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He sits up as the carrot of hope is dangled in front of him. Pitiful thing. He thinks I’m interested because I want to use what he’s learned.

No. I want to hear how to destroy this research before it’s used against me.

“The process required death on a large scale to successfully test. So… we set them up.”

Anger stirs in my chest, but I settle my beast with a promise of bloodshed very soon.

I am angry too. The destruction of Vulcan Village was my doing.

This went so much deeper than I ever could have realized. I had been manipulated from the very beginning.

“That’s blasphemy,” I snarl. “You sent thousands of people to their death, and an entire family, all for an experiment.”

“One that worked,” he says, growing bolder as he dares to lean in. My face is twice the size of his while I’m in this form. I quell the urge to bite his head clean off. “Scarlett is what she is today because of that loss of life. She sucked it all in and it changed her. My family has been watching her for years, looking for the right opportunity to bring her into our fold. With her genetics, we were going to start the perfect breeding program. One with humans who can harness the power of dreams. Imagine the possibilities, Cain. Imagine if you find others like you out there because you have something that interests them. They could just be hiding. Don’t you want more alliances? Isn’t that why you do all this?”

I glance to find Sabre and Cage taking their time killing their prey. They’re little more than a blur of shadows painting the room with blood.

Scarlett watches them with a sense of fascination. The blood that coats her looks like a red dress, one that makes me want to lick it off. She doesn’t try to hide herself now. In fact, her spine is straight with pride as she finally slinks off the bed and picks up one of the shards of the broken mirror.

And heads to her brother who limps across the floor on a broken foot.

Good girl, I think.

“Now, everything I do for her,” I say, speaking to the pitiful excuse of a human being at my feet.

“There can be more like her,” he promises. “That was always the plan, Lord Cain. It can still be the plan. If you give her to me, you will have our firstborn. You can even⁠—”

I don’t allow him to finish that sentence. I shove my hand into his mouth and wrap my claws around his tongue.

And yank.

A garbled scream rips from his throat as I tear it from his mouth. Blood gushes down his chin and chest as I toss his rendered tongue onto the floor.

“You won’t be needing that any longer,” I say dismissively as I watch him bleed.

He doubles over and screams again, but I really have no need of him anymore. He only has one more use to me now.

I clamp my claws around his head and I allow my beast to feed.

His dark dreams pour into me and settle inside my soul. I feast on them, devouring them as I tear them apart until they’re nothing more than splintered fragments in bite-sized pieces.

Edward blinks up at me, his eyes glassy with pained tears as I keep going. I take every dark dream, every subconscious thought, and everything that he hides in the deep recesses of his mind until nothing is left.

His skin pales until it turns gray. He withers before me and finally, he’s gone.

“Pleassse don’t do that again,” Sabre says from my side. He’s covered in blood and now he’s in his Strigoi form, not his human one. His unnaturally long tongue seems to make it difficult for him to speak properly, but I can’t talk. Everything about me in this form is oversized, including my tongue as well.

He wrinkles his nose at the carcass as it falls over into a withered clump. Edward’s bloodied mouth gapes open as his eyes stare into the distance.

“Why not? That was fun,” I say.

Cage appears by my side, closer than I would have expected given I hadn’t seen him coming. “Can’t feed on the dead,” he says, glancing up at me with a toothy smile full of fangs and danger, before he vanishes again.

Rolling my eyes, I turn from them and face a beautiful Scarlett now painted in her brother’s blood. My massive cock instantly goes rock hard.

“I’m done killing anyway,” I say as I go to her.

My beast doesn’t need bloodshed, not when our mate is naked and covered in nightmares and death.