Claimed by the Dark Souls of VHA

Chapter Seven

Ryder

"Oh, and to answer your previous question, Alex and I f!cked. Outrageously mind blowing earth shattering s*x was going on in here while you were floating on cloud nine thinking you broke me."

My head is thick with the images of Alex f!cking her. This girl is tearing away at my walls at such a rapid pace that I don't know what the f!ck to do anymore. The words that come out of her mouth are my complete undoing. I purposely built walls around me, suppressing my emotions so nothing or no one can hurt me like I was hurt when I was child by a scumbag father who didn't give a sh!t about anybody but himself, yet here I am caving to this fiery minx standing in front of me, with nothing but a damn sheet wrapped around her body.

The a***e and torment I had to endure as a child, yes child, was by the hand of my father. The many lives he ruined didn't bother him the least. He took joy on watching as the kids he created suffered. Now, ever since she stepped foot into the Academy, the walls I built are beginning to crumble and I am starting to feel emotions that I have never felt before. I need to lock this sh!t down before she ruins me for good.

Before I can even formulate a response, she does the unthinkable and drops the bed sheet that is wrapped around her body. There is no shame from her when she turns to walk away from us. Completely n***d, beautiful, a work of art until I spy the markings across her back. That image will haunt me forever. To think I had scars, but hers shouldn't be on her body. She shouldn't have them. No heavenly person should ever bare them. I am no stranger to scars but the fact that they are on her plunges a dagger into the organ I tried so hard to forget I had.

All the scars on her lower back cascading down to the back of her legs. A beautiful body covered in nothing but reminders of pain, agony, helplessness.

The intense anger in my body towards her and Alex and this sh!tshow ceases to exist once I see that. My body goes rigid and I can barely feel the clasp of Christians hand on my shoulder. I can feel anger radiating from him as well since he is just as captivated by her as I am. She turns to look at us once again and we school our appearances. She doesn't need to be looked at with pity and we will not give it to her. Our insides are burning with fury. Burning for revenge on whoever did that to her. I plan to find out every damn detail from her past and lay waste a million corpses to exact my revenge for her. Avenge this beautiful creature.

"Even those didn't break me." She says before entering the bathroom, closing and locking the door. Every cell in my body wants to bang on the damn door, kick it in with all my might, and demand her answer our questions, but it will be of no use to even try.

She hates us.

Hates me.

"Let's go Ryder." Christian says behind me and I pull away from his grasp and stride out the door, leaving Christian to close it himself. The sh!t running through my head, the ache in my chest, the immense hatred I have for all those around me is consuming me right now. Luckily, class doesn't start for another half hour, so we head back to our room only to be greeted by none other than Alex himself, our other brother. He must have snuck in while we were downstairs with Ava acting like Alpha lunatics.

Sneaky bast!rd.

"Don't you dare say one motherf!cking word to me asshole." I say through gritted teeth not even wanting to glance his way. Christian, however, has a different approach with our dearest brother and walks past me, launching himself at him, pummeling him to the floor, punching him square in the face. There's the laid back Christian that walks around these halls and then there is the psycho version that has been dormant. Guess he awakened now.

"You f!cking piece of sh!t!" Christian spits before laying another punch to Alex's face. I would love nothing more than to see his a*s handed to him by Christian, but I relent and move over to yank him off of him, knowing full well what demons lie within Alex. He might look cool, calm, and collected on the outside, but there is a rabid beast within him as well, and when that beast rises, all hell breaks loose.

"Enough!" I shout, pinning myself between them, arms extended towards the both of them.

"Pays to be a good guy, jerkoff." Alex states with such an arrogance to him, as he wipes the blood off his mouth and winks at Christian, egging him on even more.

"F!ck you Alex. I should f!cking kill you right now!" Christian says while trying to barge past my hold on him. Alex's face contorts to a scary looking maniacal expression that gives me the chills.

Here comes his beast.

You think I have anger issues? Alex is one hundred times worse. All the rumors about us enacting revenge has Alex's name written all over it.

"You want to run that by me again Christian?" Is all he has to say to generate fear amongst the both of us. Christian backs away and storms into the kitchen, while Alex composes himself, sitting down like nothing had even happened. Christian comes back out with a bag of frozen peas and launches it directly at Alex's face, to which he catches perfectly one handed.

"Glad we came to an understanding brother." He places the bag on his already swollen face and I grimace.

"Why?" Is all I can manage to say to him while I sit down and rub my face with my hands, at a loss now.

"Why what exactly? Why did I make a move on her? Why did I claim her? Well, that's plain and simple. I want her. Have wanted her since my eyes landed on her day one. Before you two sh!heads think any less of me, even though I could give two f!cks, I am doing it for me. There is absolutely no hidden agenda for me unlike the two of you. I fell for her, period." He eyes me first.

"You and your need for vengeance started up a whole big sh!tstorm. A sh!tstorm that I had to settle because of your lack of thinking things through. The f!ck were you thinking exposing her secret and then trying to play good guy by getting the f!ckers who trashed her room announcing more salacious secrets in front of the masses? You are so f!cking lucky that I have so much dirt on these pathetic pieces of sh!t here." He then glances at Christian.

