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I let out a deafening, savage roar of glee as I take full ownership of our form.
This is the first time since binding our souls that I have broken through completely. The bones in our chest crack and expand, stretching twelve feet long across the grand foyer. Blue skin melts into living obsidian hide, sprouting four extra limbs of pure shadow clad in sharp bone. All six of my eyes ignite down the center of my skull glowing bright, and my multiple jaws unhinge, snapping hungrily.
Down on the marble floor, the pathetic, pale creature named Gregory pulls the trigger of his iron toy.
A lead bullet flies toward our mate.
Before it can travel three feet, I flex a single shadow limb. Darkness surges upward from the floorboards, catching it and crushing it into a powder that spills uselessly across the floor.
Gregory stares at the falling dust, his eyes bulging, his jaw hanging open. He realizes, far too late how powerless he truly is.
He turns to run, scrambling frantically toward the locked front doors.
I let him go two steps before I grow bored and attack. I slam into him.
A hysterical shriek tears from Gregory’s throat as my weight slams him flat onto his back against the cold marble floor. The impact shatters his weak ribs, sending his silver gun skidding.
Killian laughs in the distance. Vesper’s approval hums through our link.
My sharp shadow claws pin his shoulders, grinding his body into the stone. Gregory flails wildly, his small human hands clawing at my limbs, sobbing, and screaming. Choking on his own blood.
“Bellamy! Please! Tell it to stop.”
I lean my towering nightmare head down until my glowing blue eyes are inches from his face. Through our bond, Vesper and I feel every bruise this human ever put on our mate. We feel the cold dark rooms he locked Bellamy in, the terror he inflicted, the things he tried to force onto a soul that was meant to be ours.
A wave of vicious, intoxicating pleasure floods my veins. I want to destroy him so completely that not even a memory remains.
I unhinge my jaws, revealing row after row of sharp teeth.
“You touched what is ours,” I roar inside his mind.
I plunge my shadow jaws straight into his chest.
I rip his flesh, sinking my teeth directly into his soul, tearing the ugly, corrupt spirit out of his screaming body while he is still conscious. A mortal death is too quick, too merciful. I shred his soul, letting his essence feel the absolute terror and agony he inflicted on others, making his spirit weep and disintegrate second by horrific second before I finally digest it.
With a final, brutal snap of my jaws, I consume the last thread of Gregory’s soul in a single, ravenous gulp. The dark, corrupt essence converts into raw, burning fuel, erasing Gregory from the physical world and the spirit realm forever.
Silence falls over the grand foyer.
No body remains.
I stand in the center of the room, energized and wild from devouring a fresh soul. I turn my large, nightmare head toward the grand staircase, my dark aura flooding the room.
An ordinary human would have fainted or fled in terror from a true cryptid unleashed.
Bellamy doesn’t even flinch.
He stands at the landing of the grand staircase, looking down at my feral, raging form with a calm gaze. He steps off the final marble stairs, his dark boots clicking softly against the floor, his green eyes burning with steady, unshakeable devotion for the monster standing in front of him.
I lower slightly, waiting for him to pass judgement.
Bellamy wraps his arms around my thick neck, holding me tight. He nuzzles against me in a way that makes my soul purr. Then, Bellamy leans in close. With a reverent voice he whispers that one word that makes Vesper’s soul sing with feral need.
“Mate.”
Chapter twenty-two
Vesper
