Page 78 of Asher
His head hit the wooden beam with a sickening thud, and he slumped to the ground.
The sound of the gunshot drew the others. Declan appeared at the barn’s entrance, flanked by his remaining men.
His face twisted in fury when he saw the bodies of his fallen team.
“Gael,” he snarled, leveling a crossbow at me. “Where’s Asher? What did you do to him?”
I stepped forward, the moonlight illuminating my bloodstained clothes.
“He’s safe,” I said, my voice low and cold.
Declan’s eyes narrowed, and his grip on the crossbow tightened.
“Safe or dead?” Declan spat, his voice trembling with disgust. “You’ve taken him from everything he knew, from his family, his life, only to kill him in the end. Is that what you call saving him?”
My fists clenched at my sides, my nails biting into my palms. The fury simmered just below the surface, begging to be unleashed.
Who the hell was Declan to make those assumptions, to stand there and cast judgment like he had the moral high ground?
I was tempted to correct him, to throw the truth in his face, but I forced myself to swallow the anger, shoving it down deep where it couldn’t control me.
Better for Declan and the Guild to assume Asher was dead. Safer for all of us.
“You’ll never know now, will you?” I said with a sneer.
Declan’s face twisted in rage, his knuckles white as he gripped his crossbow tighter.
“You vampires,” he snarled, his words dripping with venom. “You ruin everything you touch. You take and destroy without a second thought. If I could burn your entire species to the ground, I would.”
The hatred in his eyes was like a fire, searing and relentless.
It wasn’t just anger; it was pure, unfiltered loathing, born of years of conditioning and personal loss.
To him, I wasn’t a person. I was a monster, a symbol of everything he despised.
His words should’ve rolled off me, just another insult from a hunter who didn’t understand. But they didn’t.
They stuck, digging under my skin and festering. Not because they were true, but because a part of me wondered if they could be.
How many lives had I taken? How many people had I hurt in the name of survival?
And yet, even as those doubts flickered in the back of my mind, another thought burned brighter: Asher wasn’t dead.
I’d given him a second chance, a way to fight back in a world that would’ve let him die.
“You think you know everything, don’t you?” I said, my voice low and dangerous. “You think you’re the hero in this story, but you’re not. Look around. Half your team is dead.”
He flinched, just barely, but I caught it. A small crack in his armor.
The remaining hunters fanned out, trying to flank me, but I was faster.
With a blur of motion, I disarmed one, driving the barrel of his rifle into his chest.
He crumpled, gasping for air. The second raised a knife, but I caught his wrist and twisted until he screamed.
He dropped the blade, and I knocked him unconscious with a single blow.
Now it was just Declan and me. He didn’t lower his gun, his finger twitching over the trigger.