"Don't even think about giving me that holier than thou sh!t look. You egged Ryder on knowing he was going to go ape sh!t on her. Neither one of you idiots gave yourselves the chance to get to know her, but I have, in more ways than one, might I add." He says and holds up his hand to cut us off.

"Yes I need to gloat because it is what you f!ckheads deserve. She is free to choose what she wants to happen from here on out, but am I praying that she'll want more? Hell f!cking yes. I know you two see the fire in her. The rawness. You both are dying to get answers, but the only one who will be getting answers is me until you two wisen up and get the sticks out of your asses!" He storms to the front door throwing the peas onto the table beside it. Before he opens it, he looks to the both of us, almost beginning to foam at the mouth from our stupidity.

"Come at her again, and you'll answer to the beast within me, do we have an understanding?" He says with no hint of serving up any mercy the next time. We nod and watch as he storms out, slamming the door behind him.

"He's one irritating little f!cker." Christian says while coming to sit where I am. Christian is my half-brother, born out of wedlock to my scum of the Earth father. Dad wound up cheating on my mother, causing her to run away, barely able to look at my face anymore because I reminded her so much of him. She ran when she found out that he had fathered another child, the exact same age as me.

Always great to have parents that show you just how much they do not love you or want you.

This wasn't the first time my father had cheated on my mother. Apparently he was going to leave my mother for a Sinclair, hence my hatred for them, because it was that move that sealed his fate when it came to me and my mother. When he found out my mother was knocked up with me, he was forced into a loveless marriage and then wound up despising everyone for it, including the both of us, and set out to break my mother's heart for keeping him from his one true love, Sinclair. Therefore, she took it upon herself to abandon me.

F!cking pathetic assholes.

My grandmother, my father's mother, took Christian and I both in when my parents, and Christian's own mother, wanted nothing to do with us. Dad was already creating chaos and she didn't want us to wind up in foster care. We were ten at the time when we realized how much our father and mothers hated us. Young, right?

A couple of years later came that f!ckwad, Alex. He was yet another child born as a mistake courtesy of my father's need to screw any woman he comes across. The downside to that whole ordeal is that he was stuck with my father for a childhood of pain with him never ceasing to let Alex forget that he was just as much unwanted than his other bast!rd children. The only positive was that he luckily had his mother with him for those years before she OD'd. However, it was almost too little too late before my grandmother found out about him. The damage was already done.

Alex soon wound up being raised by our grandmother. He is a couple of months younger than the both of us. He was basically malnourished by the time my grandmother finally got her hands on him. My father should've never had kids if he didn't know how to take care of them.

Thankfully my grandmother snatched Alex away from him before it was too late. I remember us going with her, watching her pound on the door demanding he let her in. She yelled profusely and a sh!tload of profanities at him. She didn't care who the hell her son was or what type of sh!t he was involved in. All she cared about was the well being of her third grandchild. She stormed into that house while Christian and I stood beside her, bats at the ready, at only ten years old, our own beats forming within us, if he dared to do anything to her, and grabbed Alex and ran.

Alex suffered daily and that's why he has a darkness inside of him. We are all f!cked in the head because of our parents. My grandmother always blamed herself for not getting to him sooner. She tried so hard to give us the love we deserved to have but our walls had already been built and the memories haunted our dreams. Definitely see the connection we have between us and Ava.

Scar to scar

Hurt to hurt.

Pain to pain.

I eyeball Christian who has no expression on his face. Everything that has happened lately is definitely weighing on his conscience.

"I'm so done with this sh!t bro. It's too f!cking much. Maybe she's better off with Alex. They share this weird bond based on their f!cked up history's." He says in a defeated tone.

"Maybe you're right, but so do we." It then dawns on me.

"However, the only thing worse than what we did, is the full truth Alex is holding from her. I doubt she knows he is our brother." Christian's eyes perk up and he goes from being slouched in his seat to sitting up straight.

"Guess we'll wind up having the last laugh when she comes to find out. That's no way of starting any sort of relationship, especially when he has been acting as her friend for these past few weeks. We might have been pr!cks, but so is he. We still have a fighting chance." Our new found sense of hope makes us jump off our seats and we leave to head to class because we are both on a mission. A mission to repent our ways to Ava and hopefully form a bond with her, much like our dear brother has done.

We will salvage whatever this pull is with Ava and make her ours, and I'll be damned if that doesn't happen, one way or another.

*************************************************

CHRISTIAN

No matter how we spin this, we are all on a united front for Ava's affection. Alex already has his foot in the door, the lucky bast!rd. Knowing they were together last night makes me all kinds of jealous, but I only have myself to blame.

Ryder and I both watch as she saunters into class after speaking with Emma, without a care in the world. She must feel our eyes burning a hole through the back of her head but she doesn't pay us any mind. The bell rings for the next class and she jets out like a bat out of hell. The next period slowly passes us by when we know third period class with her is right around the corner.

