by Nora Ash
I glanced at Mirome, who was watching Trish rant on about Bright with a bored expression.
But my only other option was guaranteed death. At least Lightning might be able to save me from The Shade’s wrath, whereas if I took my chances with Mirome… and Bright… There was only one outcome.
As quietly as I could, I reached into my pocket and fumbled for my phone. I kept glancing at Mirome to see if he was watching me while I desperately tried to unlock my phone without making too much movement. A wave of relief shot through me when I finally got to push the right button. Now, just to navigate to my contact list…
It was the one time in my life being a bit of a loner paid off. I didn’t have too many contacts to memorize as I scrolled all the way down to “S,” and I was 99% sure I got the right name without looking when I pressed “Call.” What I was less sure of was whether or not The Shade would answer.
“I’m sorry it has to be this way.” Trish’s change in tone brought my attention back to her.
I pulled my hand from my pocket and looked at her pleadingly. Perhaps it wasn’t too late—perhaps I could reach her somehow, if only I tried. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Trish. You’re my friend—my only real friend. Don’t do this. Bright, he’s only using you. He’s messing with your mind. They can do that, with their pheromon—”
The stinging slap came out of nowhere. Pain burst through my cheek, and the impact made my jaw snap shut, effectively silencing me.
“Shut. Up!” Trish glared at me, hand still raised. Her eyes were black with sudden rage, and her pretty face was all twisted in anger. “You don’t get to speak about him like that! He loves me, and I love him. Not all of us are too thick to form real relationships. Don’t put your shortcomings on me! Just because no one will ever really love you doesn’t mean you get to disparage my relationship. He and I are one—and you are nothing, like you always were! Do you know why I’m the only one who still keeps in touch with you? It’s because I pity you! No one else could be bothered, because you’re so pathetic, Kat. You always were and you always will be. And it’s your own damn fault you’re going to die. If you hadn’t dropped your panties at the first supe who showed you any sort of interest, Bright wouldn’t care one whiff about you.”
Tears blurred my vision of my only friend as she glared at me with murderous rage, hands fisted into balls as she panted.
Everything she’d said, I had feared at one point or another, but always managed to push away. I was awkward, and a loner by nature, and she was the only friend from college who had stayed in any sort of contact. I had always wondered if this was the reason.
My cheek hurt, but so did my heart. My best friend… It wasn’t just Bright’s influence. It couldn’t be. This much hatred couldn’t just come from his claim.
Then, unexpectedly, anger welled up, drowning out the hurt. If that was how she’d felt about me all along, then I wasn’t the one who was pathetic. She had lied to me for so many years, faked her friendship—and now, she was willing to kill me, simply because a man told her to?
“You are the pathetic one!” I hissed, balling my own hands into fists as I glared back through my tears. “And you’re a fake, a liar and now an accomplice to murder. Well done, Trish. I hope you’ll remember this moment when you realize that you are nothing more than a toy to him. And you!” I turned halfway around so I could stare Mirome down. In my surging anger, I didn’t care that he was a superhuman who could end me with a flick of his wrist. If I was going to die, I was going down swinging.
“They trusted you! You were their teacher. Their friend! That’s the only thing they agree on. How can you betray them like this?”
Mirome took my angry assault with complete and utter calm. He clucked his tongue and shook his head at me as I glared up at him, wishing I was strong enough to wring his neck for the betrayal against the two men who had claimed my heart.
“I am not betraying my old students, little dimwit. I am merely ensuring that I don’t get on Bright’s wrong side. And if they’d had any sense, they would have heeded my warning and done the same. It’s either be on his side, or perish, and I have no intention of ending my existence for the sake of opposing a man who simply wants what is our race’s birthright. You humans—you are so inferior in your imperfections that you will never grasp it. Why should we live in the shadows? Cower at the thought of angering lesser beings than ourselves?
