Realization crashed through me in an icy wave.
“Darian was your mate,” I repeated slowly.
“Yes.” Her eyes blazed with fury. “He told me everything. He told me you lied. That you paid people off to fake stories about him because you hated that he rejected you. That you couldn’t handle being left by him.”
“I never paid anyone, and I never once lied. You were with me several times when he tried to get me back in year one.” I let out a harsh laugh. “I wanted nothing to do with him! If you’dwanted the truth, you’d have looked at what he did to me. To others. The drude you sent to torment me? He made me relive memories I had buried.”
Images flashed in my mind of ice crystals in my lungs, Darian’s hand over my mouth, and his magic cutting off my air while he whispered I was overreacting.
“Hehurtpeople,” I told her. “He used his power and drugs to trap them and hurt them without their consent.”
She shook her head violently. “You’re such a liar! He told me you twisted everything?—”
“Did he tell you about the woman he almost killed with ice magic by freezing her lungs?” My voice dropped. “What about the girl who ended up in the infirmary because heshatteredher ribs with ice?”
She flinched. “No…”
“Yes. Darian is nothing to mourn. If you were smart, you would’ve rejected him.” I stepped closer.
My mates’ bonds were flickering back to sufficient strength now.
“No…” Her brow furrowed with disbelief.
“Why the resistance network?” I pressed. “Why build this? Why kidnapkidsand lock them up while pumping them full of toxins to steal their magic? Whyanyof this?”
Her breath hitched, raw.
“My sister,” she choked out. “Cynthia. She was twenty-five. A medic. She went out on a mission to deliver vaccines to one of your villages and never came back. We found her in a ditch a week later, drained of all her blood. A vampire fed on her and left her to rot.”
Real, deep pain flickered across her face.
“I watched my parents break,” she whispered. “Watched my mother stop sleeping. Watched my father bury himself in work just to keep from drinking himself to death. And all yourSupernatural Council did was say they'd look into it. Nothing happened, and no vampire was brought to justice. So, yeah.” She lifted her chin, tears still tracking down her cheeks. “We built something that would change things.”
My chest tightened. I could understand the helplessness of feeling like no one in power cared enough to help solve the murder of a loved one, but to do so many terrible things under the guise of grief?
“The vampire who killed your sister was a monster,” I admitted.
“I know that.” Her lips pressed into a white line.
“But you huntedall supernaturals,” I continued. “Instead of demanding justice for Cynthia and for the vampire’s other victims, you came forallof us. You decided one human death meant every supernatural life was collateral.”
“Of course it was collateral! We shouldn’t be at the bottom of the food chain!” she cried out.
“You capturedkids,” I snapped, pointing back toward the cell block. “Teenagers. People who had nothing to do with Cynthia. You ripped the magical essence out of supernatural bodies. You injectedmyDNA into humans who did not know what they were signing up for. You slaughtered entire villages, and for what? To make yourself feel better? To make your pain loud enough that it had to become everyone else’s problem?”
Her shoulders shook. Imp magic crackled around her, wild and unfocused, sparks bursting against my skin and dissolving on contact.
“It’syourfault,” she whispered. “If you’d just died in that lab with the others, none of this?—”
I drew my hand back and slapped her across the face. My palm connected with a sharp crack that echoed down the corridor. Venom flared across my skin on contact; a paralytic, to be precise.
Allison froze.
Her body locked from head to toe, her muscles seizing. She toppled sideways, hitting the ground hard. Her blue eyes stayed open, pupils blown wide, chest still heaving.
She could feel everything.
She just couldn’t move.
