AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My heart was pounding harder now, desperation making me shake as I tried to force energy into my limbs.
“He was visiting a Council member’s home, and me, no less. He claimed he wanted to be prepared,” Azazel quipped. His eyes flared when the Captain made a noncommittal sound. “Well? Are you going to take them or not, witch?”
The Captain gave him a quelling look, and at that moment, I realized that she might not be as brainwashed as the rest of them. Her spine straightened as she gave him her name. “It’s Ansen.CaptainMarilyn Ansen.”
Azazel frowned at her tone, but acquiesced. “Apologies. Like I said,Captain Ansen, I’m on edge. We were discussing them when they showed up and started wreaking havoc.”
Captain Ansen’s expression remained dutifully blank, but I could tell she was skeptical, even as she motioned for the others to wrap things up with a twirl of her fingers. Aria went lax in the arms of another male witch, and my spine convulsed with the sudden rage that filled me.
My angel surged to the surface, but without Aria’s energy, I couldn’t even shift my claws out. The invisible binds holding me shuddered. One of the witches cursed, and then a blade appeared at my throat, the handle gripped in the hand of a vampire.
“Easy, big guy,” he said, stepping close enough for the blade to press into my skin. “I wouldn’t want to accidentally cut you.”
“Justus,” the Captain said, her tone reprimanding. “He’s weak. And the spell is making him weaker.”
She was right, but I held eye contact with the vampire even as he backed away, the dagger still pointed at me.
Vampires weren’t thetotalscum of supernatural kind—that honor went to demons—but they were a close second, stemming from their disgusting over-promiscuity to their tendency to enjoy their meals most while they were kicking and screaming, even when there were established blood banks in every major city in America.Thatmade them scum, in my book.
Demons, for their part, were rarely heard of outside the occasional possession or haunted house story; they didn’t mingle with humans as openly as the rest of us and were bound by leaders, but they were worse than vampires when left unchecked and up to their own devices. Unlike the strict leadership of the demons, however, vampires were governed by a set of ancient, should-be-extinct bastards who swapped every few hundred years and set themselves back decades.
They made me sick.This guymade me sick just to look at him.
Aria was carried out of the room. Relief flooded me for a split second, which was followed quickly by guilt. How could I be relieved that they were taking my mate out of the room, and out of my sight?
I glanced at Alpha Bastille. He’d stopped struggling after Azazel’s explanation and was now watching me, a sick, twisted grin on his face.
He wasn’t horrifyingly ugly, but there was something so sinister about him, even my angel was uncomfortable being under his scrutiny. He was the kind of man who could kidnap and kill a child without much thought or remorse, and murder his only family for his own selfish gain.
My mate was related to him, too. She shared his blood, maybe even one or two physical features for added resemblance.
I wanted to gag. The thought of someone as precious as Aria being related to a piece of absolute shit like Tyler made me ill. I inwardly raged at the powers that were for putting me in this situation, and for making me feel like choosing my fated mate would be a betrayal of my brother’s memory.
I knew Auren would actually be happy for me, wherever he was. He would have scoffed and told me to get it together if he’d known what I was considering. I’d been blessed with the literal other half of my soul, after all.
How unfair was it that she’d been born in the family she had been?
That thought brought me back to our first meeting at Ambrose Media House. When her scent had first flooded my senses, my angel had simultaneously gone defensive and haywire with delight, only for the underlying scent of a fallen-blood wolf to assault me.
My heart had plummeted; the idea that someone as beautiful as Aria shared blood with the same monsters that had tortured and killed my brother made me viscerally angry. That feeling had been amplified by the fact that she’d been working at AMH, since that meant my father had willingly let one of those monsters into this establishment after what they’d taken from us.
And yet, Aria had shown me exactly why she was nothing like the fallen-blood wolves I knew. She’d shown me the redeeming qualities that half of her had, and only now, as Tyler grinned at me, did I realize I’d been chalking most of them up to the other half of her parentage.
At some point, I had started subconsciously disregarding the fact that she was a fallen-blood; even when I’d apologized for my previous behavior toward her, I hadn’t even thought I was apologizing to a fallen-blood, just a person that I’d wronged by making assumptions.
In all this time, I’d never really let it settle in that I’d already accepted her as my mate.Her. A half fallen-blood wolf.
Tyler licked his teeth nastily. I flashed back to Auren’s pained and broken expression as he screamed at me to run—my little brother, whoIshould have been saving, had begged me to save myself.
An emotion similar to the initial grief I’d experienced long ago—when we’d buried an empty, worthless, twenty-thousand-dollar glorified box into the ground and called it Auren’s funeral—blossomed in my gut. This time, it mixed with something hot and acidic that corroded any patience I’d developed while waiting for the Captain to make her decision.
Anger was swirling together with my sorrow. I’d left my little brother in the hands of those monsters so that I could escape with my life, but now I had to live miserably ever after with the very same ilk who’d killed him in the first place? As my equal, no less?
I didn’t like it. I wasn’t sure I could accept it.
“I’m taking you all in,” Captain Ansen finally announced. She made a waving motion with her hand, and several syringes appeared in the air. “Don’t fight the serum. You won’t feel a thing.”
Azazel’s expression darkened. “Excuse me?”
