Devils In Her Bed

Prologue

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A prismatic cascade of colours flickered across Lydia's face, wrenching her out of a harrowing nightmare, only to find her slender body drenched in clammy sweat and her head jerking.

Whispering, she peeled the damp sheets off and flung them to the edge of her bed, then buried her face between her quivering feet. This wasn't like any other nightmare.

For a while, she murmured prayers faintly in between ragged gasps, as if driving some demons out of her drained mind.

“Raphael is dead!” her brain thundered. “This is just a stupid nightmare!”

“It can't be real!”

Her racing heart decelerated, each heartbeat throbbing with a distinct pain, as the mantra sank deeply into her drowsy brain. It wasn't real. This wasn't the mountain play anymore.

She exhaled a long breath and sprang to her feet swiftly, feeling the remnants of the nightmare seeping into her brain like fog. Soon, she settled into one resolve: a cold shower, waffles, and bacon.

Hot coffee would chase the darkness away, she thought, discarding her nightgown and stepping into her first rule—shower.

This month would be brighter, anyway.

This week, she would encounter new faces, a new life, new conversations—new everything. A month that would finally release the past for good, as she embraced the thrilling adventure of life at Bridge Wolf Academy.

The moment Lydia entered Bridge Wolf Academy, she didn’t simply arrive—she disrupted everything. Short skirts, sinful lips, and a glance that never looked back.

She wasn’t naive. Lydia never begged for help, despite suffering from schizophrenia. Life had already fractured her into confidence.

Too much alcohol, smoke, sharp smiles, and stained lips spoke for her before she ever opened her mouth. Even her admirers called her destruction.

Confidence had spoiled her for years, pushing her toward too many men—old and young, wolves and humans alike. Too fragile to survive among wolves, yet somehow, she laughed at them all.

As her seductive flame spread through the academy, two brothers began to notice her.

“Wolves don’t love, baby—they destroy.”

Raiden didn’t look at her like a spoiled brat or a beautifully wasted girl from the streets. He looked at her like a disease he wanted to cure.

Desire slowly turned into possession. Passion controlled him, but Lucian controlled himself, silencing his lust with a single punch.

Lydia was already ruined—something Lucian once wanted to destroy completely. Yet Raiden protected her from every danger.

The fire between the brothers kept Lydia constantly on edge.

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Chapter 1. The First Crack

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A spoiled girl.

Ruined by darkness.

Just like a normal student, Lydia perched herself in the only empty chair between strange faces and pulled out her notebook, pretending to be immune to tension.

“Philosophy 111.”

She drew a line under it in bold and italicized it.

For the first time, she'd made it through a week without a freaking scandal—no stupid scenes, not even getting expelled like an outcast.

Uh, a good student, she thought with a wild grin.

However, the comfort just dragged her to the edge of curiosity, not knowing when her deep-sealed anxiety would break free from the cage and ruin her pretense.

Soon, she would slip and start feeling like a misfit again, either getting her arse kicked out of the academy or even worse...like taking advantage of the old men.

“Are you done with the reading?” a pretty-looking blonde-haired girl with a dangerous shape, whom she thought was Emily, asked, flashing her a friendly grin.

Why act nice to a stranger? she wondered.

Wow, perhaps she looked hot. Lydia hadn't seen her in any other lecture, so the calm tone she used caught her off guard.

“Um, of course I did,” she replied, gathering her wits. “The novel is pretty intriguing—not as dry and endless as Vesper's essay. You know... I literally despise history.”

The grin she forced faded a few seconds later, forcing her to lower her eyes to her notebook and fidget with her pen, coiling back to her shadowed life.

To every eye, she must've seemed like a good girl trying to act nice, while she was struggling so hard to suppress the urge to hyperventilate, as if her words kept replaying, trying to find an excuse to end this.

“Sure thing!” she pressed on, continuing the conversation Lydia was trying to end. “Vesper almost drained me! His essays are as boring as hell. Thanks to Dan and his romantic literature.”

As if on the verge of defeat, she raised her hands and shook her head, saying, “But I don't like how he sets me ablaze. What do you think about his romantic words?”

Lydia stifled the bubbling laughter, completely surprising her. She had the same thoughts and feelings about the lecturer every time he wove his romantic scenes with words.

“That's how he affects every girl,” she nodded, forcing herself to meet her gaze with a friendly grin.

She was taught right—smile even at the worst.

Just then, a huge, meaty figure strode in, greeting everyone with an eerie wide grin. They all seemed to get along with it, anyway.

Thanks to the old man, unique with salt-and-pepper hair and an old, wire-rimmed glasses that barely hid his intelligent hazel eyes; otherwise, the conversation had already ruined Lydia.

The man carried his profession in a dark suit, right down to a tweed leather coat with visible, old patches on the elbows, but managed to keep it looking brad new with ironed lines.

