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During those wretched moments of his darkest despair, he did not think of her betrayal, only her beauty. He sometimes preferred the lie and found sanctuary in the memory of her artificial kindness. Those lies were the only comfort he could find in the cold, dark, silent earth.

Now, those delicate recollections crumbled under the heavy weight of his deep-seated resentment. Despite his ever-present, unrequited desire to have her, he sincerely wished he’d killed her. Stealing her first born and murdering her children was not nearly enough to punish her. Lilias was the catalyst behind his centuries of suffering.

No matter how many times he died or how many years passed, the pain of her abandonment remained the greatest injury of his life. He’dfought in hundreds of battles and died repetitively underground as he wasted away in his own dismembered despair, but nothing compared to the excruciating misery he’d discovered through love.

His foolish affection was his highest regret. Lilias was his first and his last. His only. And she paid dearly for her deceitful choices.

Today, he reveled not in the tender recollections of a love-sick boy but in the memory of the inescapable pain. The agony he’d suffered shaped him into a hardened male. When he was underground, he welcomed the madness. His mind became his only escape and he found hidden corners that were so dark a lesser immortal would have flinched and shied away.

But Cerberus welcomed the darkness inside of him.

Behind the mask of a modern businessman lived a monster. His duality served him well, and he’d adapted quickly to the ease of modern living, finding great comfort in wealth and luxury but never forgetting his purpose.

The polite grins and tiresome nods were all lies. Years of suffering had shredded any remnants of his moral fiber. He plainly saw what he was and accepted his true self without shame.

Human entanglements only confused the simplicity of his nature. Mortals were food. Unlike before, they served him now.

His lack of empathy and his innate hunger for living flesh and carnal pleasures lived at the baseof his needs. He was a predator. He did not lower himself to consider the pitiful feelings of his prey the way he once had.

Accepting his dark nature unleashed the full extent of his potential. No longer bound by propriety or restricted by social expectations, Cerberus worried about one thing and one thing only—surviving long enough to have his revenge.

He chuckled. To think, the bitch had been hiding on an Amish farm living a life of self-imposed discipline when she could have done anything. Pathetic.

He rejected any suggestion that immortals required social order. The lion did not cower to the rabbit or the jackal, so why should immortals limit themselves by the laws of mortals?

As adraugr, he was top of the food chain, the son of a snake-shifter, and king of whatever he claimed. In all of his misery, he’d made peace with the unsavory parts of himself, and once he escaped the constraints of morality, he never pretended to be anything less than the rogue, vicious barbarian they created.

His time entombed only sharpened his need for revenge. Other times, he embraced the excruciating repetition of suffering and death with silent calm, surrendering to his lack of control and testing how composed he could remain in the face of fear.

His hatred anchored his mind in fury and gave him a place to bide his time. He blamed the girl, Adriel. He blamed her mother, Lilias. Heblamed the males who put him into the ground and Lilias’s mate, Lazarus, for taking her away. He even blamed King Charles, the sniveling weakling, for bringing her into his life and creating discontent where Cerberus had once been satisfied with next to nothing.

No matter what he felt over those long, torturous centuries, immortality always saved him in the end. The certainty that he would one day have his revenge comforted him through the darkest times. Very few knew how to finish adraugrand, be it a comfort or a curse, his true end would not happen buried in the earth.

It took decades for his limbs to regenerate without the aid of mortal blood and centuries to escape the ground. Time lost all meaning as his muscles wilted away and his sanity liquified. The unforgettable pain of new skin glacially regrowing over bone just as maggots rapidly ate it away was enough to drive the soundest immortal mad.

Shaking off the memory, not wanting to trigger old fears, he fanned out his senses again, pushing further than he had the last time.

Girl… Where are you, girl? You do not want to anger your mate… Answer me.

Leaping from one tree to the next, he continued to search for her but found nothing. He preferred to be outdoors after centuries of confinement and took pleasure in his hunt.

Looking out from the trees at the mortal chaos that filled the roads, he grinned. Themeaningless lives and routines of mortals were about as entertaining as ants moving grains of sand. But their cars and technology fascinated him.

For ages, he’d wondered at the curious rumbles coming from above ground. Gentle vibrations of unrecognizable sounds changed over the years, from hoofbeats and wooden wheels to water-cooled car engines and the unknown.

Those endless rumblings were a welcomed disruption to the darkness. Curiosity could be a great distraction from pain. While trapped underground, he’d thought the noises above to be many things. Gods smiting the earth, floods, or even earthquakes. But in the end, the technology of motor vehicles went far beyond his limited imagination.

The shock of seeing motor vehicles rushing over roads once terrified him. Now, he owned several. But nothing beat the thrill of hunting by foot.

Dropping from the elevated branches to the earth, Cerberus landed in an agile crouch. He brushed a hand over his tailored pants and grimaced at the scent of smoke still clinging to his clothes.

Moving toward the rumbling road, he scanned the traffic for a victim to join him for this evening’s meal. Cars swerved, and horns blared as he walked directly into rushing traffic. One quick mental command and an SUV pulled over.

He knocked on the glass window and pointed to the mechanism in the door. “Unlock it.”

The small knob clicked upward, and the mortal female stared at him, her adrenaline pumping wildly through her veins as her body remained hypnotized but not anesthetized under his compulsion.

He preferred them frightened because nothing sweetened the blood of prey like the spike of adrenaline. The door closed as he slid into the passenger seat, buffeting the noise from the highway and stifling the air.