Everyone makes mistakes

Is a saying frequently told

So that those who mess up feel consoled

But it can be misleading

Give a mindset that screwing up is alright

Cause people to try less on getting things right

But there's a dark truth people don't frequently share

The truth that it takes just one bad mistake

To regrettably make your world crumble and break

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jules could no longer grasp reality. Everything happening around her appeared like frames. Her senses were scattered.

Randall's burning flesh. The flare of the fire. The sound of glass shattering. Screams slowly drowned out by the deafening sound of squawking. A black sea of crows. People trying to escape. Doors not opening. Spilled wine. A cracked golden watch. The shaking diamonds on the chandelier. Silence. A sound of ringing in her ears.

Now that the academy students no longer blocked her view, Jules could see the ball room's giant mirror wall. With the crows continuously flying every which way, she could only see her reflection in increments.

Her disheveled hair. Her puffy red eyes.

She frowned.

Her dress was ruined. It had been so beautiful and white before. Her mother would be devastated.

Another wave of crows flew by, taking Jules' reflection away and leaving another behind.

It was her mother wearing the same dress, unstained and beautiful like it had been before.

Her mother was smiling at her, rubbing lovingly at her pregnant stomach. Jules smiled back. It looked just like the image of her mother before labor that was placed safely in a box hidden in Jules' closet.

A hand appeared from behind and rested on her mother's shoulder and her smile retracted. Jules could not see who the hand belonged to. There was only a shadow where a body should have been.

"Mom? What's wrong?"

Her mother began holding her bulged stomach tightly, crumpling the dress into ripples.

"Stop it mom. You're gonna hurt it."

Jules watched in horror as her mother's nails pierced her bulging stomach so deeply that blood slowly seeped out like a waterfall, soaking into the white cotton fabric.

Jules ran towards the mirror, swinging her arms wildly to prevent the crows from blocking her view. Her mom needed her. The baby needed her. But it was futile.

Once Jules reached the mirror, her mother was gone.

"Mom," Jules banged her hands on the mirror repeatedly, "Mom? Mom!"

Jules clenched her fist, her chest heaving at an alarming rate as the feelings of frustration and loss washed over her. She leaned against the mirror. Her body shook as she began to cry. She was scared and confused. She just wanted to go home.

"Why do you cry?"

Jules recognized the voice. Her suspicions were confirmed when she lifted her head and the same little boy from her nightmare reflected in the mirror. He wore the same blue raincoat with the hood keeping his face hidden. She turned around but no one was there. His reflection still remained in the mirror.

"Why are you doing this?" Something deep within her knew that he was the cause of the chaos happening in the room. Everything about the little boy--the way he spoke, the way he dressed, the way he made her feel--seemed so familiar. But Jules only had pieces of a shattered memory and the more she tried to remember, the more it felt like grabbing blindly at sharp pieces of a broken mirror.

"They made me angry. I don't like to share."

"Please," her words could barely escape out of her trembling lips, "I don't want this. Make it stop."

Jules was forced to back away from the mirror as the crows began swarming around her. At the center of the black tornado stood only Jules and the little boy. Everything else had disappeared around them.

"You're trembling. You're afraid of me."

Jules backed away cautiously.

"I know you're not a child. I know you try to deceive me with that body. Show me your real form," Jules demanded. She was sick of games and tricks.

"I was hoping you would remember me if you saw me as you did when we first met." The boy backed away and disappeared in the mass of crows.

"I'm hurt Jules." Now it was a man's voice, identical to the one from her nightmare. His voice echoed as if it was coming from multiple directions. Jules looked around frantically but saw no one else around her.

"I been waiting for you all these years and you've already forgotten." He laughed bitterly. "But that is alright. Your birthday is soon and I'll have to wait no longer."

"Please, I'm begging you. Just leave me alone."

Jules' hair continued to stick to her wet teared-face as the wind from the birds' wings clashed all around her.

"I can't do that."

"Why?" Jules shot back immediately. Her courage to speak was fueled completely by the desperation of wanting her life to go back to normal. Back to Reveille Oaks where there were no academy students, no one claiming her like an object, no confusion, no fear. Just her, her mom, and her favorite angel oak tree. The tree where birds would sing to her during sunrise and crickets would keep her company on her way home at sunset. Thinking of those times made her desperation flare. "Why can't you leave me alone? I don't want this!"

"We've already made a deal." This time the disembodied voice sounded more penetrating, causing Jules to flinch. "Whether you like it or not, I'll stick to your side like a shadow. I'll hurt anyone who even thinks about laying a single finger on you. I'll wait patiently for you to give in to our bond."

The crows stopped flying in circles. They stayed in place and stared at Jules with their dark red, beady eyes. The color began to seep out their iris, leaving thick scarlet drops flowing down the birds' feathered face and onto the ground. It looked as if the crows were crying blood.

