Page 2 of Laid Bare

“No. She shouldn’t fucking exist as it is.” Her eyes light up. “And she’s about to die anyway. So, you’ll be mine!”

“Never!” I snarl, smashing my fist into the drywall next to her head. “If she dies, I’ll be right there next to her taking my last breath. She is my mate, and there willneverbe another for me.”

Abigail stops squirming in my grip, glee infusing her features as her lips curl up in a smug grin. “By the time you get back inside, Axel baby, she’ll already be dead.”

I recoil at her words, but I don’t dare release her from my hold.

Her smile widens even further, and it’s then I notice her hand raised next to us with Bailey’s glamour-infused snowflake necklace dangling between her fingertips. The rainbow colors refract the surrounding light, shooting beams of color around the space.

If she has that… that could only mean…

“You fucking bitch!”

“Your bitch, Axel baby.” Bile rises in my throat as she shifts her lower half forward, trying to rub up against me like a cat in heat. “I’m all yours.”

“Not in a million years.” Bone crunching is like music to my ears as my fist breaks through her sternum, giving me direct access to that black heart of hers. My fingers curl around the fleshy organ, mild surprise rushing through me that she even has a heart to begin with. “I hope you rot in Hell.”

Her mouth pops open in a silent scream as what’s happening finally registers in her brain. The squelch and pop of her heart being torn from her body only serves to fuel my bloodlust further, but it also appeases my vampire that this vile person will no longer be around to harm those that are dear to me.

Blood splatters the cuffs of my white tailored shirt when my claws pierce through the continuously beating heart in the palm of my hand, stilling it almost immediately. It easily gives way, turning into nothing but mush, no longer viable and able to return to her body.

Before what’s left of it falls from my fingers, I strike out, my claws slicing through her fleshy throat with precision. For what feels like minutes, her head floats in the air, even as gravity finally takes effect and Amelia’s headless body hits the floor with a resounding thud. Not even a second later, Benjamin’s scream pierces the air as it disappears in a cloud of ash. Her vacant eyes stare into nothing before her head too poofs away, leaving nothing behind.

Benjamin’s keening wail doesn’t stir any remorse as he drops, his knees cracking as he falls to the marble ground. His movements are jerky as he desperately tries to piece his daughter back together, but there’s no helping her now. She’s gone and not even into an afterlife. Her crimes against mates has left her soul adrift with no peace at the end of the tunnel.

My gaze falls to the distraught vampire once more as I pull a handkerchief from my pocket and wipe the bitch’s blood from my fingers. Can’t stain my beautiful mate with the blood of a cunt. Once my hands are moderately clean, the soiled material falls from my fingers, landing next to the small pile of her left that Carter hasn’t reached yet.

Even though Benjamin has been like family since he and my father opened the law firm decades ago, there’s no time—nor do I really fucking care—to console him. Mycor meumneeds me.

Fuck. I should have checked on her first. It’s my duty as a mate to take care of her needs first. But I was so consumed with dealing with this bitch once and for all that I put my heart second to my vengeance. I wasn’t lying when I said that if I lost Bailey, I’d lay down and die right next to her.

But this whole situation reiterates what Luka was talking about when he said she’ll need us both, along with whatever other mates she has—Lycan currently excluded. The world isn’t ready for curiomancers to be on the rise again, not until we can prove she’s not a threat. It’s just not something that I can do alone. It’ll take us all. Whoever the others may be.

My protective instincts push me toward the heavy double doors that loom ahead of me, but the sound of music no longer floats through the air. Now it’s a call to action.

A call for death.

And it’s all pointed at one person.

Mycor meum.

Fuck a damn duck.This is an absolute nightmare.

When I woke up this morning, if I’d thought to myself, I’m going to die today, I would have gone back to bed. But, honestly, who in their right mind thinks something that morbid?

Definitely not me.

But now that I’m standing here, facing down my imminent demise, I can’t help but wonder who I fucked over in a previous life to be staring my own death right in the face.

It’s crazy to think that after a few months at Stonewell, rose-colored glasses dropped over my eyes, concealing the truth of this world to me. Now, though? They’ve been brutally ripped off, leaving me with a view of the real world. The real supernatural world.

All the glitz and glamour that captivated me when we first arrived at the gala now seems dull and lifeless.

Kind of like I’ll be by the end of the night.

Lifeless.

Fuck.

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