"Just one chapter," Aria had lied to herself at 11:00 AM. "Just to see what the formatting looks like."
It was now 6:30 PM. The sun had completely set over the New York skyline, casting long, dark shadows across ICU Room 1.
Aria was currently twenty-seven chapters deep into an epic, slow-burn, 150,000-word masterpiece titled The Demon King's Pet, and her entire worldview had been irrevocably altered.
The internet was unhinged. The Wattpad girlies were feral. And the AO3 authors were writing with the kind of intense, descriptive passion that honestly deserved a Pulitzer Prize for creative anatomy.
She had scrolled past tags that made her violently blush: Dark!Damien, Praise Kink, Heavy BDSM, Leather Appreciation, Size Difference, and something called Somnophilia that she had to quickly Google on a separate tab just to make sure she wasn't being put on an FBI watchlist.
The door to her hospital room clicked open.
Aria didn't even look up from her iPad.
