Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Alexander is still sitting in the mid-distance, around the siege line. He is not moving. Ash is floating around him in the breeze, the remnants of his army. He is still as stone as the loss spreads out around him. I lock my eyes on him, this statue of cruel masculinity who took so much from me, and will likely take more in the future, and I realize that this is my chance. I could erase him now. Hit him with the truck, cut off his head, stake him, turn him to ash like the rest of his kin…
“Don’t.”
The word cuts through my mind like ice.
I forgot he could do that.
How the fuck did I forget that?
A chuckle resonates through my mind, a hollow laughter that comes with the realization that I forgot because he wanted me to. He has been toying with my memories, overwriting things he wanted to stay hidden for his own amusement or ends.
I feel a flush of guilty heat. He’s been reading my mind this whole time, enjoying my pain, my fear, oh, my god—sensing my arousal. He probably knew every time I got laid. He probably knew when they threw me on that table in the smuggler’s bar.
I drive the truck up to him nice and slow, and park it tidily next to him. I get out, breathing in the odd scent of hundreds of dead vampires turned to dust and floating on the desert breeze along with the remnants of burning buildings and other fiery things.
“Your heart, sir,” I say.
“Good. Thank you.” He smiles at me a little too broadly for my liking.
“I’ll be going now,” I say. “You have a good one.”
He catches me by the arm and swings me back to face him.
“You think it is that simple? You think I am just going to let you go after you just got a thousand vampires killed?”
I stare. I can’t believe he is blaming me for this. Wait. Why can’t I believe that? Of course he’s blaming me for this. He’s blamed me for everything. I am a scapegoat.
“You are not a scapegoat,” Alexander says. “You are the wolf who stole my heart. And you will be held responsible.”
“Your vampires got themselves killed trying to eat a lot of people who made it really clear they weren’t up for being eaten,” I say. “That’s what happens when you ignore consent.”
“And what happens when you ignore the danger you put yourself and everyone you love in just to annoy your surrogate vampire father?”
“You’re not my father, and you never will be,” I reply. “You’ve got your explosive heart. We’re done here, right?”
“You came into my home, you stole an artifact from me, you put yourself and everyone else in your general vicinity at risk. You got a port razed to the ground. You caused a war here. You have caused the deaths of hundreds of humans and countless vampires.”
“No, you did all of that, by overreacting. You could have just chilled.”
Nobody wants to hear that they could have just chilled less than an ancient warlord whose go-to response has been to slaughter a village every time he’s been inconvenienced since the dawn of time.
“Do you want me to drain you?” Alexander hisses. “You have been increasingly provocative. Are you looking for some kind of final showdown? Tired of living?”
“You killed my parents, you monster.”
“I killed your parents, and I gave you life. What would you have been if I left you with them, a runt of a wolf, bullied by her pack, likely traded off to a low status mate early on who would have bred you relentlessly before you knew what it meant to be a person?”
“That would not have happened.”
“Yes. It would have. Have you ever gone back to the place I took you from? Have you gone to see the family you lost? You were trash, Kita, and I made you royalty.”
A loud slap echoes through the night.
I just smacked him in the face.
I just slapped one of the most powerful vampires in all of history in the face.
He smirks at me, fangs long and dangerous.
“I have killed people for less.”
“You kill people like you breathe.”
Alexander snorts. “You know, you are quite correct. This is not the time to re-litigate the sins of the past, even the most recent ones. The future will prove all I have said, one way or another. You need to discover these things for yourself. You’ve always needed to put your hand on the metaphorical stove. I do not have time to argue with you, child. Besides. You have bigger things to worry about.”
“Like what?”
“Like your mates.”
He looks over my head. I turn and follow his eye line and see three tall, broad figures standing silhouetted against the burning city. I can feel their stares, and start to feel as though I am withering under them.