by Pam Godwin
Tricks.
Lies.
Manipulations.
Except the determination on his face was the same look he wore when he’d killed the hybrid children at the mansion and the attackers at the Canadian camp. His unblinking stare promised death.
I sat back and calmed my breathing as she squirmed and nicked her neck on the blade. He wasn’t being careful with her. And why a knife? He never used one. His fangs were more efficient.
And more intimate.
He knew that his mouth on her throat would shove me into total darkness. I tried to go there now. His cock was inside her. I tried to block out the view of his body pressed against her back. I needed to look away from his fingers in her hair. I couldn’t shut down, couldn’t stop my heart from pounding, begging me to do something.
Because the horror in her eyes was genuine. It leaked in huge drops down her face. Whatever this was, she wasn’t in on it.
She was a human woman, so very rare and important. I might’ve failed in my prophesied role, but I would never sabotage a chance for the human race to reproduce.
“Let her go,” I whispered, dragging my gaze to his face.
His eyes connected with mine, flaring with desperation. “Tell me to kill her, Dawn. I’ll give you her blood. I’ll give you anything you ask.”
I believed the part about killing her. She wailed and clawed at his arm, and he didn’t react. Didn’t give a shit about her. This show was all for me.
“Let. Her. Go.” I gritted my teeth.
He released her, and she grabbed her throat, weeping uncontrollably. Tears flooded my own eyes.
Prowling around her, he didn’t take his gaze off me. “Tell Dawn what happened the night I came to your room.”
A dull knife plunged through my heart, opening a gaping wound and bleeding agony through my body. There was nothing to wrap around me. Nothing left to protect me.
I felt everything, and it hurt. Fuck, it hurt so damn much.
“Tell her!” He pointed the blade at Macaria, seething with impatience. “And don’t fucking sugarcoat it.”
“H-He…knocked on my door. I—” She looked at him with watery eyes, sniffling. “I didn’t expect you.”
“Tell Dawn,” he roared, thrusting a finger in my direction. “Tell her why you didn’t expect me.”
My molars snapped together as I glared at him with what could only be terrified pain in my eyes. I didn’t fear him. I feared the words he would force me to hear.
“I didn’t expect him b-because…” She wrung her hands in front of her. “He didn’t come to me anymore.” Her breath hitched on a sob. “Since you arrived, he had nothing to do with any of us.”
“Lies,” I breathed, the air thickening around me.
The demon stopped prowling, his expression hard and barren as he stared at the floor.
“I have no reason to lie.” Her chin trembled. “I used to be his favorite. Then I was nothing.”
My hands balled into fists. I hated her. Hated that she knew him so intimately. Hated that I felt her anguish, became one with her misery. She was a beautiful woman, and he’d reduced her to a pitiful heartbroken creature. Like me.
He was a cancer to love. I could fight him, kill him, but the damage was done. There was no cure. I would never be free of him.
“Tell her about the sex,” he said hoarsely and flung the blade at the far wall.
Icy prickles raced across my cheeks. “No—”
“I can’t.” She shook her head.
“Tell her,” he shouted.
She flinched, and a flush of anger stormed across her tear-stained face.
“He came in. Demanded I remove my clothes.” She stared blankly at the smashed wall of cabinets. “He was so…cold. Disinterested. Wouldn’t even touch me.” She blinked rapidly and swiped at her fallen tears. “But I missed him. Wanted him. So I touched myself. He used to like it when I did that.”
My own tears welled up, singed with bitterness and jealousy. Those sentiments disgusted me. I shouldn’t have felt anything for him. I couldn’t even look at him.
“Keep going,” he said quietly.
“I couldn’t…” She wiped her sniffling nose on the back of her hand. “Nothing I did aroused him, and he wouldn’t let me touch him.” She peeked over at him and looked at the floor, whispering, “He didn’t get hard.”
