Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
What the fuck?
I look around, only realizing now that it’s not just Phoenix, Ammit, and I who are caught in this circle.
John Paul holds out his arms and smiles a familiarly sinister smile at me.
Then his body and features morph until the creature from my nightmares is standing in front of me, handsome, black wings flaring out ten feet wide on both sides of his back.
“Son,” he says. “It’s been too long.”
What in the ACTUAL FUCK?
Phoenix’s professor has been my father all along?
Chapter Twenty-Two
PHEONIX
10 Years Ago
I shove through the bathroom door, the image of the politician bursting through the glass to his death still on repeat in my head.
“Hey, are you okay?” Layden asks, puppy dog eyes concerned.
I glare at him. “Why are you still here?”
He looks at me, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Cut the shit. You’re free.” I fling out a hand. “So go be free. You can go anywhere. Be anyone you want.”
“I like who I am,” he says. “And I don’t want to be anywhere but here.”
He steps forward, and I step back. He stops, frowning, but doesn’t stop talking. “Phoenix, I feel like I really have gotten to know you over these past few months. You’ve become closer to me than any other person I’ve ever known in my life. I don’t want to go anywhere else because I—”
I throw up a hand to try to stop him from saying it, but it doesn’t work.
“—I love you.”
I cringe and back away even further. “Don’t! Don’t say that.”
“Why not? I do. I love you.”
Every word out of his mouth feels like it’s flaying me. All of them saying that they love me. Men. Women. Obsessed, following me, endless confessions of I love you, I love you. I hate those words. That guy earlier tonight loved me enough to throw himself out a window! No, I didn’t care about him. I’m a monster, after all. But I do care about— I mean, if Layden got hurt because of some stupid obsession—
I back up. “I never wanted that!” I yell.
He blinks at me, too naïve to hide his hurt. “But I thought we…”
“You thought we, what?” I’m driving him even further away. But it’s what I have to do. For him. For me. It hurts but feels good at the same time. I deserve to hurt.
“You thought we were falling in love?” I make my tone as scathing as possible, and he’s the one taking a step back now.
“Why would I ever fall in love with someone like you? You see how I live.” I wave my arms around me. “I’m used to power. I took pity on you.”
I barely know what I’m saying; I just know I see the growing devastation in his eyes, and it’s good. It’s far better to wound him now than whatever might happen to him later from being around me. He’ll get hurt by me or by Vlad. I’m poison. So, like the viper I am, I keep striking out at him.
“What good is an angel without wings? You’re ugly. You’re weak.”
“No,” he says, swallowing hard. “I was the only one brave enough to stand up to our father—”
“And how’d that go?” I ask mercilessly. “Your brothers buried you alive afterward, and you let them get away with it. Seems like they actually know how to make their way in this world.” I shake my head at him and make the pity heavy in my voice. “You’re just so naïve.”
I turn and start walking away from him, even though it means I’m walking out of my own room. I don’t know where I’m going. I just have to get away from him and the pain I see on his handsome face. The pain I’ve inflicted on him.
But he just runs to get ahead of me, turning to get in my face.
The puppy dog look is gone. Instead, his features are hard in a way that makes my heart break. “Fine,” he says. “I’m too naïve? I’ll go get experience. I’ll give my brothers what they deserve. Will that make you happy?”
“Fuck what makes me happy!” I yell. I grab the vase of flowers from the foyer and fling it against the wall. “Do you hear how fucking useless you are? You sound just like all my fawning admirers. I adore you, Mistress, I’ll do whatever you say, Mistress. I can’t even tell if my fucking compulsion has started working on you or if you’re just this fucking pathetic!”
I see the full weight of my words hit him in the chest. Worse than any blow.
“You don’t want another fawning admirer?” he says through his teeth. “Fine. I’m gone.”
Then he spins and walks away, out of the compound, and he doesn’t come back. Proving yet again he was never under my compulsion at all.
Which is exactly why I have to let him go. Nothing’s holding him here now. Not yet. Sabra might feel like she’s been trapped here and hates me, but I’ll never let that happen to him.