human beings. Babies . . . .

In the Holocaust, it was said that German doctors used the Jewish people as their test subjects for experiments of their own.

This happened during the Holocaust . . . one of the darkest parts of human history. It happened to people who weren’t thought of as human, yet these babies aren’t that way. These people running these experiments, ripping babies away from their parents, know they’re taking a human baby.

They just don’t care.

How is that possible for someone to be so cruel and curious that they can rip a baby away from a mother and father and do things to them that could just kill them in the end? It didn’t make sense to me. Everit was a good person, and even though I didn’t know her all that well, I could see how she genuinely wanted to make people smile.

And she’s like that after they destroyed her and made her destroy herself even further.

I think I looked freaked out, sitting at the dining room table by myself with wide eyes and pursed lips. It just . . . no matter how many times I repeated it in my head, I couldn’t get my brain around it.

People were experimenting on other people—babies.

Noah came in the room, and he notice. His eyebrows rose, and he immediately sat down beside me ready to listen.

He didn’t have to say a word. I just knew that’s why he was there.

“I just . . . I’m sick of how fucked up the world is,” I sighed, and I started to fiddle with the water bottle in front of me. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was all the truth that I could tell.

Noah nodded. “Yeah. It’s pretty sick some of the things that go on. I just can’t imagine all the things that go on that we don’t know about.”

“Me either.”

Maybe that was what was getting to me. No one knew. Babies were being kidnapped and tortured, and all anyone knew was that the baby had disappeared.

What if that happened to someone else I knew? They have a child and lose it, and then they think of all the possible things that might be happening.

Yet they leave out one of the most horrific, something the baby will never be able to escape from.

Human experimenting.

Everit changed her face, changed her name, but that didn’t make her past disappear. One day, it would come back for her, and every day she had to look in the mirror and see the face that wasn’t her mum’s, see the face that didn’t really look like anyone’s.

And how many had to do that after her?
*Everit* Harley jumped up onto the bed next to me before I realized I had dozed off, and the small amount of light shed in the room disappeared by the time my eyes opened fully.

Then, Harley wasn’t the only one who climbed onto my bed, but Niall sat down beside me and leaned back against the headboard. “Would you like to go back to sleep?”

I sat up quickly and rubbed my eyes, aware I was yawning. “No.”

“Your eyes . . . they really glow,” he murmured. “And so does your hair. That’s so neat.”

I pulled the braid around to where I could see it and smiled. “Yeah. The eyes are actually kinda freaky, if you ask me.”

“A little scary, but also beautiful,” he admitted, and that made me smile.

Something made me want to lean over and lay my head on his shoulder, so I did. “I’ve never done this before, you know.”

“Done what?” he asked, and to my delight, he leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “Laid on someone’s shoulder?”

I let out a soft laugh, remembering that we had to be quiet, and shook my head. “No. I mean, I’ve never been with anyone before . . . ever. I was always too scared, and, well, one day . . . one day, I’m gonna destroy Prepot. Before, I thought I should be alone so that if I died when destroying them, it would hurt less people, but . . . I was reminded that I don’t have to die.”

“Uh, no, you definitely don’t,” he said, and there was an intensity in his voice more powerful than I expected. “I’m not okay with this. I don’t think I can get through losing you, Evie . . . and that scares me, honestly. How can I live so long without someone and then suddenly feel like I can’t live without them, someone I just met?”

“I don’t know, but I feel the same way,” I murmured. “I really did miss you, too.”

He started softly my arm as he took a deep breath. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

I nodded and sat up so that I could look at him. I could see him perfectly, but he could only see my eyes and hair, really. “Niall . . . the thing about this is . . . I may have told you all of this too soon. What if, say, something happens? Say this doesn’t work out?”

“Who says it won’t?” he asked, lips pursed. “I’ve waited my whole life for you, Evie, and I very seriously doubt that things just won’t work out. I think you know that as well.”

