Page 96 of Hybrid Heroics

I gave him half a shrug. “I do.”

“Not your mate?”

“She’s not my property to control.”

“No,” he sang, pouting his lips sarcastically. “She’s just a mass murderer who gained quite the rep. You fancy yourself less weak because you stand behind her. It’s cute, Novak, really.”

I smiled up at him, pushing off the ground with his knee still in my chest. He climbed to his feet as I did, his hand a vise around my neck. My eyes bled red rivers as my skin flushed cold.

Only today, my cheeks didn’t sink in, and I didn’t lose myself. Control over my worst urges was something I’d gained with our growth through the bonds.

“I’ve grown a lot since you last went head-to-head with me, Gus.”

I clicked my tongue as he backed away from me, instigating the love of the chase I shared with my mate. The shock of fear that lit those dim, mustard yellow eyes thrilled me to the bones as I prowled closer.

“Word of warning before you die,” I murmured. “My mate isn’t your fucking business.”

Feline grace overtook me, leaving no movement without a reason. Every twitch of a muscle, blink of my eyelids, expansion of my lungs held a purpose in this game.

“But if you must know,” I continued, inching closer, eyes locked on his. “All those rumors about her are true. The murder and gore. The huntings, and the slaying. Did they tell you all about her? How she’s the strongest creature in our world? Did they tell you I stand at her side, not behind her? How I’m equal, not beneath her?”

I launched forward, catching him off guard as I grabbed his jaw, squeezing until I felt his teeth breaking. His eyes were wide with terror as I lifted him off his feet. Shaking fingers pried at my grasp, unable to loosen my hold on him.

This was the moment he understood he wouldn’t win.

I hummed as his eyes bulged, my fingers digging in deeper. “Did they tell you, Gus? That I’m not a little boy anymore… That you can’t push me around, shove me down, break me.”

His breaths panted through his parted lips as his rancid blood scented the air between us. I readjusted my grip on his jaw when his teeth gave away from his gums.

“Did they tell you I’m still a pushover with a pretty face? Or that I’m a heartless criminal with piss-poor morals?”

I ran the fingers of my left hand through his messy hair, pushing the fly-aways back into place before I dusted the dirt off his chest.

“Did they tell you I’m sweet, that my mate is the mean one? Or did they lie to you?”

He made a rasping, choking sound as his teeth slid to the back of his throat, mouth pooling with his blood.

I nodded my head in understanding. “I completely agree. Alric led you to your death. Whether by me or my mate or my co-mates or your daughter… One of us will kill you today. You’ve lived long enough. You’ve soiled enough lives.”

Red lines ran from the corners of his lips, his life force slowly spilling down his chin. He smelled just as disgusting as I remembered.

“I bet they didn’t tell you I’m stronger,” I stated, lowering him so his feet were on the ground. “I am. Period. Not because of any one thing, but everything combined.”

I shoved him to kneel before me, prowling around his back.

“All the punishment you dished out showed me how pathetic you really are. You couldn’t stand on your own with adults, so you had to beat your children to feel big. You had to slap your mate around to get your dick hard.”

And this was the moment he realized I would kill him.

It hadn’t been a threat, but a promise.

One I made to myself when I was ten years old. The night he punched his twelve-year-old daughter in the face, sending her careening into the corner of the fireplace. The night I stabbed him in the back with the knife our mother had been using to prep supper… Before he hit her too.

“Because deep down, you’re a tiny excuse of a man who knew he’d never amount to anything. You’re a fuck-up whose mistakes plagued your nightmares. But I bet you weren’t expecting to come face-to-face like this with one today.”

I leaned down to peer into his eyes as I readjusted my grip once more. Only this time, I slid my left hand into his mouth, slowly stretching his jaw as he swung at me.

He was useless. Always had been, but now he knew it.