Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Was she okay?
I’d thought—when she said we might be the key to our survival—that we’d be fine as long as we both existed...but what if it was a proximity thing?
What if I’d just condemned her to—
The guards opened fire.
Turning my back on them, I cradled the little girl in my arms, protecting her from the bullets. Sharp pain tore through my back but...my flesh switched to smoke, allowing pure metal to soar through.
Bullets thudded into the little girl instead.
The girl I was trying to protect.
The girl they’d tortured and killed.
Fire twisted into a vortex, drawing deep into my heart like a planet about to become a blackhole. Every molecule of heat, every thread of anger, every splinter of grief and helplessness and rage, rage, rage gathered into a crushing supernova.
Oxygen bent toward me.
Pebbles danced by my boots.
I coughed up another mouthful of blood as my marrow charred. The power took everything, killing me to keep a promise. A promise to make everyone pay.
The guards kept firing—muzzles flashing, sulphur rising—but the sound warped and slowed as if I controlled time itself. My vision fractured with every bullet. Stalactites dripped like candle wax.
And only once they’d run out of ammunition did I turn to face them.
My arms tightened around the dead girl as I glowered at the men who’d done this.
She was hungry?
Well, so the fuck was I.
Absolutely starving for retribution.
All it took was a thought.
The supernova inside my chest collapsed. Reversed. Boomed.
They didn’t just burn—they vanished. Reduced to carbon shadows and gone.
I summoned hell and hell answered and the fire targeted my mind in payment.
Every heartbeat cost me something.
A name.
A memory.
The pieces that kept me human. The memories I treasured and the moments with Rook all blurred. My childhood shrivelled like burning photographs, erasing my past, deleting the man I’d been.
Staggering backward, I almost dropped the girl as my tendons broke, one by one. My pulse thudded all wrong. My heart fought to keep beating.
The fire was no longer my enemy but my weapon. And mere mortal flesh didn’t stand a chance of containing its wrath.
This was the price.
If I kept going—
There would be nothing left of me.
But if I stopped—
There would be nothing left of them.
Screams hit my ears.
I ran.
The ground ruptured beneath my boots. The earth rumbled, lending me its unimaginable fury as my gaze landed on the woman, man, and newborn. The emaciated panther had collapsed close by, its eyes closed.
All around them fire licked at rancid hay, and stagnant water boiled in the troughs, yet they remained unharmed. She struggled to sit upright, cradling her baby close, yet she didn’t seem afraid of me, didn’t seem shocked by what I’d done.
And why would she.
She was like me.
Bred and harvested, created and farmed.
Holding the little girl tight, I bolted up the pathway—leaping over roughly-hewn stairs and careening around corners as fire feasted on me.
It found my bloodlust. It liked it. It accepted yet another piece of my soul in return for power great enough to unmake the world.
Smoky ember wings erupted from my back, granting inhuman speed as I tore through the mountain.
Chapter Sixty-Six
BRANCHES TORE AT MY ARMS. ROOTS lunged for my ankles.
I didn’t notice or care.
The cold turned into my enemy as I bolted.
All I could think about, all I could focus on, was finding Lucien before it was too late.
Why had he left?
How long did we have?
Didn’t he understand we had to stay close? That distance was killing us? That the longer we spent apart, the worse we would become until our bodies broke?
Run!
I didn’t have much time.
He didn’t have much time—
I clawed at my chest as another icicle stabbed my heart with its icy, awful dagger.
Running hurt. Breathing hurt. I left a trail of frost with every footfall.
I left via the back gate in the Whispering Dragon wall. I didn’t tell Dillon. I didn’t have time. But I left a trail for him to find us, coating the world in white as I ran and ran and ran.
The bond inside me was pulling, tugging, jerking.
Snippets of Lucien kept spilling into my head.
A dead child. A newborn baby. A slaughter.
I had to go to him. Help him.
Run, run, run!
The ice inside me snarled to go faster, faster, faster—pushing me to find Lucien so he could stop my creeping, freezing takeover.
I ran as hard as I could, my bare feet bleeding.
Why hadn’t I put on shoes?
How could I be so stupid?
Whisper raced next to me, keeping me safe as the forest swallowed us. I could barely see, but I didn’t need to. I followed the compass in my soul, urging me to go east, don’t stop, keep going.
I stumbled over a rock—
The panther pressed his massive shoulder against my hip, bouncing me upright before I could fall. My hand landed on his muscular back, finding my balance before streaking ahead again.