Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 65167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
But this is far from over.
For I now know the true reason for Alara’s teachings. They weren’t for defeating Eris. I did that on my own.
I offer the corpse a final victorious grin before turning away.
I ache with pain and exhaustion. Every bone in my body screams at me to collapse, but I stay strong. I walk away with my head held up high despite the agony searing through me.
Because the battle with Eris was only a prelude.
The real war is just beginning.
I walk until I can’t hear the wind rasping through her lifeless fur. Until the scent of blood—her blood—isn’t the only thing clouding my senses. But it still lingers. In my mouth. In my lungs. On my skin. The demon in her clings to me like smoke that won’t wash off. I can’t tell if I feel sick because of the blood or because of what I’ve done.
Killing her should have given me peace.
I saved myself and my child from her wrath.
I saved Rogan from being her fated mate.
A moon cuts through the clouds above. The ether is grand, to be sure. Existing existentially but also in reality. I perceive it, and perception is reality, after all.
I tighten my hand around the hilt of the dagger still slick with Eris’s blood. It feels like the only thing keeping me tethered to my purpose—a purpose that’s shifted so quickly that I barely recognize it.
It was never about Eris.
It was never about Rogan’s love, not truly.
It’s always been about my stepfather. About control. Power.
Perhaps even about lineage and survival. I touch my abdomen.
The child inside me stirs. He is the link. And if my stepfather has his way, my baby will be snuffed out like everything else he’s touched.
He’ll come for me. My mother be damned. In the end, he won’t care that killing me and my unborn child will hurt her. She’s lost most of her emotion anyway. To her, I’ll be a simple memory that makes her smile weakly but then drifts away.
Now that Eris is dead, Richard knows the threads are unraveling. His carefully placed pieces have started to fall.
But he’ll find me different now.
I’m not the girl I was when he married my mother.
Hell, I’m not the same woman I was moments ago, before I sank my fangs into a demon-wolf.
I’ve tasted darkness and survived it.
I’ve ended a fate that wasn’t mine and claimed one that is.
The air thickens around me. I can feel them watching. My stepfather’s spies, maybe. Or my father’s. Or Dominic’s. The pack’s.
I keep walking, hoping to find a portal home.
Because if I stop now, I’ll break.
I won’t give Richard that.
No.
He once forced me to my knees.
The next time I face him, he’ll drop to his fucking knees.
He will see the child he abused and called a monster has become something far worse.
A mother.
A survivor.
And soon…his end.
61
The moon shines brighter. I reach a small clearing where the grass sways gently in the nocturnal breeze. I stop here to rest, my back against a tree. My body aches with an intensity that almost matches the pain in my heart, but it’s bearable. Almost tolerable. The pain in my heart, however…
I close my eyes, allowing myself the luxury of grief for what could have been—what should have been.
Richard has taken so much from me already. My youth. My joy.
The attention and love of my mother.
A tear escapes from my closed eyelids, and I let it fall without wiping it away. It’s okay to shed tears for the woman who gave me life.
For she’s the reason for my grief.
I’ll lose her when I kill the demon king.
I touch my swollen belly lightly, drawing strength from the tiny life growing inside me.
“Everything will be fine,” I whisper into the silence, a promise to myself and to my unborn child. “I will never let him harm you.”
I rise and continue to walk, the weight of my victory pulling me forward. I am not the prey anymore. I am the predator. The hunter. The promise of revenge is a sweet song that sings in my heart, and it propels me further into the night.
The moonlight glows on my clothes, illuminating the stains of Eris’s blood.
A chill sweeps through me.
I’m not a killer.
But this had to be done.
And unfortunately, I’m not finished killing.
Again the chill.
It’s a validation of the change inside me, of the transformation I’ve undergone. I’m no longer just a woman or even just a vampire.
No longer a creature of darkness and seduction.
I have become something more—something formidable and resilient.
Someone with a purpose. A destiny.
Eris may have been fated to mate with Rogan, but she was not my enemy. She was another piece played by those who believed they held power over my fate.
First my father.
Then my stepfather.
But I have altered the path before me, taken control in a world where none seemed possible.