Twenty-years-old and he couldn’t get an erection. How embarrassing. I should’ve laughed my ass off. Should’ve laughed so hard my face reddened and my insides stitched. But all I felt was despair, and it poured down my cheeks in rivers. He wasn’t interested in her, didn’t want her, so why in the name of all that was holy did he fuck her?
She cleared her throat and tilted her head toward him. “Do you want me to tell her—?”
“Yes.” His jaw clenched.
I didn’t think the stabbing pressure in my chest could get any worse. But there it was, threatening to double me over beneath the unholy pain. My nose was runny, my eyes gritty, and my throat swelled with fire. I just wanted this to end.
She rubbed her palms on her dress. “He stroked himself to get hard, but as soon as he was inside me…” Her breath hiccupped. “He couldn’t— H-he lost his erection.”
Standing a few feet away, he lowered his head and clasped his hands behind his neck. The dejected posture was as uncharacteristic as the notion of him going soft during sex. He was the essence of virile masculinity, power, and superhuman stamina. So what had happened? Some kind of emotional or mental impairment? I didn’t know what to do with that. I didn’t want to care, but I couldn’t stop crying.
“I repulsed him.” Her face fell. “He wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t touch me or—”
“Stop.” I turned my soggy glare to him. “You’ve hurt her enough. Let her go.”
Rather than ending this nightmare, he studied me for a daunting moment. For what reason? To watch me break down so spectacularly I would forgive him? That was never going to happen.
I reined in my tears, and he turned away.
Striding toward the door, he motioned for her to follow. “Are your things packed?”
She nodded, wrapped her arms around her waist, and shuffled after him.
“Wait.” I jerked against the rope. “Where is she going?”
“To the surface.” He reached for the door, chilling the air with his cold-hearted demeanor. “She’ll be blindfolded and dropped somewhere so that she can’t find her way back.”
She hugged herself tighter, her lips pinned and trembling. He was dumping her like a piece of trash? Why was I surprised? Only a moment ago, he was prepared to kill her.
“You will not just leave her somewhere outside.” I thrashed harder at the restraints. “Fucking untie me!”
“Not yet.” His tone was firm.
“You son of a bitch.” My voice shook with the hammer of my heart. “If you leave her out there alone, she’ll be raped and bitten by nightfall.” I hardened my eyes, blinking away tears. “Escort her to the nearest human camp. They’ll protect her.”
Her head shot up, wide eyes locked on mine.
“That’s what you want?” He regarded me with suspicion.
“That’s what you should want. She’s a person, not an instrument to use in your games.”
“This isn’t a fucking game,” he bellowed. Then he collected himself and dragged a hand down his face. “I’m trying to fix this.”
“This can’t be fixed, but you’ll make it a whole lot worse if you don’t protect her.” I trembled to rip off these damn restraints and punch his stupid face. “Escort her to safety. Promise me.”
He pushed a hand through his hair and nodded. “I promise.”
Without a look in her direction, he opened the door.
She moved to follow him, curling in on herself, chin tucked, shoulders hunched. The bastard had done a number on her self-esteem.
“Macaria,” I said and waited for her to turn to me. “Only you define your worth. His inability
to see you is his own dysfunction.” I sucked in a tear-clogged breath, taking my words to heart.
Her face paled, and she looked around the room as if seeing the destruction for the first time.
“He destroyed it while spinning in rabid circles, chasing his limp dick.” I tried to laugh, but it came out strangled. “You’re better off without him. He lives in a flaccid world of tiny-fisted tantrums and erectile problems. I doubt he could get it up if his dick was tied to a bird in mid-flight.”
She covered her gasping mouth, and her eyes flew to Salem.
I felt the weight of his glare and pretended to ignore it. I was kicking him when he was already down, and I hated myself for it. But I was tied to a chair with my fucking heart on the floor. What he’d done to me was so much worse than any insult I could throw, and right now, insults were all I had left.
“There’ll be hundreds of men fighting each other for the chance to love you,” I said. “Hot-blooded, better-looking men who know how to pleasure a woman. Just…” My chest swelled with a rising surge of grief. “Stay alive and don’t look back.”
