Their Human Mate

The Argument

Ember

I keep thinking back to that day. One year ago today, the events with Ryder that changed my life happened. Ryder kept all of his promises. Charli came by faithfully every day to monitor my mother. They had gotten really close over the last year, and I was glad my mother had someone she could bond with. Her relationship with Rosalee was strained already.

As commanded, I trained his staff, and now I led them. I got to know more about Ryder as time went on. His family controlled every part of northern Florida, with their main location in Tallahassee. He told me he was raised to lead his family in this lifestyle and that he had no choice. I almost felt sorry for him.

Ryder lived in a huge mansion — a beautiful, all-white, three-story structure trimmed with blue. There were apartments nearby where some of his extended family lived, at least the ones who didn’t want to live in the mansion. When I first arrived, everyone looked at me as if they had seen a ghost, and then all eyes turned to Ryder at once, who was glancing silently at all of them. It was almost some sort of warning, but after that, things went back to normal.

Ryder explained that Florida was split between two families — his, and a rival family. He said their grandfather had a treaty that they still honored to this day. Ryder and his family controlled the northern region of Florida. The rival family controlled the southern half. As long as neither of them stepped foot in the other’s region, there was no cause for war, but Ryder believed they had spies in his territory. He just had yet to prove it.

My coworkers were super nice to me, minus one woman named Rhea. I was told it was because Rhea was in love with Ryder, who did not return her affection. She was jealous, because I was the only one there who Ryder showed more than a minute of attention to. She had even tried to sabotage my first day by putting children’s glue in my flour and baking soda in the sugar. Luckily, thanks to my training at the Tallahassee School of Arts, I was trained to recognize different smells, and my sense of smell was exceptional — best in my class.

If I was to teach these chefs what I was learning in school, I needed no one to question my authority, so I spoke with Ryder about how to deal with Rhea. He said he would handle it. I assumed he would simply speak to her, but I’m not sure what happened. Rhea went to work the next day less bitter and more determined to learn. She almost looked scared. Knowing Ryder, I could only guess what he did to get that reaction from her. I made sure to treat her with more kindness after that. She asked many questions along with the rest of my coworkers, and I answered them.

After a few months, their training was complete, and now I led them each morning with meal prep. I only stayed for the breakfast portion, since school started at 1pm every day, so I made sure the rest of the meals were properly prepped to be cooked later.

Ryder had one of his men, Lamonte, follow me to school each day. Lamonte sat in the back and monitored me. Ryder said it was for my protection, since there were spies looking to threaten his organization daily. Even though I didn’t know anything, they would still torture me just for working for him. Given that he was the head crime boss, I believed him. I’d seen movies. I knew what happened. Hell, I had even seen Ryder kill a man just because he yelled at me. Who knew what he and people like him were capable of?

Somehow, in this last year, against better judgment, I had fallen for Ryder. You’re probably thinking:

What, Ember? He is a f*****g monster!! How could you?

You’re absolutely correct. He was horrible. Almost villain-like. But there was a small part of me that was attracted to this darkness, and no matter how much I tried to fight it, I could not deny it. So we started sleeping together, and he turned it into an actual relationship. He told me he hadn’t dated anyone since his last girlfriend, Victoria, killed herself from depression. It was all he would say about it, and he looked sad when he spoke about her, so I never brought her up again.

I had spent the night at his mansion one night, and we ended up in an argument over my last year of school. He suggested that he hire my professor to teach me there, and that I officially move in, since a few of his men were starting to go missing. He was already stressed, and the last thing he wanted was to be worried about me.

“I’m a grown woman, Ryder. I can handle myself,” I said to him, which made him angry.

“I don’t give a f**k if you can handle yourself or not. You are staying here to live and to be schooled,” he said.

“So what, Ryder, you’re just going to keep me f*****g locked up here all the time? What about my mother?” I shouted at him.

“Obviously, I would bring her here too. How f*****g dense can you be?” he said, which annoyed me.

“Dense enough, I suppose, to see how paranoid and ridiculous this is. Are you even sure your men were trustworthy? What if they just left because they hated you?” I said, attempting to make him see reason.

“Then that’s even more reason to keep you here. What better way to reach me than to hurt you?” he said.

“I carry a f*****g gun everywhere I go, Ryder. Lamonte watches my every step to and from school,” I said, nearly yelling. He didn’t take being yelled at too kindly, and he did something he had promised he would never do again. His eyes seemed to turn black and he struck me across the face. It had only happened once before, when he was angry with me, and afterward he had apologized and kissed my face as tears fell. This time, it caught me off guard, but I was prepared. I drew my gun and aimed it at his head.

“Hit me again. I dare you,” I said, gun at his head.

Ryder had taught me how to shoot, and I had turned out to be an excellent shot. He was not expecting me to pull a gun on him. He was quick, though — quicker than I realized. He knocked the gun from my hand. A shot went off, hitting the room door as I was shoved to the opposite side of the room. He stripped the gun and tossed the pieces aside, then walked over to me and hovered above me. My head was bleeding from the impact, and I was feeling weak.

“Don’t you ever pull a gun on me, b***h,” he said in the calmest yet most dangerous tone, before standing up and leaving the room.

Nurse Charli came in not long after and bandaged me up. She gave me some medicine and helped me to Ryder’s bed. I don’t know if it was the medication she gave me, but I began to hallucinate. I heard a howling sound before I drifted off to sleep.