Call Me Nothing

She didn't belong here.
Not with her wide, stubborn eyes and her mouth that tasted like defiance.

***

Rhys watched her back against the wall, breathing too fast, too soft, every inch of her begging him to tear her apart or leave her alone.
He wasn't sure which he wanted more.

"You don't get it, do you?" he murmured, letting his hand trail up-slow, deliberate-brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers grazed the edge of her jaw, feeling the way she flinched, then held still, proud little thing.

"You think you matter," he whispered, voice dropping into something rough, almost cruel. "You think you can claw your way into this world. Into my life."

He leaned closer, close enough that their mouths almost touched, and smiled-slow, merciless.

"You're nothing."

She didn't move. Didn't blink.
Just stared at him with all that stubborn wildfire he hadn't managed to kill yet.

Rhys almost hated her for it.
Almost wanted her because of it.

Nothing is dangerous when it has nothing left to lose.

And she was about to prove it.

***
Honey Bee Harrington was never meant to set foot inside the Cladwell estate-a crumbling empire of polished lies and sharpened smiles.
But death doesn't ask for permission. It rips, it drags, it buries.

Now she's trapped in a house that doesn't want her, with a boy who wants her even less.
Rhys Devereux: vicious, beautiful, and lethal in the way broken things always are.

He knows her bloodline. He knows her sins.
He knows he should stay away.

But hatred tastes a lot like hunger.
And when their battles turn breathless, when fury slips into stolen kisses and venomous whispers against skin, Bee realizes surviving this house might cost her more than her heart-it might cost her soul.

Because love was never the plan.
War was.

He calls her nothing.
She'll make him remember her as everything.