She lowered her hand to her throat and stared at her feet. “I get it now.”
My lashes twitched, and a rogue tear tracked down my cheek. “What?”
“I get why he loves you so much.” She straightened, shoulders loosening as she whispered, “Thank you.”
She slipped into the hall, passing Erebus and vanishing out of view. He stepped into the room and bent his neck to listen as Salem gave him instructions for her escort.
I twisted my hands in the rope, dreading the conversation that would follow. No doubt he’d kept me restrained to exercise control over me and force me to hear his remorseful pleas. I wouldn’t be able to block him out just like I couldn’t dry up the tears now that they’d fallen.
Misery sat in my chest, a bludgeoned heart that beat away the numbness. It cracked and bled, and I knew the pain had only just begun.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I waited in the darkness of my broken heart, where there was no sun, no life, no future. It was so much worse than the absence of hope. It was death while still breathing.
Without him, I was empty, soulless, no longer living.
With him, I was a trampled, abused, pathetic version of myself.
There was no escape.
He closed the door and rested fingertips in the front pockets of his trousers. His porcelain face would’ve been flawless if not for his gaze, which flashed like lightning in a storm of lies.
Lowering his chin, he regarded me from beneath the shadow of his brows. “Tiny-fisted tantrums?”
“And a limp dick.” Tears thickened my words.
“You’re back.” His shuddering breath was distant thunder echoing from nowhere and everywhere.
I was more lost than ever. “I’m not coming back.”
He stalked toward me and the thunder grew louder, rattling my bones and fisting my heart. It was him, working his way inside me.
“All those times I asked if there were other women…” My voice carried so much resentment it crackled the air.
“It was only her. Just the one time.”
Despite his hushed whisper, I cringed at the asperity of his words. I didn’t want to believe him, but he spoke with such helplessness I knew he wasn’t lying. Didn’t matter. One time was one time too many.
I needed to understand why. “Before that night, you could’ve told me you were monogamous. Are you cruel just for the thrill of being cruel?”
“I didn’t understand the concept. I’d never been…faithful? Is that the word? I’d never been with just one woman, in a relationship, and I was spinning off balance.” He closed the distance with humanly cautious speed and knelt at my feet. “I was scared. I saw my faithfulness as a weakness. You were emasculating me faster than I could run.”
Every word was the swipe of a blade, the pain inside me far from undiminished. “It’s called love, you stupid cheating asshole.”
“I didn’t know that at the time. I’ve never felt anything like this before.” He gripped the arms of the chair, his hands inches from my bound wrists. “You were on an assassination mission, seducing me with your eyes and manipulating me with your body.”
“I was not.” The lie fell flat.
He arched a brow, igniting a quiet storm between us. After an agitated silence, I caved.
“Yeah, okay, I tried to fake it.” I flexed my fingers along the arms rests. “I tried to make you love me without reciprocating. But that’s no reason—”
“I saw the trap a mile away and couldn’t stop myself from falling in. I was already dangerously in love with you.” His eyes blazed until the fire outshone his grim expression. “I was ready to die for you, to give you my vein and let you turn me to dust. I was ready to sacrifice my life and the lives of my friends because I love you.”
“Words.” Venom ripped through my body and struck my wounded soul. “All of it bullshit. You say one thing but—”
“That day in the workout room, I bent my neck to you. I offered you my life.” A flood of emotion swirled in his gaze. “Do you remember what happened?”
The pain inside me strengthened, and the tears fell. “I hesitated. I couldn’t do it.”
“Yes.” A whisper. “You couldn’t bite me because you loved me.” Silver eyes burned with wonderment. “That’s when I knew. It wasn’t just my life I was sacrificing. It was yours.” He looked at me with slanted brows, a demon bewildered by love. “What happens to a woman when she kills the one who holds her heart?”
“She saves mankind.”
“And destroys herself.”
The impact of his words propelled me to an imaginary place where I wasn’t born as a prophecy and my only purpose was to love and be loved by a dark prince. The notion awoke a deep-seated longing that strangled the breath from my body.
