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“It doesn’t matter how many times you run off. You’ll always end up back here, Bianca!” Eugene added, smirking at me from his place on the floor. He managed to amble up after saying his piece, and I fixed my attention back on Jesse.
“Even though we’re not mates?” I pressed.
Atlas growled again, and I shook my head so slightly, I wasn’t sure he would see me.
“Mates?” Jesse chortled. “Really? I didn’t take you for a romantic type, Bianca. I can be your mate if you want.”
He was mocking me. My fingers closed into a fist, but I maintained my even tone, nodding slowly.
“Or maybe I have twenty—thirty mates,” Jesse laughed, enjoying the sizzling anger in Atlas’ eyes.
Atlas growled, but I shook my head again, meeting his ferocious stare with an assured look.
“And if I did have a mate? A real mate?”
“Oh, dear gods!” Jesse groaned. “Don’t try to appeal to my sense of pity.”
“I’m not,” I promised. “I’m just wondering how that affects the legally binding contract.”
“It doesn’t!” Eugene and Jesse barked in unison.
“You are my property, Bianca. Deal with it.”
I smiled and nodded, confusing Jesse.
“Yes. I belong to you. I am yours, and I intend to do that exactly—deal with it,” I beamed.
My fist clenched around a fountain pen atop of the desk, and I jammed it directly in his jugular vein, red spurting outward to spray the walls and my face indiscriminately.
He must have realized, but not until it was too late. A horrific gargling noise escaped his lips, his hand clinging to the gaping wound in his neck, but there was no stopping it. I had watched that pulsating blue line for minutes, gauging my aim precisely from the second I’d laid eyes on the pen.
Jesse fell to his knees, choking, one hand extended as if to ask for help, and Atlas shifted back into his human form to rush to my side.
“What did you do?” he breathed, awe-struck. “How did you find the strength to do that, Bianca?”
I didn’t speak, my gaze fixated on the dying tiger shifter. I needed to watch the light fade out of his eyes entirely before I dared utter another word. My hope couldn’t begin to live again until I knew Jesse was dead, Gabriel’s bloodline over once and for all.
The horrific wheezing came to an end, and Jesse lay completely still in a pool of his own blood. I turned to Atlas and released a long, quivering breath.
“The curse is broken now,” I murmured. “With Jesse gone, we can be together—properly. There’s no one to stop us now.”
He cupped my face in his hands, his eyes ablaze with a fusion of emotions, all of them more intense than the last.
“No one will ever keep us apart again,” he swore before his mouth crashed down on mine, stealing my breath away.
And this time, I let hope overtake me.
Chapter36
Atlas
“Monsters! You’re monsters!” Eugene hissed, breaking our kiss apart.
I whirled around, my face on fire as I advanced on him. Vivian appeared in the doorway.
“Woah!” she mumbled, backtracking when she saw my nakedness, but I caught her sneaking a peek at my package before throwing me a pair of pants and turning away. “I thought you might need these—”
She rushed back into the room, her mouth agape when she saw Jesse dead on the ground. She whipped her head toward me.
