But now, I stare back at him with pure, suffocating hate.
My body shakes with how hard I’m trying to exert my power. I want to kill him. Fucking rot his heart from his chest and make him writhe in agony. I want to rip him apart limb by limb and watch his blood sully the soil.
I push and push, straining to burst my magic free, but my rot only leaches a few inches past the netting, killing the grass in a circle around me.
“You’ve grown stronger,” he muses, almost gratified. “I knew you had to be capable of manifesting. You were holding back all those years ago.”
My jaw clenches like a wolf that wants to snap its opponent’s neck between its teeth. My dragon is doing the same thing, eyes locked onto my father, growl scouring its throat.
“I saw her bond solidifying. Saw her using your rot,” he says evenly, though his voice grates down my ears. “I knew you’d come for her. And then when she came here, when the king wanted to kill her, I saw that spot.” He taps the back of his own neck, and my stomach drops in realization.
He saw Auren’s golden scale.
“I knew what it meant,” he says smugly as he gestures toward my dragon. “Your power is strong for your manifestation to bleed through into your bonded, but it showed me the truth. Showed me that you actually manifested one. Andlook at it,” he says with a fanatic gleam in his eye as he watches the snarling creature. “Just as large and fierce as the first dragons of our blood, when Culls were kings of the skies.”
“I’m going to crush your skull and piss on your fucking corpse,” I snarl.
His eye narrows on me, and I feel sick satisfaction to know he only has use of the one. That for all these years, he’s had to bear proof that I wounded him and rendered his other eye useless.
He snaps his fingers again, and I see Auren’s finger snap unnaturally. This time when she screams, it cuts off as she slumps into unconsciousness, succumbing to the piling pain.
I roar as I lurch forward, teeth bared like an animal, but the net snags into me, not budging an inch.
My father smirks coldly. “Still unworthy andweak.” Then he turns his head, looking at someone else. “Do it.”
Several of his guards march forward. They pass their dead comrades, while I continue to fight against the net, muscles bunching, rage boiling through my black veins as my spikes surge up. “Don’t fucking touch her!”
But the guards walk past Auren.
I tense as they head straight for my dragon. When it lets out a vicious growl at their nearness, several of them flinch away despite it being held down.
Still, they surround the beast while it snarls and spits. With its leg and wing broken, it lies partially on its uninjured side, breathing heavily, pupils dilated.
There is no lead-up. I have no idea what’s about to happen. One of them just moves forward, and I don’t notice the ax until it’s buried in my dragon’s chest.
The creature lets out a chilling, bone-grinding shriek. A sound full of agony and shock, one that blares through my head and snaps against my eardrums.
My entire body jerks with blinding pain.
Through tunneled vision, I see black blood seeping between its golden scales and streaking down the toughened exterior. The soldier yanks out the ax and then swings it down again in the same spot, hacking at my dragon’s chest, trying to drive the blade in deeper.
Breath gasps out of me. Fucking chokes me. I feel blood crawling up the back of my throat, either phantom or real, I can’t tell which. The pain that seeps from the dragon into me is enough to make me sway. My knuckles hit the ground, but I force myself not to fall in a heap or let bile spew from my throat.
“Stop!”
I snap my head up at Auren’s shout and see her sitting up. She’s melted down the armor on her chest to use it to shoot at my father. It streams toward him like a giant spear…
But he moves faster, quicker than a blink, and yanks it from the air.
Then, he takes the sharp weapon and stabs it right into my mother’s stomach.
CHAPTER 59
SLADE
A hoarse bellow shreds mychest and tears through Auren’s throat. I look on in helpless horror as my mother’s face contorts with shock and pain, eyes swiveling down to look at the weapon stabbed into her.
This isn’t fucking happening. This isn’t—
