Page 196 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

“I feel ill,” I said, begging him to care with wide, wounded eyes. “My magick is building up from within, and it’s killing me.”

“Shhh. It was the ritual. Juliette was rough with you out of spite. If I could’ve freed you from the turned, I would’ve done it myself.”

My spine was searing. Pressure built at the crown of my head and the soles of my feet. Power with nowhere to go.

“How can I earn my magick back?”

Aster’s hand paused over my heart, spending more time than necessary rubbing the salve into my skin. His eyes lit up, and his gaze roamed over my form more ravenously than before.

Stop. Please stop.

“By being a very good girl for me, angel.”

62

KYLO

The moment I emerged from the underground, I ran. I didn’t care who followed me. I ignored the sound of my name being shouted frantically.

Unmasked, unglamoured, I tore through the streets until I hit up against our ever-shifting battle line.

Faced with a line of born, I ripped chunks out of necks. Shadows shot from my palms in gusts of screaming wrath, annihilating several born at once.

I dodged flying weapons and deflected several currents of magick.

At a certain point, I slipped under my shadow glamour, becoming invisible to most born except those with expanded sight.

I couldn’t wield the glamour for long. I was overextended, wielding godlike amounts of power with hundreds of born surrounding me. I took every opportunity to refeed from born blood.

I had to get to her. She wasn’t dead. Shecouldn’tbe dead.

None of my clan had kept up with me. I was alone, reckless and unhinged. A man driven to madness.

Or at least, I thought I was alone, until I turned down a quiet alley to catch my breath and saw a hand appear from a dark mist.

Phineas.

“They have her, and I need her back,” was all I managed, my voice a raspy growl.

The born had long learned to set traps for turned eyes, but Phineas was crafty. He could get close.

At the very least, he’d seen me being stupidly, unabashedly reckless and was covering me.

Beneath the grumpy exterior, he was a fiercely loyal fucker.

I hadn’t realized how compulsive a habit it had become to check the blood bond until only silence waited for me on the other side.

My heart was a tight fist. My muscles and bones screamed from the exertion.

Phineas’s hand reabsorbed into his veil of shadow.

I must’ve destroyed hundreds of born before my invisibility glamour disintegrated for good. Firebirds screeched. Shouts hit me from all directions—calls to gather forces and hunt me down.

I’d be surrounded in a matter of minutes.

I couldn’t fight my way through all of them. I ripped at my hair. My lips were stained with copper. My soul was bloody and aching as if it wanted to break away in search of Evie’s.

At the end of the street we were currently on—now lined with born corpses—I saw another hand floating midair.