Page 49 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

Lie. Lie. Lie.

These princes and their bloody secrets.

Eros, Corry, Vincent... From night one, I knew they’d be the end of me. Corry with his youngblood thirst. Deathwish and his enticing but not exactly health and safety approved interests. Vincent Feral and the volatile hybrid blood running through his veins like gunpowder, its constant demand for blood and pain. At least with those three, I’d known what I was getting myself into. Unlike the oldest prince, they hadn’t hidden their primal nature from me beneath smooth words and calculated movements.

Sterling had been like an invisible, scentless gas. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s what made the priest so deadly. It wasn’t his unnatural speed, grace, strength, or even his thousand years of academic experience.

Buried deep beneath the kind and wistful exterior of my silver prince was a monster.

He’d kept that part of him locked away like a shameful secret. By entering his mind, I’d basically thrown myself into the cage with the monster my father had created. A monster that had been beaten, abused and imprisoned in the dark for years.

Here he was. Starved. Ready to take a piece of me to fill the hole Thomas Knight had left.

A piece I’d already promised his brother.

Sterling’s fangs elongated. His marble-white skin turned ashen, and his network of black veins was now discernible beneath his flesh—almost as much as Vincent’s.

Slowly, he rose to his full height. His muscles rippled with his movements, and vicious energy undulated around him like a cloak made of menace and dread. His white eyes almost glowed, ethereal against his accursed demeanor.

Bloody fucking hell.

My lungs slammed together, leaving me breathless when his sweats stained black with his blood as if he’d been pricked with a thousand needles. No…not needles.Fangs.They were bite marks, twin dots of blood seeping into the gray fabric. Wounds began to appear past his waistline, bite marks and bruises spreading like a fever over his abdomen, his pectorals, his arms until the wounds swallowed him.

Everything about Sterling in the real world made it easy to forget the broken romantic was still the millennia-old progeny of the vampire king. A creature of death and destruction. One that had been severely hurt. These wounds weren’t normal. Time may have healed him on the surface level, but vampiric regeneration didn’t stretch this deep. These were forever branded into the fabric of his being, memories of every cut, bite, and bruise his master ever made.

Centuries of abuse covered my mate. My mouth filled with ash.

There weresomany.

His throat was the worst. Ragged and flayed.

He’d been hiding his monster and its power within himself, not just because of the danger it posed but because of the grim story the wounds weaved.

“Well?” I shivered at the Stygian bend to his cadence. “Is this what you wanted? To see me as I truly am? Here I am. No more secrets. No more disguises. I am no longer a man of God, but the spawn of Satan himself, no matter how much I pretend otherwise.”

I scrambled back on the grass, and his foot came down over the scrap of my nun’s habit that still clung to my frame, pinning me down. He crouched, shadows falling over his ravaged features.

“Do not run from me. This is what you asked for. To seeallof me. So now you must look. Look at what remains of the monster your father created.” His gaze softened, telling me this was still my silver prince.

It turned sharp again on the next beat when he reached for me, and I kicked at him, snarling.

“Do you find me too gruesome to look upon now?” His voice went dark. “Every time I touch you, will you see anything but the scarred face of the monster within?”

I blinked. “You think this is about the scars? And I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. The scars and trauma don’t make you less desirable. Not to me, anyway. It’s all the fucking lies I can’t stand. That night in the attic, when you told me you were sterile, you fucked me.” My voice went shrill.

“You let me claim you when you knew there was a chance of knocking me up!” I threw another foot in his direction, and he caught my ankle, sliding me across the grass. The hem of my habit bunched up over my thighs, exposing me to him. His shadow enveloped me, and the coldness of it made me fall still.

“Tell me. Would you have changed your mind?” He canted his head, shadows shrouding his features. He slid his palm along the underside of my thigh, hooked his hand beneath the crook of my knee and held me open. “Or would you have still spread these legs for me, just like you did for Eros that same evening?”

Humiliation, rage, and primitive desire set me on fire. “Fuck you. I hate you.”

His nostrils flexed, catching the scent of my body and how it betrayed me. “Perhaps. That doesn’t keep you from loving me, though, does it? Love and pleasure can’t exist without hatred and pain in equal portions. Not for creatures like us, Miss Baxter.”

Tears stung my eyes. “That’s crap. I don’t mind a little pain, but everyone seems to forget that I’m not into literal heartbreak, Sterling. I’m tired of all the lies. Maybe just try punching me in the fucking gut next time. It’ll hurt less.”

I elbowed and kneed him with everything I had when he came down on top of me, holding me down in the grass with his bruising grip on my forearms and his knees clamping my hips. “Listen to me.”

When I continued to struggle, he shook me by the shoulders. “Fuckinglistento me, and let me bleed my goddamn heart out for you!” I fell limp when I caught the authority in his voice, woven with desperation.

---