Page 137 of Claimed By Blood

I struggle—of course I do—but he doesn’t react to my jabbing limbs or my snapping fangs. He might as well be made of stone. His grip is unyielding, and I’ve never been a match for him. My breathing picks up and panic starts to fog my mind as the second cuff clicks shut with a deafeningsnick.

Shit.

I search for a gap in the ranks. An escape. A distraction. Anything. But I might as well be back in the manor, all those years ago, watching Frost prepare to die.

Only this time it’s Gideon who’s in danger.

Thankfully, the bulk of Cain’s attention is still on Immy… who’s becoming more unstable by the second. Her eyes have started to glaze over from pain, and the wound he created isn’t healing as it should. Instead, the skin around it is starting to rot away.

He disliked her before, but now she’s an embarrassment, so I know what’s coming.

And I think, given the pleading look in her watering eyes, she does too.

Something in my chest breaks at the sight. Despite her second betrayal, I can’t help but wonder if I caused this. Should I have tried harder to love her the way I did before? Focused more on her and less on my thralls? Would any amount of love or attention have ever been enough? Or would she always have returned to Cain’s side in the end?

“I can be useful,” she promises. “Sire, please. I’ll do better!”

And then she does the one thing we don’t expect.

Lunges at Gideon.

The alpha dodges, but Immy’s stumbling steps make her movements difficult to predict, she sways, almost falling, and reaches out.

Her venomous claws rake across his chest, and thanks to our new bond, I feel his pain like it’s my own. Fire streaks across his breastbone, and the hurt is so real that it steals my breath. But Gideon isn’t down. He roars, striking out with his own claws.

But Immy is now a lethal combination of fast and unpredictable. Her stagger draws her just out of his reach, only to lurch back in time to sink those needle-like fangs into Gideon’s neck. With one savage yank, she clamps her teeth into the space above his jugular and rips out his throat.

Fire consumes us both. His pain bleeds into me until it might as well be my own. I feel it when his muscles give out and the two of them sink to their knees. My alpha is still fighting, ripping into her, but his movements are slowing. The pain he’s feeling is almost enough to make me lean on my sire for support.

No.

No. No.No.

I want to scream, but I can’t. My body has locked up in shock.

My sire has no such problem.

“Foolish girl,” Cain hisses as Imogen tears further into my alpha, snarling like a beast.

Keeping my arm in one hand, he switches the powerful beam of light on once more, this time directing it at her head.

She’s so distracted that he doesn’t even have to try hard to burn a hole right between her eyes. The beam of light is powerful, and she is so weakened by her new nature that it cuts through her head, leaving a hole through which I can see the yellow grass.

The effect is immediate. She slumps to the ground beside a still-twitching Gideon, her fangs still biting at empty air as her body tries to continue feeding. An unholy noise tears from her throat, but it stops when Cain traces the beam of light across her neck, severing her head in a slow burst of fire.

My sister withers. Her once creamy skin darkens to ash and shrinks in on itself until she’s gone.

Oh, Immy.

Despite my earlier anger, tears prick at my eyes. Not just for her, for Gideon too.

My alpha is still twitching on the ground, but his eyes have fallen shut. In my chest, the thrall bond is dimming, and what little of him I can feel is pure agony. A tear slips free, and Cain makes a tiny noise of disgust.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have a chance to reprimand me for my emotional outburst. The ghouls around us are starting to bristle. Now free of whatever control Immy had on them, there’s nothing to stop them turning on Cain and his men.

“Finish them,” Cain orders his soldiers. “Then spread out. I want the rest of the rebels and whatever humans remain found and killed. Leave none of them alive.”

The hail of bolts tears through the gathered ghouls with practised precision, as the vampires fire the crossbows into them. Disabling their prey. Cain’s men draw their blades without hesitation and begin the process of hacking their heads from their bodies. It’s a brutal and efficient mass execution, one that this squad is obviously trained for.

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