Page 153 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
I didn’t hurt her, but I let my power vibrate through the air. That, combined with my hand on her throat and wrath in my eyes, was enough to provoke Evie’s power.
Our darkness melded. I saw a piece of bloody chocolate cake.
I felt Evie’s terror and disgust. A spoon met Aster’s lips. He called her bloodperfect.
“Kylo,” Evie gasped, coughing.
I realized in horror I’d applied pressure to her neck. I quickly yanked back my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, the words as strangled as hers had been.
For the first time in decades, I felt something akin to real bloodlust threaten my perfect control. All I could do was stare at her. The reality of what I’d seen was slow to reach the analytical side of my brain.
“He clotted my wound and tasted my spilled blood. I told him to stop, and he did, and I wanted to tell you so many times but you said you would declare war early and?—”
“This didn’t happen today.” My voice was rough, harsh. My power trembled beneath my skin.
A tear slid down Evie’s cheek as she shook her head. I could taste her shame and panic on my tongue, and the caregiver side of me wanted to pull her close and give her comfort.
But the animalistic side was too strong, old wounds reawakening as the truth came into clearer focus.
“This happened the first time you met with him. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t want to,” she said. “You said if Aster touched me, you would?—”
I backed away from her. My veins were pulsing, darkness clouding the corners of my eyes.
“I need you to get away from me,” I barked.
Evie flinched. Her eyes widened, and another tear fell. More darkness spilled from me, and she didn’t move.
“Now!”
The sight of her flinching again at the sound of my yell was a stab to my stunned heart. She took off running, and I had to fight every vampiric cell in my body to stay rooted to the ground instead of chasing after her.
My breathing was ragged. I hissed when my fangs suddenly ached with all the intensity of a newborn. Several competing urges flooded my body: the urge to hunt Evie down and bury myself inside her until she screamed, to soothe myself with the taste of her blood, and to find Aster and peel off his skin inch by inch.
The least enticing urge was to calm myself the fuck down before I entered bloodlust and accidentally killed the other half of my soul.
I forced myself to my knees. Shadows swirled around me in deathly gusts as I dug my hands into the earth, grounding myself.
“Princeton, please,” I managed, the words leaving my lips as if from down a dark tunnel.
Over and over, I saw Evie’s frightened features as she told Asterno,tears blooming in her wounded gray eyes.
“Kylo!” someone yelled.
The sound could hardly reach me over the sound of blood rushing to my head, the gusts of wind, the whispers of starving, vengeful shadows.
I called to Princeton again through Evie’s blood in my veins and her lingering magick in the earth, grasping for a lifeline.
Voices reached me as I fought to stay grounded. To breathe. To not let myself cross the point of no return.
You’re not going to like what I have to say…
It was just a whisper that tickled my ear, maybe even wishful thinking I could mistake for something more.
“Say it,” I hissed. My muscles trembled, my mind consumed by thoughts of her.