The scarlet drops continued to rain down, spattering and merging into a large puddle with an awful metallic odor. Eventually, the puddle reached Jules and the blood moved up her dress as if it was trying to crawl onto her. Multiple crows then began to dart at Jules and tug at her dress. Her body was forced roughly in many directions as the birds pulled on the fabric. The sounds of fabric ripping and stretching filled her ears.

Swinging her arms wildly was useless. There were too many of them.

Hundreds of feathers fell from above and impaired her vision. Everything around her became so chaotic that she could not even register her own screams. Jules kept her eyes shut tightly, afraid of what she might see if she opened them.

"Don't be afraid." The deep voice sounded very close. "For you are my mate."

She opened her eyes and there he was.

An unknown emotion burst within her at once that dominated everything else she was feeling. It felt as if her heart stopped for that mere second she laid eyes on him. Jules expected to see a monster. Perhaps a man with horns holding a trident. Or a creature with sharp teeth, red skin, and cat eyes. But her expectations were not even close.

He was beautiful. Sinfully so. Everything about him was alluring.

Jules thought all the academy students were gorgeous but they were not comparable. They were charming but he was captivating. That was the difference.

A crow flew through his body, and it dispersed into dust. The crow's talons were going straight for her neck but she was still stuck in her trance, unable to move. She waited for the pain as its talons were cementers away from piercing her flesh, but she only felt a gust of wind.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the crows begin to fly out of the window, revealing disheveled academy students staring at her with widened eyes from all across the room.

Jules' dress had transformed. The blood that soaked up her dress from the crows' tears was replaced with a pattern of red flowers and vines. The feathers that had fallen stuck to the upper part of the dress, creating an illusion of flowers and leaves cascading down her torso.

However, the dress did not have the spotlight. The academy students were staring at something else. Something that made their knees weak, skin crawl, and veins fill with dread.

There was an image--like a tattoo-- of a crow on Jules' neck . The crow's wings were spread out to where it engulfed both sides of her neck and ended at her nape. Its talons were extended in a threatening manner and looked as if the bird was about to fly out of her skin to attack anyone who came close.

It took just one look for the academy students to understand its message.

It was a warning. She belonged to him.

But Jules stayed unaware of her transformations. Her thoughts remained on the image of the man. It made her heart beat wildly. She was still stuck in his trance even in his absence. It wasn't until her vision began to dim that she could detach away from the image seared into her memory. Her body was never good at handling trauma.

Alec ran to catch the falling girl. He did not want to think of what he would do to them if she were to get injured. He laid her on the floor gently before quickly snapping his hand back. He was no longer comfortable touching her more than what was necessary.

"How could this happen?" Skye was first to break the tense silence. She was in front of the cracked wall mirror, trying to fix her hair and wipe away at her smeared lipstick. One could be unsure if her question was about her appearance looking disarranged or the disaster that had just occurred.

"Jonathan tried to warn us," Alec threw a wine glass at a wall angrily, "but we didn't listen to him. He told us Jules could see the red eyes." Another wine glass was thrown. "He must have hidden her mark. But nothing matters now, we're all dead meat."

Skye placed her hands on her hips angrily. "Randall, you dumba**! He is going to drag us all to hell for what we did to her!"

"On the bright side, Jules' birthday is not until this Sunday," Ana pointed out. She laid nonchalantly on top of a table, eating the food she had protected from the scavenging crows. While everyone was busy running like headless chickens, she went to where the food was and had put her ninja moves to use.

"That makes it worst Ana! We get less than two days before we're fu*king murdered! Whats so fu*king good about that?!" Skye's voice raised up in pitch when she was stressed and Ana thought it was one of the worst sounds to exist. It reminded her of a pampered chihuahua whining...with a kazoo stuck in its throat.

Ana shrugged her shoulders. "I still have time to use my Sam's club membership to buy and eat as many Whoopie Pies as I want before I die."

Skye let out an annoyed scream and charged at Ana, "You never take anything seriously! Maybe I'll just send you to hell right now myself!"

Skye let out another piercing shriek when Ana slammed a piece of chocolate cake on her face. Both girls knocked each other on the floor and began yanking at each others' hair.

Panic and fear was building up between the academy students with the realization of who they pissed off. The fear made them lash out at each other and point fingers.

But with the tsunami of anxiety flooding in, Randall felt the worst of it. As a man whose life centered around his own pride, he felt completely stripped of his dignity. He was laying down pitifully and painfully on the marble floor and no one cared enough to even tend his injuries. Not only was the spotlight no longer on him, but his right hand had been completely eaten up by the flames, leaving nothing but burnt flesh. He had purposely given Randall the harshest blow to his pride by making him a cripple.

Randall laughed bitterly at the irony. They had been anxiously waiting for years for his return so that he might save them. Now that he was about to come back, the academy students felt dread instead of relief.

Randall was fully and utterly aware that he really just f*cked up this time. The carving of the word DIXON on top of the ceiling tauntingly emphasized how screwed up they really were.

Dixon would come back soon to reign again. But he was not going to come back in a happy mood. That was the difference.