Page 96 of Sacred Venom

This is what’s crawling under all of their stupid remarks.

Doubt in me.

Whether I can take something delicate and make it survive the Trials and the Order.

I shrug Reese’s hand off my chest and look at all four of them.

“You want to know what I’m going to do with her?”

No one answers.

I move around the table, putting its glowing green felt between us.

“I’m going to crack her shell right down the middle. She’ll be the perfect little broken mess for me to mold back together.” I let that settle before I go on. “And when she stands beside me after we win, no one in that room will question it. She won’t look weak by the time I’m done with her.”

Marcus lets out a low whistle.

Tristan stares at me with narrowed eyes. “That sounds dangerously close to sentiment.”

“It sounds like a winning strategy,” I say.

What none of them hear is what this costs me. To be born first and handed the weight of everyone else’s fear. To be told the family needs you when you’re barely holding yourself together. To crawl back from the edge of existence and still be greeted like a traitor.

Zaiya melts for me with that look of hers, like I’m both danger and refuge. If I’m going to bleed for this family, I’m going to take my pleasure where I find it.

And if they think she’ll be my downfall, I’ll turn her into my greatest advantage.

Reese watches me in silence. Then he lifts his cue, steps around me, and sends the cue ball hard into the pack.

The crack splits through the room.

“If you’re wrong,” he says without looking at me, “it won’t just end there.”

I don’t answer.

Because I know.

Lucian grabs his drink off the sideboard and walks out without a word.