“I am not too surprised that Lightning is trying to be noble and ‘save humankind’. Saddened, but not surprised. But that The Shade has chosen to follow him in his ridiculous hero complex? That is an unexpected loss—and one I will hold you fully responsible for, you worthless cunt.”
The abrupt change from his calm, overbearing tone to the utter malice in his final statement shocked me, and when what was visible of his face twisted into a mask of hatred, my own anger fizzled and died, overtaken by instinctive fear. In his blue eyes, I saw nothing but murderous intent.
“W-what do you mean?” I breathed as cold dread took over my body, freezing me in place.
Mirome scoffed. “As if you didn’t already know. You are their mate—their ‘soulmate,’ as you humans so poetically call it, and neither would ever allow you to be unhappy. Your ridiculous attempt to expose Bright has brought them down with you, and they don’t even care that they are slaves to a simple, human cunt. And that, my dear, is why I am going to personally kill you, once Bright has used you to lure them into his trap.”
He was mad. Stark, raving mad. I saw it in his hateful eyes as he lifted his hand and brought it down, and felt it in my very bones as his fist impacted with the side of my head.
Blackness exploded out from my temple, wrapped in red-hot pain.
And then there was nothing.
Next Book
Read the thrilling conclusion of the Darkness series in
Fires in the Darkness
* * *
I am out of time.
There is no more waiting, no more hiding in the shadows. No more pretending I don’t love the two men who have claimed me as theirs.
But darkness has arrived.
And if we don’t fight it… If it wins….
I will lose my soul.
* * *
Excerpt
* * *
My head pounded from blinding pain once the darkness finally faded. I squinted up against the flickering light from a fluorescent tube and took in my surroundings. I was inside a small room made entirely from concrete, with only the single strip light and a heavy metal door to break up the monotony.
Good thing I didn’t suffer from claustrophobia. I touched my head lightly where the throbbing originated from, and winced. Ow! Being knocked out hurt a hell of a lot more than what movies suggested.
When I pulled my fingers back, a bit of red streaked them. Mirome clearly hadn’t held back.
My stomach roiled at the sight, and I had to swallow several times to settle it. The deep breathing also helped clear my head just enough that I could fully comprehend my shitty situation.
I’d been kidnapped—again. And the girl I’d thought was my best friend had betrayed me so profoundly I couldn’t even fully wrap my mind around it, what with my brain throbbing with pain so intense it made my eyes water. My only consolation was that there at least was a chance that I’d alerted The Shade to my situation. Not that there was any guarantee he’d picked up, but maybe it’d have gone to voice mail and recorded enough of what happened to make them realize that Mirome had betrayed them. And intended to use me as bait.
Hopefully, he and Lightning would work out a way to get me out of this mess, because I was all out of ideas.
Just then, I spotted my purse lying on the floor by the wall, and my pulse sped up. My phone! Maybe they hadn’t taken the time to remove it, and I’d be able to call The Shade again.
As swiftly as my aching skull would allow, I crawled over to it and shoved my hand inside to rummage for my lifeline. When my palm connected with the familiar sh
ape of my cell phone, I nearly cried from relief.
A relief that quickly died. As soon as I pulled my phone out, it became obvious why they hadn’t bothered to go through my stuff before leaving me in here. The concrete walls were blocking off the reception, leaving my phone as little more than a fancy paperweight.
So much for not being a helpless damsel. I sank down against the wall and rested my head in my hands as the small burst of hope fizzled away. Not only did I keep getting freaking kidnapped, but my attempts at helping just seemed to make everything worse.
I don’t know how long I sat there, wallowing in self-pity, but it seemed like hours. When the door to my holding cell finally opened, my throat was dry from thirst and my joints stiff from sitting in the same position for so long.
“Get up.”
I looked up to see Trish standing in the doorway, aiming a gun at me. If I hadn’t been numb from emotional overload, it would undoubtedly have rocked me to my core to see someone I used to trust so completely pointing a weapon at me. As it was, I only felt a wave of disgust at how low she’d turned out to be.
