Page 145 of Her Wolf

Unholy Fire

Of the three men, the fake DEA agent looked the most surprised at seeing Eleodora. She was a little shorter than Zachary, but he huddled down so her body acted as a shield.

A wet, shivering shield, but a shield nonetheless.

Her hair dripped ocean water onto the back of his hand where he held her neck and the bundle of electronics he’d removed from their casing. Too bulky, otherwise. Too easy to spot. He didn’t mind the constant drip-drip-drip of that water as much as the feel of her frantic breathing, though. She’d been struggling just before they arrived, but the pistol he’d pressed into the small of her back seemed to have elevated her urge to escape.

Little Elle.

She was responsible for so much of the pain in his life. The pain of losing Angel. Ailin. Rodriguez.

She’d been living on borrowed time; fourteen years of it, in fact. A festering thought to carry for close to a decade and a half. She was a perpetual itch he could never scratch, no matter how hard he tried. An itch that had slowly transformed into a yearning over the years.

And only recently, after he’d seen her flawless skin and her pretty eyes, had he realized how sick that diseased longing had made him. It had driven him to a kind of madness, one he’d tried to stamp down with authoritarian rule.

But the cracks had begun to show. That tainted miasma had spilled out and infected him.

It was all so clear now. What he had to do. How he had to right the scales this little cunt had tipped in her favor.

Lady’s tail whisked against the bare wooden floor. The dog was gazing up at everyone like she couldn’t believe her luck at meeting so many new friends in one day.

But Zachary’s command for her to stay overwhelmed her need for human interaction.

He looked down at her and felt nothing.

No compassion.

No fear.

None of the gut-wrenching hurt he knew should come with the thought of an animal in pain.

Not that Lady was in pain.

Not yet.

But she would be.

They all would be.

And he was ready to welcome it, to let it envelope him and take him to a place where he would never feel pain again.

No loss.

No heartbreak.

Nothing.

Just absolution. Oblivion. A painless void after a life were nothing had existed but pain. In the fire, they’d all be cleansed of their sins.

Even Eleodora Rivera—the biggest sinner of them all.

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