Page 58 of Theirs to Rule

Blood-stained fabric, both jeans and boxers, fell, revealing his unimpressive little prick and an oak tree tattoo that matched the one Silas had sported.

I ran the metal blade over Troy's cock, flicking it with the flat side.

"We...will...endure," he stuttered.

"Endure what? Who are you working for?"

He let his head hang down, and if I thought I'd defeated him, I was wrong. He began to laugh hysterically. "We will endure." He kept saying the words through his laughter.

"You really wanna lose this Vienna sausage, don't you?" I snapped, digging the knife into his thigh, just below the hip, next to his tattoo.

"What does the fucking oak tree mean? Tell me!"

"You..." he coughed. "You don't..." His eyes closed as his body began to convulse.

"Fuck! Get the defibrillator, get---"

But it was too late. Before I could even finish issuing the command, he was dead.

Camille

I let out a gasp as my eyes flickered open, and I bolted upright in bed. My heart raced, a reaction to the now-distant memory of a nightmare I couldn’t quite remember.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I gasped again. Kage leaned against the door jamb, watching me. Watchingus.

How long had he been there? He looked freshly showered, wearing only pajama bottoms, his chest glistening against the soft glow of the moonlight peeking in through the curtain. His surgery scar stood out in stark relief along with the bruises from the car crash still written on his body.

Dante stirred in his sleep, his grip on my waist tightening as he spooned me from behind. I watched Kage, waiting with bated breath to see what he was going to do. How would he react to seeing me in bed with Dante? He stared at me with a stony expression. After a few moments, I realized he was staringthroughme. The look on his face scared me because he'd worn the same expression right after he slit Silas’s throat.

What the hell had happened after he left me at the Halloween party?

“Kage?”

At the sound of my voice, Kage jerked and blinked. His gaze dropped to Dante’s arm, which was still draped around me. Slowly, he walked toward me until he stood next to the bed.

“Kage?” I whispered. “What’s going on?”

Dante shifted behind me. He squeezed my arm, kissing the tip of my shoulder. “I’m going to go,” Dante murmured. “Kage needs you?—”

“Stay,” Kage said. He turned his attention back to me. “I just needed to see you, to hear your voice.”

I reached out, took his hand, then scooted back, bumping into Dante, who shifted positions. I pulled at Kage. "Come into bed."

"I can't. Tonight..."

"I don't care what happened tonight. I mean, not right now. Come lie down next to me. Please."

With a heavy exhale, he did as I asked. I wrapped my arms around Kage’s waist and held him against me. I hated seeing him like this, but I didn’t know how to fix it because I didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t know what to do to make him feel better. There was hardly room here for the three of us in the bed but being between Dante and Kage felt like the safest place in the world for me. I wanted to give that feeling to Kage.

I lowered my mouth and kissed Kage. He returned my kiss with raw, desperate urgency, like he was trying to erase something from his mind. When he finally pulled back, the pain in his eyes was still there. He looked defeated.

“I changed my mind. I need to know what happened. You’re starting to scare me.”

“We can talk about it tomorrow,” he muttered, so softly I almost couldn’t hear him.

“Kage, please?—”

“Tomorrow,” he promised, snuggling against me. “I’m so fucking exhausted…”

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