“You didn’t want me to destroy myself,” I choked. “So you stuck your dick in Macaria. What did you think would happen? That we’d be cured of love?”
“Yes.”
That one horribly powerful word hit the spot where my wounds bled and he was everything.
“I went to her,” he said, gripping my bound hands, “because I thought it would make me hate myself more than I love you. That you’d see my inadequacy and hate me, too.” The light in his eyes dimmed. “If you hated me, you wouldn’t destroy yourself when you saved the world.”
A sobbing breath erupted from me, but he wasn’t finished.
“I failed on all counts.” His voice was soft, yet feral in its self-loathing. “I annihilated our connection. Took away your fangs. Destroyed my ability to free the hybrids. I fucking despise myself, and I still love you more.”
“Don’t—”
“I love you more than I can bear.”
The horrendous twist of my heart threatened to wring me into a mewling broken mess. He wasn’t the only one at fault in this. I was bad for him. Instead of turning him into dust, I’d reduced him to a limp-dicked shadow of a man who’d tried to force me to hate him. Because he didn’t want me to destroy myself.
I’d loved him. I still loved him, and every bleeding breath in my body wanted to sympathize with him. I had to force myself to remain angry with him, because dammit, I wanted him so fucking much. The man, the demon, his tenderness and cruelty—I wanted it all. I was a glutton for abuse. A victim of my own insanity.
But I wouldn’t forgive him. He’d gone to another woman instead of coming to me. He broke us in the worst way possible. The very thought made me angry. So fucking angry I let the vicious heat of hatred curl and coil until it exploded.
“You’re disgusting,” I seethed.
He nodded. “I don’t deserve you.”
“You deserve no one.” I thrashed in the chair, grasping for hurtful words. “You’re an infection of stupidity.”
He caught my chin and leveled our gazes. “I know.”
“Don’t you dare try to soften my anger.”
“I’m not. I’m agreeing with you.”
“You don’t get to agree. You don’t get opinions. You…you…” My voice cracked. “You fucked my trust in the ass. You…you fucking broke my heart.” No air. Can’t breathe. Pull up, pull up, before you drown. “I can’t believe how cruel you are.”
“I’m sorry.” He cupped my face, eyes bare and glassy with moisture.
“Your words mean nothing.” I jerked from his hold, every inch of my body laboring against the pain. “You’re the highest order of cruel. Meta-cruel. Trans-cruel. Superhuman cruel.”
“Are you finished?”
“No. You’re so catastrophically cruel it goes beyond the scientific laws of cruel and into a whole different hell of cruel.” Tears streamed down my face. I hurt so badly I couldn’t even concoct a good insult. “You’re a carcinogen of cruel and—”
“You’re done.”
“Untie me.”
He stared at my wrists, hesitated, then bit through the rope. “Where do we go from here?”
“We aren’t going anywhere.” I stood and searched the debris for my tennis shoes. “I am.”
“No.” The remorseful man from a moment ago disappeared, and in his place stood the captor who’d tricked and lied and cheated. “I won’t let you run.”
“I need to rebuild my strength.” I found the shoes and shoved them on. Then I jogged out the door.
I spent most of the next week running the corridors. Toning soft muscles. Exercising my pain. And thinking. Sometimes he ran with me. Most of the time, he left me alone. He didn’t touch me, didn’t pressure me, but he always slept beside me.
For reasons I didn’t understand, I accepted every offer to join him in the dining hall. I didn’t dress up. The hybrids continued to ignore me. The females were there, but all the faces were new. He’d sent the others away. I tried not to let the thoughtfulness of that action worm into my resolve.
I was stuck in a holding pattern between lethargy and action. I’d gone from utter shutdown to keen awareness, my mind on a never-ending race for the truth. Maybe he’d betrayed me for the right reasons. Maybe he loved me so much it gave him brain damage. Maybe I was missing some earth-shattering answer to everything.
