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“Worked for a while. Long enough to find you.”
“But not long enough to fight me.” I lean close to his face, searching for the beauty that was once there. “We knew you were coming. You were revealed to us because no one serves you. No one is loyal to you. No one loves you, Hadrian.”
His eyes harden and he reaches up, gripping my throat, stronger than he seems. I pull the knife from his neck and plunge it in again while the others hold him down. He screams and uses every bit of power he has left to fight me as I hack at his thickened skin.
Finally, his hold slips, and he grunts, “Do it, Cillian. Kill your maker. I welcome death.”
Centuries of rage and pain spread through me. “Ask nicely and I will show you mercy.”
“I will not beg.”
“You will. Look at me, Hadrian. Look at Lorenzo. We found each other again, and our love is stronger than anything you could throw at us. Fate kissed our lives, and gave us more than you ever could. Beg me to end your torture or watch us love each other for the rest of eternity.”
“Noooooo!”
Damiano wraps his arms around me from behind. The love he sends to me is heady, strong and vibrant, almost tangible. Hadrian reacts, trembling and groaning as if it causes him pain.
“Pl-please, Cillian. Please end it. Send me to the realm of Hades.”
“You will suffer there. Caught between life and death for eternity.” I brush my fingers across his cheek. “Are you sure you want that over this? Convince me, Maker.”
“You are cruel,” he says. “You toy with me.”
“I learned from the master, did I not?”
“Send me to death’s arms or live in fear of my return, because while I still breathe, I will haunt you and your traitorous love. I will renew myself by any means necessary, and I will hunt you both down and destroy you.”
“There’s the Hadrian I know.” I pull the knife from his skin, gazing down at him. “For what it’s worth, I thank you for your gift. My life is beautiful, and I am the man I always wanted to be in spite of you.”
I bring the knife down across his throat, slitting it to the bone and finally exhaling as Damiano rips his head from his spine. Hadrian’s body twitches beneath me, his eyelids fluttering as the last bits of life linger before finally slipping away.
A deafening silence falls over the room, all of us stunned by what has happened. The magnitude of the moment wraps itself around me like a vise and I can’t breathe.
“I’m here, beloved,” Damiano whispers. “I’m here.”
I nod, but my breath is shaky, my legs weak. “We have to burn him.”
“We should burn this whole place down,” Thorn says. “Every dude in here needs to be nothing but dust.”
I gaze at my brothers and their mates, all of them covered in blood. My friends, loyal to the end, sit nearby in reverence. Vivienne and Viper stand next to me, their arms wrapped around each other.
The Admiral, still very much alive, sits at Thorn’s feet. “Does this mean I can go?”
Thorn snorts a laugh. “Good one, my guy.”
TWENTY-NINE
Damiano
Thorn doesn’t hesitate as he uses his long nails to tear out the Admiral’s throat. The man gapes at Thorn, clutching his neck in shock, but he’s still a vampire descended directly from Hadrian, so I doubt that’s enough to kill him.
“You were a bad dude even before you hooked up with Hadrian,” Thorn says. “The worst kind. Taking advantage of kids. I fucking hate bullies.”
The blood pouring out of the mobster reeks of illness.
“Bad blood,” Syn says, nodding. “That’s why they were easy to kill. They were all tainted by Hadrian’s rotting blood.”
“Well that’s no fun,” Bowie muses.
