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I was with Julian through his first century until he was able to separate from Silas. Day after day, year after year, Silas forced him to do unspeakable things to anyone he came across. He starved him to near madness then berated him for losing control when he’d accidentally killed. Yet he’d ordered him in the next breath to maim or inflict pain on someone else. And I felt both of them—Julian’s horror and hopelessness as I touched his arm, and Silas’s pleasure and headiness through the physical connection between the three of us.

Disgust overcame me as I heard Silas recount in extreme detail what he planned to do to Julian’s love when next I reincarnated. My stomach turned as Silas forced Julian to join him and be intimate with both himself and a human woman he drained until dead. I gagged as Julian fought against him but lost every single battle. After the first decade, Julian had withdrawn, believing Silas’s constant insistence that he was evil.

I yanked my hand away, swallowing back the thickness in my throat. Julian’s face had fallen, and a blood-tinged tear trailed down his cheek. He knew what I’d seen.

“Do what you have to do,” I said softly, stepping back.

Julian nodded, focusing on the true monster who had abused him for so long. And I did not look away or feel revulsion as Julian pulled him close and tore out his throat, spraying the ground with the blood he’d stolen from Tabitha.

Spitting the mouthful on the ground, Julian sank his fingers into Silas’s eye sockets and twisted, tearing the rest of his head from his body. He tossed it into the broken tank and sank his fist into the corpse’s chest to remove and crush the shriveled heart for good measure. When he finished, he dropped it on the ground. The splat broke the silence I hadn’t realized had filled the room until that moment.

Sam and Lydia, her neck now healed as only a vampire could, gathered on either side of Julian, staring down at the carnage. Hazel, weak and hand pressed to her neck, made her way over as well. Daphne leaned on the wall across the room, unable to make it to us.

“We have some healing to do,” Julian said after a while.

“I got it,” Lydia agreed and headed for Daphne while she bit open her wrist.

We were all covered in blood, I realized numbly.

“Zoe will be frantic,” Hazel said as Lydia approached her with an outstretched arm. “We should leave this lab and go back to the house.”

“What about those two?” Daphne asked, jerking her head toward Dad and Tabitha.

“We can leave my father out of this,” I said. “He was glamoured into doing this.” Though the knowledge he’d only protested using me as a subject and not Tabitha made me wonder why I protected him. It was too much to think about now, though.

“I’ll take Tabitha here back to SHADE with me,” Daphne said.

I nodded and moved to follow Hazel out into the hall, but Sam caught my upper arm.

“Hey, I think Lydia and I have to take care of something,” he said, a flush rising up his thick neck.

I glanced at Lydia with brows raised, and she grinned lasciviously. “I hear shifters need to let off some steam after a fight, and I volunteered to help with that. I mean, who isn’t turned on by a good life-and-death battle? I know I am.”

“Have…fun,” I said and joined Julian and Hazel, who’d texted Zoe in the hall where the portal opened again.

I stepped through and stumbled off toward the shower without a single word.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ignorance is Not Bliss

By the time I reentered the living room, only Julian was left. I should have anticipated that, but the truth was I couldn’t think farther ahead than the moment I was in. He’d cleaned off and changed into his lavender dress shirt and black slacks and waited for me on the couch with his ankle crossed over his knee. His stiff posture let me know he’d probably posed himself to look relaxed. I joined him but stayed clear of his outstretched arm as I fluffed my still-wet hair.

“Charlotte—”

I held up a hand and swallowed hard. “I…know what you went through.”

He shifted so that both feet touched the ground and his head bowed toward his hands.

“I don’t blame you, you know.”

Julian chanced a glance. “You should.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I understood what you meant when you said he controlled you. It didn’t sink in completely. Maybe I…lacked the imagination.”

He grimaced. “Silas had quite the imagination when it came to pain. Thank you for allowing me to end his miserable existence. I’ve dreamed of that moment for centuries.”

“It was the least I could do.” I readjusted so that I was angled toward him.