Page 68 of Enzo

"Deja doesn't have children," Matt said. His head kept tilting to the side. As though he had a tic—that was Enzo's work.

"Wrong. She has me." Ven looked at the knife, wondering what the human thought he was going to do with it.

Matt doubled over, his fingers from his free hand were digging into his thigh in a fight not to fall to the floor. Strangled sounds of fear escaped him as he tried to resist the images his mind threw at him.

"Are you real?" he asked Ven.

"Very," Ven said.

"I'm going to kill you. If it's the last thing I do, you're dying."

"You can try," Ven had no plans of dying at Matt's hands. His father had lived for centuries and still wasn't old by Kur'iks or Earth standards. He would follow in his footsteps.

Matt staggered closer to Ven before falling to his knees. His hand spasmed, and he dropped the knife.

"Why her?" he spat out.

It was a good question, one which Ven thought over. Matt wasn't going anywhere. Why Deja? Was it because she was the first female to cross the barrier? They hadn't known any human could cross, male or female.

He rejected that idea. He'd been just as attracted to her as Enzo was the minute he saw her, just in a different way. He knew she was going to be special to him, but he didn't know how it was going to happen. He couldn't conceive when he first saw her—that she or anyone else—could ever love him as a son. As a son, it was more accurate. He was her son, more hers than he was his biological mother's.

"Why couldn't you let her go?" Ven asked.

Matt stopped moving. For a few moments, his eyes cleared, as if the element Enzo infected him with wanted to know the answer too.

"She's different," he finally said. "Deja on my arm would make every head turn. Is she plus-sized? Yes, she is and that added to her beauty. My friends were jealous even the ones who had Barbie Dolls at home. It was always about more than her body. Her personality and her ability to love shone through. Before my mother died, she said 'Matt, don't let that one slip away.' My mother was close to eighty. Interracial marriage was not something she grew up with, but she was perfectly fine with the idea of her grandchildren coming from Deja. So was I. She wasmy only chance at the good life, the respectable life. You ruined it." He growled.

Ven may have been impressed by the growl if Matt wasn't a killer in so many ways. That was coming from a killer. He walked over to Matt and sank to his knees, looking into his eyes.

"You had everything in the palm of your hand, and you weren't man enough, human enough, to keep it. I'll never let her go and neither will my father. Not because we're forcing Deja to stay; we're loving her every minute of the day. I should feel sorry for you, but I don't."

Ven stood and kicked the knife to Matt.

"You know what they say: never bring a knife to a gun fight." He looked at the gloves he'd forced himself to wear before reaching behind him to pull out a gun.

"You can't do this," Matt screamed. He stumbled as he pushed himself to his feet.

"I could tear you apart," Ven said, his fingers flexing in his gloves. "I could let the people in charge speculate about a wild animal roaming the neighborhood. Would anyone mourn if you were torn apart? I doubt it. That's not how you kill, though, was it? You liked to shoot people. Was it because it was less personal, or did you feel more powerful when you pulled the trigger?

"How did you feel when you beat my mother and the child my father told me about? How did it feel to terrorize adults while you used their children for your personal gain?"

"You'll never get away with this," Matt said, clutching the knife to him.

"You're just one more casualty in the war against drugs. No one will care—not your so-called friends, and not the parents with dead children, or the ones with strung out children because they met you. No one will cry."

Matt screamed and ran at Ven, knife raised in the air. Ven pulled the trigger—one shot, right between his eyes.

Ven watched with cold blue eyes as Matt fell to the floor. Matt would never kidnap, assault, and rape another woman, or beat a child trying to make money to put food on the table or buy an outfit to go back to school in.

He dropped the gun on the floor where he stood. He had taken it from the house and now he returned it. It was never wise to be thought of as a thief.

Ven walked to the back door, fading out of sight.

When Ven walked past the Wolves Den, Declyn was sitting on the steps. He stopped and sat beside his alpha. They remained silent for a long while.

"I killed a man, a human," Ven said, staring at the sky above.

"I know," Declyn said.

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