“What, or you’re going to shoot me? Wouldn’t your beloved Bright be pissed if you killed me before he’s used me as bait?”
“It’s not like you don’t have plenty of body mass I can shoot at without killing you. I doubt he’d mind if I blew your kneecap. Now get. Up.”
I obeyed slowly, steadying myself against the wall when my head began to spin and the pain from my wound intensified. Trish motioned for me to walk outside so I did, grimacing as each step made my head throb. There wasn’t anything left to say, and no reason to plead with her to spare me. She was too far under Bright’s thrall, and apparently quite happy to be there.
Trish guided me down concrete hallways lit up by sparse strobe lights that made me think we were in some sort of a bunker. The notion wasn’t dispelled when the narrow hallway opened up into a room a few times bigger than the one I’d been kept in. There was a sturdy chair bolted to the ground in the center, with equally sturdy straps attached to the arms and legs, and a metal grid underneath it. On the near wall hung a row of wicked instruments that looked like they belonged in a slaughterhouse. Mirome stood next to the chair, caressing one of the armrests with a thin smile.
“Ah, there you are. Come, sit. We have a little chatting to do before Bright gets here.”
My steps faltered as I took in the scene, my eyes flicking from the terrifying tools on the wall to the grid underneath the chair. It was a torture chamber.
I don’t know how the seriousness of the situation had managed to elude me up until then, but even after I woke up in a concrete cell with a splitting headache, some part of me had expected The Shade and Lightning to sweep in and save me before anything really awful could happen. Just like they’d done every time before.
“No, no… you can’t!” I was vaguely aware I was babbling as I backed against the barrel of the gun Trish was holding. I froze, and she jabbed it hard against my spine.
“Stop being such a fucking coward,” she snarled. “Sit down, or I’ll shoot you and you’ll still get put in that chair.”
Every hair on my body stood on end when a sharp, metallic click announced that Trish had cocked the gun, but I was physically incapable of getting any nearer to the chair. My muscles had stopped responding to my brain’s commands, even as it was screaming for me to do something, anything.
I didn’t get a chance to unfreeze as Mirome evaporated with a snap and a purple cloud of dust, only to reappear next to me in the same second. He grabbed me by the shoulder and threw me into the chair. I landed with a painful thump and yelped from the impact, but before I could as much as scramble to get up again, he’d secured my wrists and ankles tightly to the chair.
“There. That’s much better, isn’t it? Neater.” He sent me that sickly smile of his, but behind the mask, his eyes were cold as ice. “Now, as I said… let’s have a little chat. Bright will be so thankful if I poke a few holes in you and see if any delicious secrets spill out.”
“I don’t have any secrets!” I spat, cringing back in the chair when he casually strolled toward the wall with the tools. “Bright already asked me everything when he captured me the first time. You’re wasting your time.”
“Ah.” Mirome pulled out a long, pointed piece of metal with an elaborate handle, almost like a miniature rapier. It looked like the work of a craftsman. A sick craftsman. “But I won’t find it a waste of time. I find torture… quite relaxing. So even if you don’t tell me anything of interest, I guess I can just write it off as recreational pastime, hmm?”
I did my best to control my breathing as he picked a knife off the rack as well and turned around, but I couldn’t look away from the sick look of glee in his eyes. “Now, are you ready to sing, little bird?"
* * *
CONTINUE READING
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Also by Nora Ash
ANCIENT BLOOD SERIES
Origin
Wicked Soul
Debt of Bones*
* * *
DARKNESS SERIES
Into the Darkness
Hidden in Darkness
Shades of Darkness
Fires in the Darkness
* * *
DEMON’S MARK SERIES
Branded
Demon’s Mark
* * *
FERAL SERIES
Obsession
Despair
Torment
* * *
ALPHA SERIES
Taken
Masquerade
Mated
* * *
MADE & BROKEN SERIES
Dangerous
Monster
Trouble