“I’m pretty sure,” I agreed, and I couldn’t help but smile. “But, even still, Niall. What if we’re wrong? People think they’ve found the one all the time but end up wrong in the end.”

“Alright, fine, say something crazy happens, and it doesn’t work out,” he finally decided, but he didn’t look too pleased to say it. “We’ll part ways, but I won’t tell anyone anything. Your secret will always be safe with me, Evie, no matter what.”

That made me happier than he could even understand, so I took his face in my hands and just kissed him. Quite hard, really, but I didn’t stay long. Instead, when I pulled away, I crawled under the covers and snuggled up next to him. Like Niall did, I kept it freezing in here. “Thank you, Niall.”

He kissed the top of my head again and smiled. “Any time, my dear.”

I sighed. “Okay. So, you want the rest of it? It’s quite . . . intense.”

“I wanna know everything about you,” he said, voice almost a whisper, and suddenly, he leaned down so close that I could feel his breath against my skin before his lips so very delicately pressed against my neck. It was gentle, but it was also very exciting, and I had to take a few deep breaths so that I could continue with my story.

“The scientists don’t really know what my future holds, but they know that I’m capable of making other people like me,” I started without much thought into how I would do it. If I thought about it, I might not be able to get it out, so I just said it. “Some believe I’m capable of just going around and changing everyone, and that’s my only instinct is to make everyone like me. Others believe it’s something I can only do once with one person. It’s more likely the latter because the first way would mean that I would be out of control and changing everyone in my path. But it’s not like that. I . . . never really wanted to change anyone.”

“How do you change someone?” he asked.

I quirked my lips to the side. “Well, if I was a guy, it would be as simple as sex, but I’m not, so it would have to be something else. Honestly, if we start really kissing intensely, over time, it could change you. Will it? Probably not, but it could.”

I was surprised to see him smiling a huge and unbearably adorable smile all over again, his blue eyes shining. He noticed me looking and laughed. “I like how that sounds, to be completely honest with you.”

That made my heart flutter in my chest, but my eyes drifted down as my cheeks heated up. “Well, me too. Anyways, there are other ways. Blood transfers, and I think oral would work too, but anyways . . . some even believe that my ‘mate’ as they call the person I change . . . they believe that we’ll live together and forever be attracted to no one but each other. They think we’ll be practically invincible, and we’ll never age, never die.”

“But they don’t know for sure?”

I shook my head, knowing that he would see the glowing braid shake. “All they have is hypotheses. I’m just gonna have to sorta see how it all goes.” Then, so I didn’t linger too much on this, I changed the subject. “So was your month a good one?”

“It was,” he murmured. “Still, something felt off. I mean, this . . . it’s crazy, Evie. We really don’t know anything about each other. There’s just something about being with you that makes me wanna be with you every moment I possibly can be. While I was gone, there were times that I couldn’t get you out of my head, especially in Ireland. We actually took a boat over for something new and fun to try, and we went through Kenmare. It was after the auditions aired, so people know you and know that you’re on my team, so they approached me asking for autographs and asked me to tell you hey. There were too many for me to remember, but the point is . . . I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and that really worries me. We don’t know each other well. All we know is that something about this is right, and when we kiss each other, that just makes us wanna do it more and more. You know, I didn’t really even think about kissing you at the airport. It just sorta happened, and when it did, I wanted to kick myself. Repeatedly. It was the worst place to do it, and it was horrid timing, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.”

I smiled. “I’m glad that you did. It was kinda what got me thinking about all of this again—my ‘enhancements,’ love, Everit, Audry . . . just everything that helped me realize Audry had to go in order for Everit to live.”

He was silent for a minute as we simply breathed together while he rubbed my arm. For a part of that, I just looked up into his eyes, and he stared right back into mine with a gorgeous and very loving smile, but suddenly, he leaned down and kissed me. It took him a second to find my lips because all he had to go on was my eyes and hair, but he found them relatively quickly and put his against them.

