“My Cillian has been gifted with such strength,” she purred, her satisfaction clinging to every word. “I feed him with my magic every day,pouring more and more into him so that he may grow strong enough to rule by my side. Just look at him. Look how perfect he is.”
She turned to face him, black eyes locking onto his, and Cillian shrank behind them, behind her magic, behind the monster she had forged, praying she couldn’t see the real him, still buried beneath the surface.
She had done this. Twisted him. Tainted him. Turned him into a killer.
But he would destroy everything she had built.
His gaze flicked to Evelyne. She looked devastated, as though she already mourned him, had already accepted that he was gone. He couldn’t blame her.
She had always fought for him. Now, it was his turn.
Vaelora’s voice cut through the moment like a dagger. “Now kill her,” she whispered. “Kill her, my love.”
And the demon moved.
Cillian thrashed within himself, fighting against the suffocating blackness pressing in from all sides. But the demon was fast and didn’t falter. And Evelyne looked afraid. The fear in her eyes undid him.
He was so close to clawing his way back to the surface, back to himself. In desperation, he jerked back, a wild gamble, a distraction. If he could bait the demon and keep it focused, maybe he could draw it out.
When the darkness lunged, Cillian shoved against it, dragging it further from his core. His body and hands still moved. He felt them, heavy and foreign. So much stronger than they should have been. So cold.
His fingers wrapped around Evelyne’s throat.
Howls filled the air. Somewhere, Alaric was screaming his name. But Cillian couldn’t stop his own hands from killing her.
Evelyne didn’t struggle. She didn’t claw at his arms or plead. She simply looked at him, truly looked, and a single tear slipped down her cheek.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” she whispered.
The words struck something deep within him, fracturing what little remained. Everything began to unravel.
The final battle for his soul had begun.
Chapter 48
Kaldrek could do nothing but watch as Cillian stalked toward Evelyne, his eyes black with bloodlust. There was a flicker in his expression, a hesitation so brief it might have been imagined, but Kaldrek saw it. Something inside him was still fighting. Cillian hadn’t completely vanished beneath the monster Vaelora had created.
Part of Kaldrek still wanted to tear him apart. The image of Ty’s body, split in two on the cold stone floor, was burned into his mind. Ty had been more than a friend; he was pack, closer than blood. Kaldrek had felt the alpha bond tear the moment Ty died. Through it, he’d felt the ripple of agony from Nathan and Reyna. The grief threatened to consume him, but there was no time to mourn.
Vaelora had turned her attention to Evelyne. She had given the command. Cillian was going to kill her next.
Kaldrek couldn’t let that happen. He had seen what Cillian was capable of, what those hands had done to Ty. He couldn’t bear to watch Evelyne meet the same end. He needed Cillian to fight back, to resist the demon that still lived inside him.
Cillian stood over her, unmoving and hollow-eyed. Evelyne was unarmed, broken-hearted, and vulnerable. And part of that was Kaldrek’s fault.
She was going to die, and he was powerless to stop it.
He had to shift. It was the only way to break free, to reach her before it was too late. But the Noskari holding him were too strong. Three of them pinned him in place. One had its claws buried in his shoulder, pressing its fangs to his throat as the other two held his chains. They restrained him just enough to keep him from tearing them apart, and to ensure he had to watch.
Evelyne, the woman who had unraveled him from the moment he found her in his camp, bound and defiant, her golden eyes blazing with challenge, was about to die.
It was breaking him.
He had known other lovers, but none like her. None who saw him for who he truly was, none who made him feel so infuriatingly alive. She was his. Even if fate had not bound them as mates, she was his in every way that mattered.
And he had barely been given time to love her.
But he did love her. Deeply and desperately, enough that it had terrified him. And now Vaelora, the twisted creature who had already taken everything from him—his birthright, his pack, the truth of his blood—was about to take Evelyne too. Kaldrek wasn’t sure he could survive losing her.
