Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Seeing a part of me I’d only shared with a handful of people.
“Last time I checked, they were still in the ICU,” I explained, knowing it wasn’t low enough for Agnes to not overhear, but I couldn’t care at that point.
I clenched my magic tight. It was a warm, dark night with a full moon blazing down on it. It was powerful and timeless, and it was mine. And maybe I hadn’t wanted it for most of my life, but it wasn’t going anywhere, and now it was my time to use it for a good reason.
“You ever wondered what life looks like?” My chin went up another notch. “It looks like a spark, like the flame on Duncan’s tail. But inside. Beneath your skin and ribs and all the organs that keep a body functioning. It’s hidden right up in there.
“For most people, it’s the biggest and the brightest when they’re young. As they get older, it loses size and gets duller. It’s not everyone, but it’s most people. Nice people, happy people, are always bright and beautiful,” I explained, holding his searching gaze tight.
“It’s easier, the older someone is, to make that spark even smaller though, a little dimmer….” I dropped my voice even lower, but I didn’t doubt he could hear it. “To pinch it between magical fingers and extinguish it completely.”
Dominic’s lips parted even more, and I caught him licking them, caught his gaze moving from one of my eyes to the other. And I didn’t imagine that his voice wobbled, “But… you get people pregnant….”
He was finally seeing the full picture.
“Most people don’t know there’s a very, very fine line between life and death. Between creating and erasing. One of them is easy to control, and the other one… not so much. Want to guess which one is which?”
A harsh breath left the man in front of me, but I wasn’t done.
He’d had his chance to walk away, and now he was going to regret not taking it.
“I want you to think about that the next time you threaten someone that you think is weaker than you. That you think can’t stand up for themselves or won’t retaliate. Because maybe they can’t, or won’t, but someone else might. Someone else would. Maybe someone else might feel a little bad about doing what they have to do to protect their loved ones, but at the end of the day, they’ll be able to sleep just fine,” I warned him softly.
Because like I’d told Shiloh, you didn’t have to be big and have sharp teeth to be scary.
Then I gripped my magic even tighter, and I showed him, just a little, just enough. I brought it to the surface.
He saw it. I let him get a real good view of it too—of the other side of my parents’ gifts. The opposite of life. I showed him the death that ran through my veins, in my eyes. Some might think it was cold, but it wasn’t, pulling at it was like tugging at an inferno in my chest, in my soul. I could crush the life out like a crumpled piece of paper: that was what he saw. Color drained from his face in a split second, and there was something in his eye that would have made me feel awful if he’d been anyone else.
But I was sick of his shit, and I was done playing nice.
Sometimes good men could be misunderstood men, the same way good women could be. But he was not a good man. He was jealous and petty, and it went against a werewolf’s nature to not care for those weaker.
He might be under the impression he was still the baddest fish in this pond, but I was the box jellyfish here and everywhere.
And this was no competition.
I took a step closer to him and softened my voice that much more, even as that dark, ancient magic that coursed through my body flared throughout it. “I want to make sure you understand this isn’t a threat. I’m only sharing a fact with you, and you can share it with whoever you want.” My nostrils flared as I thought about my friends at the nursery and the wounded look on Agnes’s face and remembered the way Phoebe hadn’t wanted to be overheard when she’d told me about him.
“Tell whoever needs to hear it: death isn’t one person. Death doesn’t walk around with a scythe and a robe. Sometimes it has long hair, sometimes it has short hair. Sometimes it comes in an accident, and sometimes in the middle of the night when you’re asleep.” I dropped my voice and looked him right in the eye. “And sometimes it likes wearing a fanny pack.”
Dom swallowed hard.
Very, very hard.
His coloring went even more pale when his gaze dipped to my waist, where a brand-new silver fanny pack rested around my hips.