Both of our legs are bouncing like crazy, waiting for her to walk in, and when she does, both of our breaths hitch. Luckily, nobody notices. Nobody dares to look our way unless they want trouble. Ryder and I make it so that every seat is filled except for the one right smack in between us. She sees what we have done and rolls her eyes. She reluctantly sits between us and manages to flip us both off simultaneously making us smile inwardly.

She's not fully ignoring us.

We continue to watch her every movement and when she receives a text, we both look to see who it is from. She giggles softly and texts whoever it is back.

"Psst." I try to draw her attention away from her phone, but now she won't give me the time of day.

Fine. I'll try a different approach.

I scoot my seat closer to her and she then looks up to me with a horrified expression.

"What the hell do you think you're doing Lucifer #2?" She whispers to me and I smirk.

"Nothing." I shrug and she dismisses me once again while shaking her head. Ryder watches but he is too stubborn to try and even make a move to even gain her attention. He talks all this sh!t about wanting to try and get to know her but he always backtracks. Before I know it, the bell rings and we all make our way to our next class, both following behind her and I know she knows we are right on her tail.

Lunch time finally comes and Ryder and I walk casually into the cafeteria, both of our eyes landing on Emma, Ava, and Alex. They don't look like they are a couple so maybe that's a good thing. He did say that it was up to her to decide what she wanted to do. We make our way to our usual table and just watch over them. Girls blatantly come to flirt with us, especially Candice. Girl knows no bounds.

One of the jocks, Emmett, waltzes up to where Emma is sitting and tries desperately to converse with her. Alex watches his movements like a predator seeking out his prey. Emmett says something that warrants her flipping him off, but he doesn't take the hint and only continues to bother her. I grow tense along with Ryder who is white knuckling the table.

Emmett, you know better than this. Walk the f!ck away.

Like he heard me, he walks away and sits back with his team. Emma leaves the table to head to the bathroom I am assuming and Alex wanders off to discuss business with one of the other students. I watch as Ava sighs and sits back in her chair leaning her head back to close her eyes while placing her headphones in her ears.

"Something's up. Emmett keeps eyeballing her while his friends keep eyeing where Alex is." I say to Ryder who notices the same thing.

"We watch and wait." He says through gritted teeth. Emmett finally makes his way to her and rips the earphones from her ears, bending down to say something to her. Ryder and I both jump up, watching as Alex makes a beeline for her. One thing leads to another and all I see next is Emmett laid out on his a*s holding his throat trying to gasp for air. I watch in slow motion as Ava kicks him in the stomach and pushes him all the way down where he is lying on his back. He is still coughing up a storm, while she descends upon him.

"You ever lay a hand on me again, you'll wish you never had. You think a punch to throat is all that I do next time? Think again you piece of sh!t." She kicks him again in the gut warranting Alex to toss her over his shoulder and runs outside with her.

"Shows f!cking over! Get the f!ck out of here!" Ryder yells while I contribute a punch to the assholes face.

"You too Christian! Let's go!" Ryder pulls me away from Emmett and leads us to where Alex and Ava are outside.

"You need to calm down Ava." I hear Alex trying to reason with her. She's pure rage, pacing back and forth. Hands are balled into fists at her side and her look is downright murderous.

"Calm down?! He put his disgusting hands on me and told me there was no place for me to hide and that I would be blowing him by the end of the day. It's because of those two assholes that now I am eye candy for the rich and famous! May as well start taking bids boys!" She shouts extremely loudly warranting Ryder to stomp to her and covers her mouth. She wiggles against his hold, not intentionally grinding against him, but I can see the mix of emotions from both of my brothers. I need to deescalate the situation and pronto. I stand in front of her with her eyes blazing.

"Ava, listen to me. You really need to calm down. You have us to protect you." I say to her cupping her face while prying Ryder's fingers off of her mouth gently. I plead with my eyes for her to not scream.

"Protect me?! You two caused this! There is no we! You can't protect me. Nobody can or ever could. Like f!ck will I ever trust you and Lucifer behind me!"

"We will and can protect you Ava. You just need to let us in." Alex says and the questionable face on her makes me realize she is about to find out the truth.

"Why would you help these two to protect me, Alex?" Ava says, all her defenses up. She manages to get out of Ryder's hold and all her attention is on Alex for an answer.

"For f!ck sakes Ava can you just trust me to keep you safe from the sh!t those two created? I told you this morning that I was here for you." Her eyes narrow and she slowly inches closer to him.

"What is it Alex? Is it you protecting me or all of you?" She stands tall in front of him and I just pray that he doesn't flip. I see the wheels turning in his mind as he is backed into a corner now.

"Alex is our brother, and you are the only one to know." I blurt out and she turns to look at me.

"Your what now?" I can see the immense shock and hurt in her.

This was the final straw.

"Our brother." Ryder says. She doesn't even bother looking at him when she pins her glare right onto Alex. With the truth being out now, I have no idea how we go from here. She continues to glare at him until her eyes close and her shoulders fall. Without another look at any of us, she walks away, holding herself, looking utterly defeated, again.