If Fletcher wanted me this badly, then he’d get me.
I had too much to lose.
CHAPTER 58
SLADE
The roar of my dragon was deafening inside my head. We were too close to our family to shift without risking injury, and I couldn’t step away from Emme as she was the most vulnerable and the one this bitch wanted. A bitch who was going to die.
The fact that she’d stolen my energy.MINE.
I’d been too distracted by my mate and Kellan at the time to properly inventory my power, and that had me ready to blast the entire street to cinders. It took every ounce of my strength, every scrap of control I’d built over the years, to keep a hold of my destructive fury.
My body shuddered when Emme pressed her hand against my spine, and I wished now wasn’t the time she chose to initiate touch.
Today… we were out of control. Today… was the root of all my fears.
My dragon could destroy everyone who stood here in seconds.
It had happened once before when I was fifteen, when Fletcher had taken his torture a little far. He’d cut me until there wasn’t any part of me which didn’t bleed, all in a bid to force mydragon out. He’d wanted me to kill for him, but I was no one’s fucking puppet.
I’d endured the torture, which went on for so long that I believe this was the first time I started to associate any touch with pain. Ironically, I now quite enjoyed pain when it was done right.
That day had a lasting effect on me, severing my bond to my dragon, who blamed me for holding him back. Not that I cared about killing Fletcher, but there were others being contained near me. Hunter for one, along with other prisoners chained against the walls of his torture cells.
By the time Fletcher was done, the rage of my beast had me confusing friend with foe, and even as we healed over and over, the canvas of my skin repairing for his butchery, I never broke.
Not until he brought an omega female to me.
She’d looked about twenty and was naked and blank faced. Fletcher sent her in there to clean the blood from my skin, and then he’d told her to hug me. That full-bodied touch, soft and gentle, had been the last crack in my control. Somehow, he knew all along that an omega was the key to my destruction.
I’d shifted, and Fletcher got exactly what he wanted: the omega torn to pieces and the building torn down around my beast. I’d almost lost Hunter that day. I definitely lost myself. I should have fucking killed Fletcher too, but when I’d finally shifted back, he’d offered me a deal. If I forgave all his sins, there’d be no more pain and Hunter would go free.
I forgave nothing, but for Hunter, I kept the sick bastard alive.
As long as we were free from him, I didn’t care. I should have expected that he’d find other ways to fuck us over.
The rumble in my chest echoed around the street, drawing Hunter’s attention. Whatever he saw in my expression had his features tightening. He nudged Emme’s touch away as he leaneddown to murmur to her, too low for me to hear over the roar of my beast.
“You have signed your death warrant, witch,” I informed her, the fires building in my chest.
She smiled broadly, and her tone was heavy with amusement as she said, “You always were my favorite, Slade. I fought Fletcher when he hurt you, and ensured he turned his attention to the other lizard. You should thank me.”
The knowledge that she’d been in my life manipulating behind the scenes had claws appearing at the end of my fingertips. Not to mention her casual reference to Talon and his suffering under Fletcher’scare.
“I will thank you by taking your life,” I promised.
She chuckled. “You’re never going to win if you can’t even figure out the most basics of information about who I am, and how I’ve been manipulating behind the scenes…”
I hadn’t kept up with Jewels’ life for many years, not since she initially passed all my surveillance tests. When she started assisting us, and didn’t ask for more than her usual favor or cash, I accepted her role in our lives.Another fucking mistake. Clearly, I’d missed a vital piece of information, and I wondered if she was somehow connected to the Termaine witches who were supposedly behind this…
As more of our friends and family started to break free from the spell, Kellan hurried over to stand with us. We’d had to fight harder to break the spell due to her use ofourenergy, hence why she’d been so fucking happy to steal from us.
Jewels needed to die, and I needed to figure out how to make it happen without Cora as a casualty. Not that I cared about her personally, but she meant a lot to Emme. I couldn’t be cavalier with her life when it would break my mate to lose her.
The crowds of shifters pressed in closer to us, and if I let my beast free, they’d be crushed or worse. I needed a distraction so I could back away.
Jewels watched me carefully, and her hand tightened on Cora’s throat as I moved. “Don’t do it, dragon. Just give me what I want.”
