Dangerous Dream: A Beautiful Creatures Story(3)

Thanks to Lena, I had spent enough time studying in the last two years to earn a scholarship somewhere I actually wanted to go.

Okay… somewhere not all that far from where she wanted to go.

What can I say? I’m a guy who loves his girl.

I’d go anywhere for Lena Duchannes, whose name rhymes with rain—whose birthmark looks like a Caster moon, whose hair curls when she uses her powers, whose green and gold eyes shine brighter than the sun.

She is the other half of me.

In the last two years, I’d figured something out—something I never would’ve believed before I met a Caster girl and fell in love; before I died fighting for our lives against Lena’s Dark Caster mother, Sarafine; and before I died the second time to save the world and the people I loved, and then fought my way back to them.

Happy endings don’t come cheap.

It isn’t enough to know you’ve found your soul mate, if you believe in that kind of thing. I do, because I have one.

You have to make it happen. You have to will the whole world to bend around you and the person you love. You have to kick fate in the teeth and poke fortune’s eyes out. You have to fight and claw and scrap your way to her side. You can’t let anyone or anything or any reason—supernatural or otherwise—stand in your way.

True love?

Fate?

Your future together?

To get there, it means refusing all the other crap the universe hands you. It means telling the Wheel of Fate to suck it and roll over someone else. It means not settling for any of the other endings you see coming.

It means holding out.

If Amma were here, she would’ve said it was all in the cards. But that was true only if Amma was the one reading them. She taught us that.

The rest of us had to make our own destiny.

Lena and I knew that better than anyone. Ridley and Link, they still had to learn it the hard way.

I guess that’s sort of where this whole story begins.





AFTER


Wesley Lincoln


Wesley Lincoln never could’ve imagined being as whipped as his best friend, Ethan, not for one minute of his life. Not even back when he was a hundred percent Mortal, one bite and a whole quarter Incubus ago.

Things with Ridley weren’t like that. The two of them didn’t say nice things to each other; they fought. They didn’t look for little ways to help each other; they competed in one-liners and dares. They didn’t hold hands and go on errands and hang out with each other’s families. They made out like two lit firecrackers burning up oxygen off the same match.

Then they didn’t speak for weeks at a time.

It was hot.

Stupid, but hot.

When Rid walked into the room, Link got goose bumps. He didn’t even have to be looking at her. Just so long as he knew she was there. It was like he had some kind of radar that went off in the presence of that girl. Right or wrong. Good or bad.

Maybe it was an allergy.

A bad one.

Wait, is that a certain kind of whipped? Is that how it’s supposed to be? Like an infection? Poison oak or something?

Link didn’t mind about Ethan and Lena. They were like Bert and Ernie, and it was sort of sad to see Bert without Ernie. Those two fuzzy little guys belonged together, no matter what his mom had to say about it. And he had become used to having Lena around, especially during the time they had both lost Ethan to the Otherworld. Lena was like a little sister to him. A fuzzy little sister.

Ridley was something else.

None of it was easy with her. None of it was ever what it looked like at first. That’s what Link usually loved about Ridley. She’d claw your eyes out and then weep over the scratch marks. She was her own worst enemy and her own best friend. She made life so damn hard for herself, and everyone around her, that it was like a miracle, only in reverse.

But she’s not anything like any other girl I’ve ever met.

Link watched her from across the swimming pool. They had started the day at Ravenwood, but then he had Ripped them all to a new location after Ridley’s hissy fit this morning, when she had decided it was too hot not to swim.

When Rid got these ideas in her head, she was too stubborn to let them go. Then it was up to Link or Lena to bail her out, every time.

Lena had called the community center and found out that the pool was closed on account of a wayward diaper incident, so Ridley had insisted they find another place to swim.

“What’s wrong with hanging out by the lake?” he’d asked.

“The lake isn’t Saint-Tropez,” Ridley had said.

“I’m a country boy,” Link had said.

“Saint-Tropez is in a country,” Ridley had countered. “And that country happens to be France.”

“Well, you can Santa Toupee yourself somewhere else, ’cause I don’t like it.” After that Ridley had pouted, and Link had given in. Of course he had. That’s all he ever did lately. He was your basic slave to love—but the girl he loved wouldn’t even admit she loved him back. Guys had written songs about less.

Link turned over in his lounge chair, pulling his towel halfway over his face. An Incubus working on his tan. This whole thing is ridiculous.

Link didn’t like it—except for how the girls’ bathing suits were smaller, when they were there at all. The guys were in Speedos, which revealed too much to make anyone comfortable, as far as he was concerned.