Page 99 of Reign of the Beast

Just like moments ago in the living room, that anger,so pure and raw, sparked to life and I snapped, “Tabled? How about I do one better and resolve it here and now? You’re not going anywhere near that asshole, Vincenzo.”

“Is that so?” he asked, stepping up to me.

I glared steadily up at him. “Yes. I forbid it.”

His features hardened. “That sounds very much like an order.” There was a very clear warning in his tone, urging me to tread carefully.

The hell, I would. Not about this. “If you need to label it, then that’s what it is.”

“You believe you can enforce this,” he stated.

“That’s not what I said.”

“Yet, you wouldn’t have put it out there if you didn’t believe you had the means to back it up.”

“I’ll do what I need to do to protect you.”

He laughed, but there was no humor to it.

It was bitter and pained.

“Here we stand, with the roles now reversed.”

“This isn’t the same as me taking off to the Guardian Compound.”

“Correct. What you did was far,farworse.”

“Lucian, we’re talking about Vincenzo Daza here!”

With a burst of speed, he slammed me into the wall, pinning me there with a single hand to my chest, roaring, “You almostdied!”

Choking, I looked up to see him vamped out, his features twisted into his demonic form, his fangs dropped and glistening ominously, his red eyes aflame.

It took me a moment to see past it all, but when I did, I realized it wasn’t rage that was fueling him.

It waspain.

His snarls mingled with my heavy pants as we stared at one another on the verge.

We hadn’t spoken about my near-death experience.

For one, that wasn’t what I did.

I’d been a soldier of the Guardian Movement for so long that putting my life on the line was par for the course now. Old hat, really. If I stopped to dwell on it, I feared it could cripple my ability to roll with it, to get back up and do it all over again, throwing myself into the chaos of battle.

Beyond that, I just didn’t like to linger in the past.

Mia had been the only exception to that. She wouldn’t release her grasp on me. And I’dhatedit. I’d hated the hold it’d had on me. I kept going, kept moving and looking forward. It was what I did, who I was. It was who I needed to be.

But it was brutally clear right now that I needed to make an exception this one time.

For Lucian.

His peace of mind demanded it.

Our relationship craved it.

Swallowing hard, I reached out and touched his cheek, caressing the raised flesh and hollow grooves of his demonic form.

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