Of all, he appeared more mature, if Lydia hadn't had a crush on his wrinkled face. Drop that crap of crushing—after all, she had nothing to do with the old man.

‘The Alpha's Dark Seduction.’

He seemed to love quoting words out of it—a forbidden love narrative of two hateful brothers fighting for the same girl. And the best of it, they perished in it.

“Love is all about good and evil, anyway.”

His reading was brief, but the way he delivered it drew Lydia in, making her sink into it with a piqued passion, knowing it had nothing to do with her stupid past.

“Dark seduction and demon love are all the same, right?” asked Dan, wearing his grin.

He shifted, his fingers locking and tapping on his lips playfully. “Lydia,” he called, his voice so close that she nearly lost her breath. “What do you think about these kinds of forbidden love?”

Her lips suddenly dried, and her body seemed to freeze against the chair, as if a heavy load had surged through her system.

A churned icy acid rose up her throat, but she forced it back to where it belonged, her lips locking stiff, making it so hard to respond.

“Demon love?” she wondered.

“I think I'm a victim of all kinds of darkness,” her mind whispered, but she only pulled a bottle out of her backpack and gulped from it greedily, drawing curious glances.

“Love is evil, anyway,” another voice whispered, but she only drained the last drop into her tensed system.

What felt like eternity was only a few seconds.

The thickening air and curious, strange glances held her, pinning her to the wall of tension. She knew more than the lecturer was asking of her, but it felt like a threat.

“You can do this,” another voice whispered lightly.

She stretched up, feeling heavy than usual and her toes arched on the floor. Under that brief skirt, her white, exposed thighs were visibly paler than she'd entered.

Then she felt her lips doubt it. “I believe the concept of forbidden love is quite dangerous,” she began, her fingers trembling.

Her lips quivered as she struggled. “Love has the potential for destruction, even to those with strong wills. It is unpredictable and evil to all seekers.”

In between, she bit her settling lips, turning over whatever her brain was whispering.

After drawing air sharply through her tracks, she exhaled, caught between an interesting topic trying to revive her destructive past.

“If love is real, so is forbidden,” she continued. “It is like a dangerous contagious disease that leaves victims out of control. And... Sadly, it strips both victims of their sense of responsibility, leaving them hollow.”

“That's brilliant!” whispered Dan in a higher tone. “Yes! That's it, girl. And what do you think in a philosophical view?”

“Philosophically,” she began, rolling her eyes, “I think real love does exist in the world, but unlucky people paint it as evil and forbidden.”

She swallowed, now finding courage. “However, true love is the hard choice we make to conceal the worth of life. We often find ourselves consumed by the same darkness—an urge of destruction, a stupid obsession...”

Her voice was turning personal, as if pouring pain out of her heart. All eyes flickered on her, forcing her to search around the room only to find no peace.

What she wanted to say was that she'd yearned for evil love her entire life, that her eyes were already filled with darkness and her heart soaked in dangerous obsession.

Then, she lowered her face, not wanting to draw attention too soon or do something so stupid that everyone would judge her.

At that, she leaned back, easing her pain with a tight grasp of her chair. Meanwhile, she recalled the three rules that had kept her going for an entire week:

Don't speak unless they do.

Pretty, you don't have a name, a face, nor a voice.

Count your steps; otherwise, you already look suspicious and will be back to the darkness soon enough.

She had loved in the darkness—so obsessed that she greedily relished all kinds of forbidden pleasure, yet she got destroyed in the end, raptured naked by the same greediness for ecstasy.

How about now?

Had she changed?

Suddenly, another figure stepped in, drawing every head like a ghost that had entered uninvited. Before Lydia could get a clear look at him, he had already slipped into the seat beside her.

She gasped—her breath catching sharply—as a familiar face locked eyes with hers. Another dream caught up in the nightmare.

Oh, yeah, she was used these kind of nightmares.

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Chapter 2. The Devil Finds Her Again

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Prof. Dan moved swiftly to the next student, asking questions but apparently applauding Lydia's exceptional answers.

No, she wasn't brilliant, but merely an ill-fated one who'd gone through hell to get to heaven. He played the devil's advocate at an inopportune time.

Meanwhile, Lydia appreciated the fleeting reprieve and stayed mute, regrouping and shoving those haunting memories back to where they belonged.

Her psychiatrist had warned, “Pushing darkness away to cope with life is a temporary mechanism.”

“As soon as those memories get revived, they'll come back stronger, demanding to be acknowledged.”

Already, they felt rekindled by thoughts of her past. The only thing that fought with the darkness was her uncertain future, something she wasn't even sure would ever come true.

Besides the alluring nightmares, she doubted if she would ever get a mate or be capable of keeping one.

To her,