Page 161 of Cruelly Bitten

I don’t see you as a fragile doll,I reminded her.You’re my lioness. And lionesses like to hunt and kill their prey. I won’t stand in your way, love. I’ll only help.

Someone cleared their throat, drawing Ismerelda and me out of our mental conversation and back to the party watching us.

“Michael’s demise was Lilith’s trigger,” Jace said, his focus on Darius before returning to Ismerelda and then me. “Do you know how he survived?”

Ismerelda remained silent, allowing me to answer instead, as she didn’t know.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know either. “He claims I sired him, but I’ve been questioning that for weeks.” Primarily because he didn’t seem worthy of my time and energy. I also didn’t feel connected to him in any way. “That said, recent events made it evident that he’s not my progeny.”

And by “recent events,” I meant what he’d done to Ismerelda.

But I didn’t feel it was necessary to elaborate on that. She didn’t seem all that keen to share the details with the group, either.

“Perhaps it would be prudent to start with what you remember and go from there,” Hazel suggested. “Not necessarily memories from a thousand years ago, but the most recent ones? From after you… woke up?” She phrased that last part as a question, likely because she wasn’t sure what exactly had happened.

To be fair, I wasn’t sure either.

However, her suggestion seemed appropriate.

But I wasn’t going to relay the entire story while standing just inside the doorway of this oversized space. It was clearly meant to be a ballroom, the random table in the center dwarfed by the open area around it.

While it was a decently sized round table, it clearly didn’t belong in here. Hazel or Deirdre had probably pulled it together at the last minute, needing a place to house all of us for an impromptudiscussion.

The couches off the lobby would have been more comfortable, but less private.

Although, who knew what kind of listening devices and cameras lurked in this large room?

Rather than openly agree to Hazel’s request, I stepped up beside Ismerelda and slid one of my palms to her lower back, then guided her to one of the chairs.

I could feel everyone’s eyes on us, observing our behavior as though we were an experiment of some kind. It was an unnerving sensation, one that irked myErositaas well.

However, she took her seat with the elegance of a queen while I settled beside her, my arm loosely draped over the top of her chair. Then I waved at the table with my opposite hand, silently inviting everyone who was still standing to join us for story time.

It seemed a bit juvenile, if slightly redundant, but I indulged Hazel’s request to share everything I knew, starting with how I’d been told I’d simply been asleep these last one hundred and eighteen or so years.

I provided a summary of Lilith’s logs, how they’d informed me of what had transpired while I’d been unconscious. I didn’t elaborate much, as I imagined they already knew their own history. But I did supply more details when I told them aboutLilith’s experimentations and her quest to create immortal blood bags.

None of them commented while I spoke, although a few of them flinched when I mentioned Lilith using the Blessed Ones.

Jace and Darius had already known about the lycan labs, as well as some of theErositatesting, and they’d seen a video of the Blessed Ones—something I knew because I’d witnessed their reactions to it while observing them via a security feed—but they hadn’t been aware of the full extent of Lilith’s research.

My final commentary was about Michael again, how he’d led me to believe I was in charge, but my connection to Ismerelda had made me realize it was all a lie. “At least most of it, anyway,” I concluded.

Silence lingered in the air, the others seemingly stunned by everything I’d just shared.

I ran my thumb up and down Ismerelda’s shoulder, the light touch grounding me beside her as I studied the expressions at the table. Darius and Jace seemed to be deep in thought. Khalid and Ryder appeared bored. Cedric wasn’t giving anything away at all. Kylan’s focus was on his mate. Ismerelda seemed to be the focal point of Damien’s attention.

And Hazel… was staring over my shoulder.

At Keys.

He’d chosen to stand behind me even though the chair beside me was open. I probably should have told him he could sit, but I’d thought it was implied.

I glanced back at him. “You can sit.”

“I’m okay, thank you,” he replied.

“They’re not going to bite you,” I promised him. “You’re under my protection.”