Page 109 of Shifting Tides

Cora cringed and shrieked in pain, making Letti and Adina whimper and quake beside us.

“W-we set it t-to the lowest vampire level,” Cora went on, as if that fact would help her case.

I squeezed her shoulders painfully, my dragon oh so tempted to crush her frail bones. “You locked her in there with vampires? Her mother was killed by vampires, you heinous bitch.”

Her lack of response and the downward cast of her gaze told me that she knew. She had set the sim to vampires intentionally, to hurt Arya in the worst way imaginable.

I bellowed a dragon’s roar so loud that it shook the tree, loosing leaves to rain down around us. I threw her to the ground.

Her minions dropped to their knees to help her as she scampered away from me.

“It’s just the lowest level,” Cora said defensively. “She’ll probably be fine.”

I closed in on her until my shadow loomed over the trio in the fading blue glow.

“If any harm comes to her in that room, I will make you suffer ten times more,” I promised in a low snarl.

She dared to smirk up at me, a twinkle of malice flashing through the fright in her eyes. “Well, then you’d better run. If you hurry, you might get to her before they do.”

My heart leapt into my throat, the urgency that had been plaguing me for the last hour sprinting into overdrive. I whirled away from the mer bitches without a second thought,darting across the lawn to the gym door with every bit of speed my human form was capable of.

Arya had never been in a sim before. She wouldn’t know that she could really get hurt or how to end the sim if she couldn’t beat it, and she had little training to defend herself. Especially against vampires.

She was in great danger. And my only reason for being at that moment was to get to her before it was too late.

Chapter 32

Arya

Another whistle streaked through the air, and I tripped on something and face-planted into the foliage. My gaze rapidly shot down to my foot. An arrow had landed right in front of it. I was glad that the arrow had missed me, but now I had lost all momentum.

“Gotcha!”

Strong fingers gripped the hair at the back of my head and yanked me off the ground. I screamed and scratched at the fingers that sent fire into my scalp as my captor turned me to face him.

His face was beautiful. Pale porcelain skin that seemed to glow in the darkness, smooth features that sought to draw you in. But there was an absence of light in his eyes. He wore a simple but elegant black suit, which made the white of his skin stand out even more.

“Aren’t you a tasty morsel?” He sneered, and the flash of fangs that peeked beneath his lips gave proof to my suspicions.

He was a vampire.

My terror escalated, flushing every inch of my skin with white-hot panic. My heart was beating so fast that its cadence in my ears pounded like one solid roar, and I was sure it was about to give out.

It no longer mattered that this was supposed to be a simulation. The iron grip that held me up by my hair was as real as anything else, and I was certain this monster was about to kill me.

“The song of your frantically beating heart is so beautiful,” the demon purred, the tip of his tongue tracing his upper lip and brushing over the points of his sharp teeth. “I love to savor its slowing melody as I drink.”

I couldn’t look away from this beautiful monster, even as it spoke so whimsically about killing me. He was as hypnotizing as he was terrifying.

I couldn’t give in to his spell. I had to fight.

These were the creatures that killed my mom. Images of her lifeless body flashed in my mind. The teeth marks on her neck. The emptiness in her open eyes. The pain of never hearing her voice again, never seeing her smile again. Never finding out what she knew of our world, or why they’d killed her.

This creature took her from me. His kind had stolen all her secrets and love, and I’d never get any of it back. Because of them, everything about her was gone forever. And Idespisedthem for it.

I desperately grabbed onto that hatred, fueling it with my fear and anger. Irefusedto let them have me too. I was determined to beat this fucking video game nightmare and make the real bastards pay for what they had done to my mother, to me.

A familiar force welled inside me, pooling in my gut, like some untapped power I didn’t have a name for. It intensified my will, the energy it gave me humming through my body like electricity, giving me the strength to fight back.

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