Page 162 of Our Sins in Blood (Coven of Sin 1)

He chuckled, his serpent’s tongue flicking out to lick his lips. “I had hoped you would take a liking to all the princes so that the old king would be tempted to kill them upon his resurrection. But I didn’t think they would be quite so taken with you in return. Corry, yes. Eros and Vincent were a surprise. But the biggest shock of all was when you managed to steal the heart of the jaded Sterling.”

“You keep their names out of your mouth, asshole!”

Sharpe stooped to a crouching position, getting to eye level with me. It was something an adult would do with a child, something he had done with me when I was a child.

Sharpe still saw me as that child. It would be his downfall. He couldn’t even begin to fathom the sort of strength I possessed. Hell, I was barely coming to terms with it myself. But I did know that I had every ability to make this fucker hurt.

I moved so fast, he didn’t have time to react. Plucking my tiara from my head, I mustered all my strength to drive the silver teeth of it deep into his eye socket. He reared back, his vocal cords fraying as he screamed bloody murder. His skin smoked around the silver as if he was being branded.

Standing to my full height, I shoved the tiara into my hoodie pocket, and for one oh-so-satisfying moment, I watched him squirm at my feet.

I would have torn his head off right there if it hadn’t been for the other Boston vampires who surrounded me, dragging me down the alley toward a black van parked out on the street.

They’d caught me. But this wasn’t over. Fuck no. These idiots were all about underestimating me. It would be the last thing they ever did.

I hoped they were taking me back to their den. I would tear it down from the inside with my own two hands.

I would make them scream.

I would bathe in their blood.

I’d dance on their ashes.

One of the vampires opened the back door to the van, and it took another two to toss me in, right between the bodies of Eros and Vincent.

A chill swallowed me.

I clamped my eyes closed, trying to hold my shit together.

Keep it together, Ruby. If you’re going to be a vampire queen, you have to be okay with people dying. Hell, they were already dead.My attempt to console myself only seemed to drive the sharp knife of grief deeper into the hole where my heart had been.

A numb paralysis spread through my limbs, slowly taking over my entire being.

At least I was able to fend off another wave of tears until the van’s doors slammed shut behind me, leaving me alone with the bodies of my lovers.

“Why? Why did you do that for me?” I cried out, agony unfurling in my chest as I burrowed next to Feral’s limp form. He’d shrunk back to his usual—still very large—self. He was completely crusted in blood, and his shorts were riddled with bullet holes along with much of his flesh.

I skimmed my hand over his chest, my fingers shaking as they grazed the wounds.

“Why did you save me? You were supposed to be my enemy. Things would have been so much easier between us if we had just kept hating one another. Why did we have to bring love into it?”

I gave his chiseled jaw a tearful kiss, then I twisted around to face Eros and kissed him in the same spot.

I tried to recede into myself, to bury myself deep into the darkness inside me. But the coldness that had settled over my body was chased away by warmth.

Body heat.

I opened my eyes to see Erosbreathing.

He was still alive!

I pressed my nose to his jugular and inhaled the scent of him. The warmth of his blood, the shallow drag of his breath. He was out cold, but there wasn’t so much as a single bullet hole in him, and the damage he’d gotten in the fight with Vincent was finally healing.

Curling up beneath his arm, my tears were bitter-sweet. At least one of them had made it. For now. And it would make fighting our way out of the grip of the Boston vampires that much easier.

As I clung to Eros, my thick tears peppered the reaper tattoo on his chest and my gut twisted at the irony. “You survived, you crazy bastard,” I said to him, even though he couldn’t hear me. I brushed his blond locks from his face and kissed him again on the corner of his mouth, his piercings cold against my lips. “Feral saved you from getting shot. Can you believe that?”

“No, I can’t.”

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