Page 107 of Ruthless Ends

Maybe it’s better.

Just because I’ve committed myself to doing this doesn’t mean I want the man I love to see it. To seemelike that.

It’ll be fine. I have it handled.

I know you do. Just…I know you feel like you have to do this. But I want you to know you can still change your mind.

I know he means it, but he’s wrong.

I can’t afford to get squeamish or moral tonight.

Not if I want my mother and Cam to live.

“Are you ready for this?” Avery asks under her breath beside me. She’d been able to hitch a ride on the plane with reinforcements from Botner, getting here just in time. With Nathan’s execution scheduled for tomorrow’s full moon, tonight is our last—and only—chance at this.

Right about now I’d been expecting to feel some hesitation. Doubt. Guilt, perhaps? Maybe that’ll come later.

A flash of pain flares up my jaw, and I force myself to unclench for the millionth time tonight.

“Are you?” I say in lieu of answering.

Avery lets out an audible breath beside me, and I squeeze her hand. She hasn’t told me any more details since she got here, though she keeps looking at me and opening her mouth and then pausing like she wants to. If he’d done the same thing he did to Monroe and Kirby, I feel like she would’ve saidme tooor something on the phone.

We’re a few halls away from the stairs to the dungeons, dressed in full Marionettes uniform, so if anyone sees us, hopefully it looks like we’re patrolling. I resist the urge to check my phone for the millionth time. When the security cameras are down and we’re in the clear, they’ll let us know.

“I was drunk the night of my pairing ceremony,” Avery says quietly.

I still, not even daring to breathe, like any movement or sound might spook her out of telling me this.

“It was a fun night,” she continues, though her voice is monotone. “I was dancing with my friends. We drank and laughed because we were twenty-one and stupid and relieved initiation was over. And I’d just been paired with this cute guy who seemed nice and funny, and I liked it when he flirted with me because I was a flirty person too, so I thought he was just doing it for fun. I remember having to carry my shoes home because I couldn’t balance in them anymore. And he offered to walk me to my room, and I’d actually thought,Oh, what a gentleman.”

A sickening coldness slithers down my spine as I know in my bones what comes next.

“The worst part was I didn’t realize what was happening at first. I was that drunk. Maybe if I had…I could’ve reacted faster…” She pulls in a sharp breath. “Anyway. He helped me into bed. Put a glass of water out on the nightstand and everything. I really thought he was just being nice. I think that was the worst part. How much I trusted him. It wasn’t until he climbed into the bed too… I didn’t realize how much stronger vampires were until that moment. He’s bigger than me, sure, but I couldn’t move at all. He shoved something in my mouth to shut me up when I wouldn’t stop crying and asking him to stop. I still don’t know what it was. I think I blacked out somewhere in the middle. And then when I saw him the next day, he smiled and flirted with me like it never happened. I think he tried to glamour me to forget. But I’ve been wearing this since my mother gave it to me as a child. It’s supposed to block them.”

She tugs a necklace out of her shirt, a simple locket on a chain.

“Maybe it would’ve been better if he’d been able to make me forget.”

I take her hand again, gripping her fingers tightly as the fire in my belly surges up so violently it steals my breath.

That’s probably what’s made him so cocky. He’s been getting away with this kind of thing his whole life. Always the predator, never the prey.

He’s in for a rude fucking awakening.

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

“Are you ready?” I whisper.

She’s the first to take off down the hall.

A sickening wave of déjà vu washes over me as we descend the stairs to the dungeon, the memories from the last time I was in one—albeit on the other side of the bars—still fresh. Avery and I go alone, though a few of the others will join us shortly, once he’s ingested Kirby’s concoction. We mixed it with a blood bag, something he’s bound to be so ravenous for at this point that if there’s a taste difference, he won’t even notice it.

The poison won’t be enough to kill him on its own, though knowing Kirby, she left a bite to it. Just something to slow him down. Impair him enough that he won’t cause any problems tonight. He hasn’t been down here enough for his hunger to turn to decay—making him more of a liability than anything. If let out of his cagewithoutfeeding him, his instincts would take over and he’d attack anyone in sight.

The other cells we pass are empty, at least they appear that way. It’s dark down here, full of shadows and spaces to hide. A shiver runs up my spine, but Avery struts confidently to his cell, tosses the blood bag through the bars, and waits with her arms crossed over her chest.

There’s shuffling, then the sound of the blood bag tearing open, and desperate gasps and gulps. After a few moments, the sounds die down, followed by a soft “Aves?”

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