My eyes fluttered shut, and he began kissing me as passionately as he had when he first pressed me against the wall. It was so intense, but I had to pull away with a grimace.

He looked confused. “What’s wrong, Evie?”

“Well, besides the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing,” I murmured, and I mindlessly began playing with the end of my braid. “At night, I have a . . . sense-depriving venom in my mouth that . . . blinds you, takes away your hearing, and leaves you unable to smell. I’m not sure if it takes away your taste. We never tried.”

“Is this a permanent thing?” he asked, and his lips pressed together as he began softly rubbing my arm again.

A smile grew on my face. “No. It depends on how much venom I put into you, really. It could be permanent, I guess. I accidentally killed a man once, but that was because I wouldn’t stop biting him.”

To my complete surprise, he actually grinned a little deviously—quite a sexy grin, really—before he slid down so that he was laying down on my pillows. “Could you show me?”

That surprised me more than anything else, and all I could do was blink for a minute. Each time I looked at his face, he was still just grinning, but in his eyes, I could see that he genuinely wanted me to do this.

I also realized that this was a chance to mess him up a little. If he was missing three, maybe four, senses and I just so happened to kiss him passionately, how much would he love that?

Can we say payback?

So, with a grin of my own, I carefully leaned down beside him and slid down the left shoulder of his shirt. He seemed confused, and to his surprise, I softly kissed the top of his shoulder. When he least expected it, right as he was about to question me, too, I bit him.

In order to get the venom in, it had to be a hard enough bite that I got into his bloodstream, but with my teeth—I have fangs, to be completely honest, but that was just something that naturally happened—it wasn’t hard to do.

He actually gasped in surprise because I don’t think he was expecting the initial bite to actually hurt like it did, but in an instant, he forgot all about that pain when his senses very quickly slipped away.

I didn’t hesitate to climb on top of him and straddle him, which he definitely enjoyed. Still, while he quivered in desire and fear, I kissed him. Hard. I could feel his body pulsing as he shakily tried to pull me closer to him, but while he tried to just get me closer, I slipped my venom covered tongue in-between his lips and started playing with his. Even though I had no idea what I was doing, I just went with whatever seemed natural.

It seemed to work, and he was thoroughly enjoying himself, but I could tell he loved it most when my fingers knotted in his hair. I could tell by how hard his member was as it pressed against my own wet center.

Suddenly, he rolled us over to where he was on top. In his eyes, I could see that he still couldn’t see or hear a thing, but he panted heavily and shook as he held himself over me, blinking rapidly in surprise. “I have a problem, Evie.”

Honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about, but he looked a little panicked. So, instead of getting back on top of him, I just rolled him over and kissed his cheek softly. I knew he couldn’t hear me, so I laid him down and laid my hand on top of his chest. It didn’t reverse the venom or anything, but it helped calm him down so that the venom would fade out.

I could tell the instant it did because he suddenly pulled my face up to his and kissed me. This time, he just softly kissed me in a very loving, adorable kiss that made my heart soar.

It surprised him when I started trying to take off his shirt, so much that he sat up quickly and looked down at me with wide eyes.

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help but laugh at his face. “Don’t worry, Niall. I’m not trying to sleep with you or anything. I need to try and get your shoulder to stop bleeding. I didn’t think about this, but you’re probably gonna have a scar there.”

He just laughed and pulled his shirt off for me. Trust me, I was not complaining. Actually, as I leaned up to get a closer look at the bite, my hand slid down his . . . quite muscular chest, which made him shiver in delight.

That, of course, made me smile my cocky little smile. It also made Niall decide that he didn’t want me to look at his shoulder because he pushed me back down onto the bed and was kissing me very intensely all over again.

Yeah. I could definitely get used to this.
*** I don’t remember Niall leaving my room, but then again, the last thing I actually remembered was laying down after taking his senses away for the second time. This time, it was easy to get the venom in. I didn’t have to re-bite him. All I had to do was rub my tongue across the still bleeding spot, and he lost his senses.

