Page 77 of Broken Souls

I don’t care if the reaper is the one to come in. Don’t care if I’m charged with treason after. I just want Varius to live. He has to live. He’s my fucking neanderthal even if I hate him so much it hurts.

“Heeeelp!” I screech, but then I remember he kicked the door shut. The silence rune has been activated, and no one can hear me scream. No one is coming to help.

Jerking my hands out from between our bodies, I cup his face. He doesn’t turn his lips into my palm. Doesn’t move at all.

“No. No, no, no, no. Varius, please,” I cry as I look into his open eyes.

Open but empty.

Unseeing.

“Varius,please. Please stay with me. I’m sorry. Don’t go. Don’t go. Stay with me.”

Fuck!

I’m not a healer.

I can’t even control my magic anymore. But the knife is still in his chest, a natural blockade. I have a chance to save him. He has a chance to live. I just need to get out from under him.

I just need to get out and open the door and get Sau.

Simple steps.

Simple fucking steps.

I can do this.

Tears burning my eyes, I try once more to shove him off me.

But I’m a hundred-and-ten pounds. And he’s over twice my weight and nearly twice my size, and the torture and then my rage-fueled destruction of my room took so much strength out of my limbs. My arms shake as they shove.

He doesn’t move.

“Varius, please,” I beg. “Please don’t leave me to raise our girl alone. Please don’t –”

I scream as his head suddenly jerks up. Red eyes, sharp fangs – that’s all I have time to see before he grabs me and sinks his teeth deep into my neck.

Twenty-Seven

HIM

I growl against her throat as I swallow down her life, the very essence of who she is. With every gulp, I crave more, the hunger in my belly urging me on. My cock hardens to the point of pain. I bite deeper, swallow faster. Every part of me is craving every bit of her.

This isn’t like the last woman I fed on – mere subsistence needed to keep me alive.

The woman beneath me is the steak tossed to a starving dog. A piece of bread offered to an escaped prisoner of war.

When I say I crave every part of her, I don’t just mean the blood flowing past my lips.

I crave the touch of her hands even as they try to fight me off.

I crave the sharp stab of the knife as she bucks beneath me, keeping me poised on this edge of death, this moment where my vampirism is allowed out.

Where I can smell every pheromone pouring off her skin, my senses heightened to their full potential.

Where I can feel how puny she is in my arms, how weak she is against my strength.

I crave the touch of her lips.