Page 95 of Sugar Rush

With that same smile on his face, looking suitably loved up, he took her face in his hands. He stared deep into her eyes as he snapped her neck.

"Boyfriend of the year," I muttered, panting through the pain in my stomach. I still had my hand wrapped around the handle, and no intention of letting go. No deluge of power yet, though. I’d stabbed myself for no reason. Man, this sucked.

"You didn't like her," Eidolon replied with an easy shrug, as if there wasn't afucking demon armylined up behind him. "I could never be with a woman who didn't have your approval."

"I liked her just fine," I gasped, "until you turned her against me."

I stumbled back a step, all my effort going into staying on my feet. Everything was going according to plan. Well, my mates didn't know I meant to stab myself, but this knife was literally shatter-proof; how else was I going to get the orb out?

All I had to do now was lure Eidolon back through the invisible shield into the bake sale where my mates waited. Easy peasy.

"You'd rather die than be at my side again?" Christian asked, his eyes big and sad, convincing enough that my heart panged. God dammit, I knew he was faking, but I couldn't control my soft heart.

"Pretty much," I agreed, and sank into my core of magic, grabbing hold of whatever dregs were left. Dammit, there should have been more than this. There should have been a whole ocean of fire and rage. How was I supposed to kill him when I didn't have magic?

The good ol' fashioned way, I supposed.

I'd worry about his army retaliating for his murder later.

"I didn't want to do this, Avie," he said sadly.

I jumped when the soldiers parted in a perfectly choreographed move, jostling the knife in my gut. I bit down on a scream of pain.Fuck,it hurt. But not as much as having my brain scrambled by shock after shock after shock. There was an upside at least.

At first I didn't know what I was seeing, my head too blurry with pain and my mates’ panic infecting my own emotions. All I saw was a pale, colourful blur in a sea of black armour, and then it came into focus and my heart skipped.

"You sick son of a bitch," I snarled, watching Eileen, my beautiful Eileen, pass from soldier to soldier until Eidolon himself took her.

"Don'tyou dare,"I growled, jerking forward a clumsy step, my fingers white around the glass dagger, black smoke twisting inside it. "You hurt her and I'll—"

I cried out when he twisted her head andtore.

"No," I sobbed, watching my beautiful bear's head get ripped off.

"Kneel," Eidolon ordered, and I jerked back into a memory of him saying the exact same thing to Dev. Forcing my devil to submit.

Well, fuck this pathetic excuse for a human being. I submitted to my mates and only my mates.

I looked him dead in the eye and growled, "No."

Then before he could react, and while he still had his hands full, I turned and ran.

The field full of tables and lazy shoppers was so close—and on the other side of the hazy barrier, waiting for my signal, were Ark, X, Taj, Dev, and Joseph.

I predicted the attack from behind; I was ready for the army to mobilise. But I didn't expect the invisible barrier to shimmer, like the ripple of a pebble thrown into water. I stumbled between one step and the next, pain snapping through my middle from the knife embedded there.1

The invisible magic parted, offering a vivid glimpse of the stalls beyond it, the world strangely brighter than this field. A tattooed hand punched through the gap in the barrier, and my heart skipped.

No. He wouldn't.

There's no way he'd ignore the plan we meticulously came up with in the circle's fancy ass mansion. There was no way. He wasn't that crazy or stupid or—

X hacked through the barrier like a serrated blade. A savage expression darkened his scarred face as he threw out his arm and sent a wave of devastating lust at Eidolon's army.

Okay, I stood corrected. He was that stupid.

39

Thirty soldiers went down, screaming, clutching their privates.

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