Page 95 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

“Angel, do you delight in torturing my exposed, hopelessly captured heart?”

She giggled.

“You really are a monster.”

I’d never been moretense in my entire century of existence. Evie and I had spent the day in deliberations with my most powerful, keen men and women of my inner circle.

Idris was livid, and I could tell he blamed me on some level for not talking Evie out of this. Which was reasonable. I hated myself right now too.

I regretted all of it. I didn’t want to do what was right. I wanted to lock Evie inside my estate until Lord Aster, Lord Conrad, and their pet witch were already dead.

“Kylo, I promise,” Evie assured me for the hundredth time as she got ready, making herself look enticing for born predators. “I won’t attempt an assassination except to save my own life. Not this time.”

The wordsthis timewere a different kind of dagger to my guts.

I glared at myself in the mirror, watching my cloud of darkness gather around us as Evie applied blush to her cheeks.

Phineas had been the only one who was entirely on Evie’s side, agreeing that it was too enticing of an opportunity for information-gathering to pass up.

I’d hated him in that moment. I hated everyone who’d been won over by Evie over the course of discussions, who’d helped her craft a solid plan and false identity to assume. They treated her like a clan member, an asset, a weapon.

They didn’t treat her likemy Evie.

“It’s only dinner,” she said.

My fists clenched.

“This is what the born do. They hide their darkness under a façade of civility and decorum. If they wanted to take me by force, they would’ve attempted to endanger Mena. This is all just politics, arrogance, and greed.”

I’d heard it all before. I still didn’t care.

“It thrills me that the best-case scenario here is that Lord Aster is attempting to seduce you,” I said dryly.

“The born want what they can’t have,” she said with a shrug. “Their predictability is good for us.”

I clamped my mouth shut and turned away. I was unable to watch Evie accentuate her devastating beauty for a second longer.

The knowledge that another man would be enjoying her company tonight was more than enough to make me lose all semblance of control I’d carefully maintained for eighty years. But the fact that it was a born lord?

I closed my eyes, finding my center using one of Princeton’s breathing techniques. I felt like a newborn all over again, knocked back to square one as I fought the urge to declare war myself with a brutal rampage.

Every time I was plagued by visions of the born mutilating Aisling’s body, I had to restart the exercise. And when the accursed memories morphed into visions of Evie, I couldn’t breathe at all.

“Kylo.”

Evie wrapped both hands around my arm. Her lips met my biceps. “I’m here.”

I slowly pried my eyes open. Evie was no longer trembling. She wore a shield of strength atop her terror, her own uncovered traumas.

“I’m strong enough,” she said.

Believe in me,was the message beneath.

I nodded. “I’ll be in the old library across from the estate.”

“I know.”

“You have the paper?”