Page 119 of Cruelly Bitten

A bad dream made worse by all of Ismerelda’s thoughts infiltrating my mind.

She’d shut down entirely, choosing to lose herself in her mind rather than allow my compulsion to win.

What compulsion?I wondered, only for the response to slam into me in the next moment.

New Cam can’t have this,she’d told herself.He may have compelled me to obey Michael, but I refuse to give them the satisfaction of hearing meenjoymy death.

It’d been an act of defiance on her part. A finalfuck youto me and Michael.

Why do you think I did this to you?I demanded.Why would I hurt you in this way?

She didn’t reply, her psyche locked in some sort of memory spiral. A safe place. One she’d created in a moment of despair and closed herself within.

I swallowed as more events played out in her mind. Nights of lovemaking. Passionate words. Promises. A world of love and admiration and respect.

“I love you, Ismerelda. Always. Forever. For eternity.”

“I love you, too.”

“It’s the way she should have died a thousand years ago. Seems fitting to me.”

My brow furrowed as memories seemed to overlap in her thoughts, one an ancient vow and the other… I followed the words, ones she recalled me saying, and watched her recollection of events.

This was today. Maybe thirty minutes ago. It’s what led to this.

But that man wasn’t me.

A realistic hologram, maybe? Lilith’s technology was advanced enough to pull it off. That was why Helias wanted the in-person meeting—he didn’t trust this technology era.

I cleared my throat, my hands still fluttering uselessly over myErosita.The fact that our bond was still in place confirmedthat none of the men had penetrated her vaginally, but she… she was definitely…

“Fuck.” I wanted to kill everyone in the room all over again.

There’d been six of them.Six.

Why the fuck would Michael do this? And all those things he’d told her…

Is it…?

I cleared my throat again as more of Ismerelda’s mind melded into mine.

She hadn’t been surprised at all by Michael’s revelations because she’d known something about it already.

A truth I wasn’t sure I understood.

Lilith won,she kept lamenting, her heart seeming to break with the admission.That bitch won.

By fucking with my mind.

That seemed to be the consensus.

Ismerelda’s frame of events did not match mine.

Yet she’d kept them to herself all this time, aware that I would never have believed her. Never have trusted her. Never have even considered listening to her side of events.

She’d tried to win me over in other ways.

With sex.