“Not our place.” Ethan raised his voice and threw out a hand. “You want to wear that when he rips her throat out?”
“This is different!” Michael shouted. “You weren’t there, and you never even asked what happened.”
“I don’t need to know any more than he fucking stabbed her.”
The world was ringing. Shifting. I stepped back and sat on the arm of the chair.
Ethan’s voice was steel. “I am taking you, Amy, whether you agree to it or not.”
I stiffened as Ethan stepped toward me. My hands lifted, my magic tingling through my blood, ready to explode. “No, you’re not.”
“Oh, but I am.”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” I whispered, getting back to my feet.
He smirked. “Don’t you know by now I am far more adept at combat than you are, even with your witchy skills.”
“Fuck you.”
“If you’re up for it, I am,” he said bitterly.
“This is not the time to joke. This isn’t funny, none of this is funny.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He raised his voice again. “You think?—”
The door slammed shut and stopped us both dead in our tracks. The sound of his footsteps striding toward us beat the pounding in my ears.
Ethan and Michael moved in front of me. Rodney sighed and climbed sluggishly to his feet, then moved in a blur of speed beside me.
Karson looked terrible, his hair messy and soaked, blood splashed across his gray shirt. He stopped abruptly and looked up as if he’d only just noticed us all standing in the room.
Georgie gasped.
His eyes?—
They were black, blacker than the cold depths of hell.
Karson, the man who loved me, who held me so tenderly, looked like something else. Something inhuman. It was as if there was nothing but agony, hate, and rage burning in his soul. His power filled the whole room. Swallowed it. Devoured it. My heart began to race.
Ethan tensed.
“Did you find her?” Michael asked, his hands interlocked in front of him.
Karson’s gaze burned over Michael, Ethan, and Rodney standing around me like vampire blockades. Was that a flicker of hurt I saw? His lips curled into a sneer. “As if you could stop me, as if any of you could stop me.”
“All this is my fault, not hers.” Ethan straightened, pumping his chest out. Ethan was tall and physically fit, but Karson’s fury had a way of making them all look small. “If you blame anyone, blame me.”
“It’s no one’s fault,” Josh said smoothly, “but Sarah’s.”
Rodney picked something out of his nail. “As much as I’d happily see the witch dead, no offense,” he inclined his head at me, “I would hate to see you do something you regret later.”
Karson swiped a vase off the side table. It shattered to the floor, leaving yellow flowers intermingled with shards glinting sharply against the dull light. His gaze shifted between the threevampires. “You think so poorly of me, you think I’d harm a hair on her head?”
Ethan’s lips curled. “You’ve done it before.”
Karson flinched, then stilled, a predator kind of stillness. A volcano on the cusp of explosion. “You all believe the worst of me, even when I show you over and over again how much I care for this family, what I am willing to do, to sacrifice, to keep you all safe.” His voice was laced with anguish. “I expect the entire world to think poorly of me, but I expect my family to know I am not the monster everyone thinks I am.”
I stepped to the side so I was no longer sheltered by Ethan and Michael. His gaze, as scorching as the hot summer sun, locked with mine. Tears prickled my eyes. Not from fear, but from the pain I saw—I felt down to the depths of my heart—radiating off him.
