Page 17 of Catch a Tiger

This was bad. So very, very bad.

They should leave before she somehow sensed them, but Samuel couldn’t force his body to take even a single step away from her. He tried and all it did was move himtowardher, so he held as still as possible, not trusting himself at all.

When she pulled the blade from the angel’s body, it started frantically thrashing around like a poor, desperate animal, but the bones of its wings kept it in place like the spikes in a pit.

“Now your blade and your wings are mine,” she told the angel, prying the second blade from his fingers. Then one of them vanished and she used the one she’d taken to pry his mouth open. “Soon he will remember I exist and when that happens…”

Her hand was too fast to follow as she tore his tongue out and tossed it aside like it was nothing.

The smell of angel blood was so strong Samuel actually felt sick to his stomach.

Somehow…thiswas his mate.

This vicious, untamed creature with dark promises stitched into her very essence. Even if he couldn’t scent it, Samuel could feel it fuckingradiatingoff of her.

“I’m going to steal everything from him, just like he stoleeverythingfrom me.”

Her hand rested on the angel’s forehead, lining up the rune on his forehead with the one on the back of her hand. She looked like a priest offering salvation, but that was damnation flickering in the angel’s eyes when the runes started to glow.

Deadly instinct roared through him, and Samuel forced all three of them to the ground, burying their faces into the snow with his hands on the back of their heads.

Something blinding rippled over them, so cold it seared and blistered everything around it. The sudden frost on the back of his shirt was a warning and Samuel forced himself to look upwhen it finally ended to see charred caverns where those eyes used to be.

A vision of something wild and free andlethalstood before him as she looked up at the sky, blade dangling from her fingertips like that burning cold hadn’t affected her at all.

“All he gave me was a name,” she whispered – eyes focused on the sky like it would bring divine wrath down on her at any moment. “He stole everything else, you know.”

This wasn’t going to work.

Samuel tapped Mylo and Rune, giving the signal to retreat.

Except both of them were staring at her with a calmness that honestly terrified the living shit out of him. All they had to do was see her once, and it was enough? Even whenthiswas what they’d found?

This kind of slaughter would normally have them bothbeggingto join, but they watched her without a single hint of madness in their scents.

“A name hasvalue,” she stressed as she spun around to face the body once more. “It gives one power, doesn’t it?”

Samuel couldn’t breathe as those words wove through his head as if she’d whispered them right into his mind, reminding him of things that were better left forgotten…words he’d heard Morgan speak just the other night.

Damn the whole fucking universe for this.

“Eliel,” she whispered, swinging the blade back and forth as she walked over to the body, staring down at it with unwavering focus. “Divine sacrifice.”

That blade plunged into the angel’s heart and she twisted, watching the body convulse before any bit of life left trickled away.

“I own you now,” she crooned, pulling the blade out so very gently. “Do you think he’ll even notice that I’ve stolen you from him?”

That blade disappeared just like the other.

One second it was dangling from her fingers, the next it was gone like it had never existed.

“Mysacrifice,” she purred, dipping her fingers into the hole she’d made before ripping the remnants of the blackened heart out of the body. “I will takeallyour names until he finally notices.”

Then she licked the blood from her fingers and the heart turned to ash, falling to the ground like snowflakes.

Samuel almost lost control when he saw her eyes begin to glow as she licked her hand clean just like a cat would. Her delicate pink tongue flicked a drop of blood off her claw and then she smiled.

This woman’s eyes were glowinggold.

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