Page 221 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

Vesper pulled Conrad close as the light drained from his eyes and blood pooled below him. She smiled in his face as he took his last breath, making sure she was the last thing he saw.

She tossed him on Aster’s body. A shudder rolled through her, followed by a blissful serenity. She wiped her hands on her leather pants.

“Whoever said that revenge isn’t satisfying is full of shit,” she said. “Because I feel fantastic. Being the bigger person is an abuser’s favorite propaganda.”

“Agreed,” Kylo said.

Allie jogged to us with a glass of water and a plate of meat and bread.

When she handed them to me, I almost started drooling. “This is the best gift I’ve ever received.”

Kylo looked down at me. “I find that incredibly offensive.”

I tore into the meat, continuing to feel more animal than girl. As the potion worked its magick and the food entered my stomach, greater euphoria entered my system that had nothing to do with lingering vampire venom.

Kylo needed me battle-ready.

He hadno ideahow fucking ready I’d become.

I checked in on Idris, the gravity of his presence here finally hitting me.

“He’s doing great,” Harmony said, reading my mind. “He has only been an asset.”

Idris shrugged, bashful of the praise. His cheeks warmed, his complexion back to normal. He’d recovered quickly. He was strong; we both were.

“I believe we have one last order of business here,” Kylo said, helping me to my feet after I finished the last bite of food and gulp of water.

We stared down at the snot-nosed, shell-shocked girl under Harmony’s knee.

She’d stopped crying at some point, her eyes hauntingly empty. She smiled, slowly meeting my eyes.

I want to smile when I die,she’d once told me.

Kylo handed me his favorite dagger.

Juliette nodded. “He was my entire world. Without him, I’m nothing. Kill me.”

She began to flicker through bodies—the skins of men and women she’d worn before—and when she landed on mine, she sighed.

She relaxed, as if soothed by being in a body that wasn’t her own. She didn’t believe her skin was good enough.

I gazed down at myself, shackled. I kneeled beside her. I reached for her hand.

Vision after vision of Juliette’s atrocities played out behind my eyes. The lives she’d stolen. Princeton’s body strung up on the wall. The academic building reduced to a pile of rubble and corpses. The demons and plagues infecting Etherdale. All the times she’d hurt me, taunted me, enraged me.

Her lips on Kylo’s.

The knife she’d used to carve out our bond.

And yet, none of it changed my heart. I tried to force the bloodlust, but it was blocked.

I’d once looked at Juliette with more venom than I had the true villains, the men who now rested together as bloody corpses.

I stared at the mirror of myself, and I didn’t feel hatred.

I only felt grief for her, for the woman she might’ve been. If she’d been born to a loving family. If she’d never met Aster.

“Aster was right. Your heartisfull of love,” I said.