It was sad how many years I’d waited for the beast to acknowledge me, and now that it had, I felt cheated. It was supposed to be an ally, a friend, a source of strength. How could it be any of those things when the only thing we had in common was that we both craved this girl?
He wanted to make her his from the inside out, and I wanted to tear her open just to see the life bleed from her eyes.
Maybe that made me the real monster. I didn’t care.
I watched the filthy little show she was putting on through the window for several more beats before stealing around to the front door and quietly letting myself inside. The hinges groaned softly, but the bunny’s heated moans coming from the bedroom covered the noise.
I set Casey’s head on the kitchen counter before grabbing the half-empty bottle of whiskey I kept on top of the fridge and knocking back a spicy mouthful.
My attention darted to Case, whose lifeless eyes watched me from beside the half-eaten loaf of Wonderbread I’d left out. The look of horror frozen on his face should have encouraged me to make good on all the dark thoughts storming my mind like a category-five hurricane. Instead, it felt like he was judging me for what I was about to do.
“She’s just a rabbit shifter. You only saw them as food,” I whispered to the dead man’s head between shots of whiskey.
“All your brother did was what was instinctual to our kind. What you’re planning on doing to her isn’t fucking natural. It’s twisted.”
I scoffed at the wolf’s words and stalked down the hallway, taking the alcohol with me as I quickly prowled toward my bedroom. Movement caught my attention from the corner of my eye, and I paused to examine my reflection in the circular mirror mounted on the wall.
Aside from the barbed wire tattoo on my face and all the ink covering the rest of my body, I looked just like my brother. Silver hair, strong jaw, hard nose, tall and imposing stature. But the pure loathing in my bloodshot eyes was all uniquely me. Casey never had that.
Lurking in the doorway to my bedroom, I watched Ruth writhe over my blood-stained sheets—my brother’s blood.
I waited for her to notice she wasn’t alone.
From this angle, I had a full view of her pretty pink cunt. She had three fingers stuffed into her hole to create her desired girth and still seemed to squirm with want.
“I could give her so much more.”
I downed another swig of whiskey, sucking air through clenched teeth as the liquid fire burned me up, making my head swim and dulling the voice that told me to make her all mine.
As she came with a scream, her spine bowed back, and her toes dug into the sheets. Using her distraction, I stepped into the room and set the whiskey bottle down on the dresser.
My attention fell to the ax.Myax, the one I left in the area where I gathered firewood. The pieces fell into place. Ruth had found my ax and used it to murder Casey.
I ran a finger along the blade, hissing as the edge sliced into my flesh.
The blade was still wet with him.
The moment my blood hit the open air, the bunny froze in my bed. Her little nose twitched as she breathed in the fresh wave of my scent. Too fresh to belong to a dead man.
She bolted upright in my bed. When her gaze found mine through the darkness, her face drained of all color as if she was seeing a ghost. “No… You’re dead. I–I killed you.”
My mouth curved with a brutal grin that, to my satisfaction, had her flinching. “What were you thinking about just then, as you came all over your fingers?”
I strode to the foot of the bed. She scrambled away from me, her back slamming into the headboard with a clatter as the wood knocked against the wall.
Gripping the footboard, I leaned toward her. “Were you imagining me?”
She shook her head, and I barked an evil laugh. “Liar. Did you imagine my face like this? When I had your knife stuffed down your panties? Or did you imagine it covered in blood with the lights gone from my eyes?”
ELEVEN
RUTH
My brain reached for a logical explanation for all this. It drew a blank.
I’d murdered this son of a bitch. I’d watched the life drain from his eyes. I’d been there with his mate as she wailed his name and sobbed into the severed head clutched to his chest. Casey.
His name was Casey.