Still, when my alarm went off, I quickly checked to make sure he wasn’t still in here. Even if he was, it wasn’t that big of a deal, considering that no one would be up this early anyways. It was still dark outside, but since no one else was up, I didn’t have to worry about my eyes.

Niall was smart enough to leave after I was asleep. What a good boy.

I got up in plenty of time to make sure I looked cute in my “just woke up” look. To accomplish this, I took my hair out of the braid and let it fall onto my shoulders in its glowing, wavy form, which looked quite good. After that, I put on a bra—I just don’t sleep in bras, okay?—and slipped into my black fuzzy boot slippers. I had on my dark blue and bright cyan checkered pajama pants and my grey “happily forever after” tank top on, so it was good for the “just got up” look.

The smell of food was a great way to wake people up, but I wasn’t sure how many people would get up. So, I just made a lot and hoped that it would be enough. I started with the bacon first because I planned to make a lot of it. After that, I made pancakes, toast, ham and cheese scrambled eggs, and some sausage for people who didn’t want bacon. There was surprisingly orange juice in the fridge, but I was partial to the pink lemonade and got that instead.

I barely had everything finished before a shirtless Niall quickly rushed in here. He had no idea who had done this, but he smelt food.

When he saw me standing there, his eyes started shining, and immediately, he was wide awake. “Well, top of the morning to you, Evie.”

That made me laugh, and I smiled. “Top of the morning to you, too, Niall. Breakfast?”

He turned his gaze to the loads of food on the table. My gaze, however, drifted down to his shoulder . . . and chest. Besides the fact that Niall shirtless was one of the most wonderful things in the world, I noticed something else I hadn’t even thought about.

My nails were like razor blades at night.

It definitely showed. His chest was scratched and bruised from my sharp nails, and the bite mark was still plain as day. That, though, wasn’t the worst of it. His bruises were dark and ugly, and the scratches look like someone had cut him with a knife.

I groaned, which got Niall’s attention all over again. “This is why I never wanted to be with anyone.”

His eyes widened a little in horror, but he rushed over to wrap his arms around me anyways. “Evie, dear, what are you talking about?”

I sighed and gestured to his chest, and while he looked down, I slowly turned him around to look at his back. When I did, I saw that it was even worse than the front, and I actually slid down to the ground. Despite the fact that I didn’t want them to, tears formed in my eyes and tried so hard to push their way out.

Niall got down on his knees in front of me and took my face in his hands. “Shh. Evie, don’t cry. It doesn’t hurt, really. I’m a little sore, but it doesn’t really hurt much. I’m very glad last night happened. That was . . . .” He got a very mischievous grin before pulling my lips over to his in a quick, passionate kiss. “Evie, you have a dark side to you that I just . . . that was really sexy, and last night . . . I think it’ll help me get through the time I have to stay away from you. Just thinking about that.”

At this point, I was smiling, despite how guilty I felt about hurting him. Still, I began softly rubbing my fingers over the bite mark as I said, “Everyone has a dark and wild side, whether they like it or not.”

“Well, if it means anything, I love it very much,” he murmured, and very quickly, he kissed me again. “Now, come on, darling. The wonderful food you made awaits us.”

Notes

The song is from Me and You by Nero.

Anyways, sorry about waiting so long to update! I've been rather busy today. I'll try to get another one up tonight, but I'm pooped, so I may not. No promises. I do promise to put another up tomorrow, though. :)

I hope you continue to enjoy! Thanks so much for the feedback. It really helps.

And a few of you have mentioned how calmly Niall took the news, and to be honest, I was so back and forth about it. When I first wrote this chapter, I had a version where he freaked out, but I took it out due to the fact I needed this chapter to happen. Now that I look at it, I've realized a way to have him freak out and still get this chapter, but, well, I've already posted the previous chapter where he was calm. You're probably right, though. He should've been a little more suprised, so sorry about that!

Still, I hope you like it! :)