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He finally raises his gaze to meet mine. “Shut the door please, baby. I don’t want anyone to interrupt us. Stephanie might come back.”

Dani. I just need to call Dani. She will help me. She might be the only one who knows the extent of the power in this town.

Saying anything to anyone else is pointless—they want me dead, and I am starting to understand why. It has nothing to do with their dark god or a bullshit sacrifice. They want my inheritance. They want what is rightfully mine.

I click the door shut behind me as heat builds in my center. I need to keep him talking; I need to draw Lincoln out.

I rest my head against the door. “You’re going to fuck everything up for both of you if you front at the workplace, Mikael,” I warn him as he takes one careful step, then another toward me. “You’re being too obvious.”

I meet his heavy stare. No flicker, no calming presence…just chaos and shadows like the vein of the night.

“Bring Lincoln back now,” I demand. I saw the way Stephanie was looking at him, Misty, too. They were scared shitless.

He shrugs and moves closer. “Nah, I won’t fuck anything up for him.” He slams one arm beside my head, caging me in like a beast. “I only want to fuck you up, pretty girl.”

My heart stops. I’m used to seeing him with glasses. His angry eyes are still on fire, but he appears to have more control over himself. And that could be scarier, knowing he’s growing stronger and more confident in his skin.

His razor blade flashes in his hands and his eyes drop to my neck. My body vibrates as he reaches out and admires a lock of my white hair.

I stay rigid as he moves in closer, and I close my eyes, not having a clue what he plans to do. I can’t have him so close; it’s killing me. My skin sears from the heat of him.

He runs the blade against the fabric of my shirt, and his breath tickles my cheek. “Unexpressed emotions never die,” he whispers.

My body trembles under the soft electricity of his touch. His evil presence shoots tingles up and down my entire body.

“What?” I breathe, keeping my eyes closed as the blade moves down and he tears a hole in my shirt. His hand finds my breast and my body turns into pudding, and I let him ruin yet another expensive outfit. Because it feels so fucking good.

He continues his rambling, “They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”

My eyes shoot open, half expecting to see Lincoln staring back at me. Mikael tilts his head and smirks. A vicious, cocky grin that makes my heart hurt.

“Sigmund Freud,” he muses, playing with the hole he made in my shirt. “This quote summarizes his key psychological ideas about repression.”

Those thoughts, ideas, theories all belong to someone else. He’s stealing from Lincoln.

His eyes shimmer as he beholds me before they settle into a deep brown. And I know at this moment, Lincoln is gone.

It’s the hate, anger, and the icky emotions that are left staring back at me. Broken and abandoned by the one person who was supposed to love him unconditionally. An empty, hateful soul when I know there is so much more to him.

I swallow hard, and his eyes follow the bob in my throat as if it’s taking all his willpower not to slice it open. His eyes shimmer and I know I am fucked.

“When did Lincoln disappear?” I ask him.

He licks his lips as my nipples harden under his thumb as he caresses them.

“Alters don’t disappear, Summer—it doesn’t work like that—we fuse. And now everything he was, all of it, every part of him, is mine.”

I hate that he sounds like him. I hate that he can carry on as if Lincoln hadn’t carried him through his life because he was so broken and torn, he couldn’t cope. I hate that I can’t say no to him because of the mind control he has over me—the control Lincoln gave him.

I hate how much I fuckin love him.

My stomach starts to eat itself as I will myself to run, to hit him, slap him, scratch him, rip that razor blade out of his hand and slit open his damn throat and end this.

“I hate you,” I whisper as he continues to cut open my shirt.

“I hate you more, pretty girl.”

He runs the blade along my breast, teasing the outside of my nipple, and begins to run it along my neck.