Page 72 of Cryptic Dreams

Atticus’s thugs are resilient, I’ll give them that.

“And where do you think you’re going?”

I slowly get to my feet and watch him fiddle with the holster under his jacket before producing a gun that he aims at me with a shaking hand. “Don’t… don’t come any closer.”

Raising my hands in surrender, I take one step in his direction, and tilt my head with a tsk. “Really now. Threatening the heir to the High Elder’s throne? In his own home, no less. That’s an offense punishable by death.”

“Stop!” he shouts as he tries to bear weight on his very broken leg. “I mean it, don’t come any closer. I don’t want to… I don’t want to shoot you.”

“No? But isn’t that why you came here in the first place? To take me out after a failed attempt the other night?”

The male pauses, clearly searching for the response that’s least likely to get him killed, but it’s useless.

Useless because I’m too far gone, too heartbroken, too bloody fucking hurt to do anything other than kill him.

My pain, my insane ideations of a bright future with my mate as the most intense point of warmth and light, myhopes and dreamsI didn’t know I had were crushed thanks to the likes of him, and death is the only penance.

Death to this berk.

Death to my sire.

Death to the entire counsel and the fucked up government they use to keep us in line.

I may have been completely daft for thinking Zephyr and I could live as they do in fairytales, but…

I just shake my head, flick the fingers of my right hand and send his gun sailing through the air while flexing the fingers of my left and bringing this male’s throat right to my palm.

“Areyoumated, old chap?”

His hands come up to mine, nails clawing at my skin as I begin to squeeze the life from him. “Y-yes.”

“Pity.” My right hand moves to the collar of his shirt where I grip and tear down the front. “It might have saved you if you were not, though I can’t say for sure.”I can because it wouldn’t.“The mate bond makes us do crazy things, think silly thoughts.” I poke the center of his sternum before tracing a path right over his thundering heart. “The mate bond makes us bloody daft, if you ask me, so bloody stupid we forget all about self preservation; of what’s best forus, and think only of our fated one.”

Which is exactly how I wound up here to begin with.

Completely daft, that’s what I was.

And instead of handling it in a way that I suppose would have been more thoughtful, more considerate and less hurtful, I went to the extreme as I usually do and completely crushed the most perfect goddess to ever walk the earth.

And that just pisses me off.

I search the male’s face briefly before leaning in close. “You see, I wasn’t able to mate my gentle breeze, wasn’t able to claim her the way the Gods of Old intended, and instead I destroyed her in an attempt to protect her.” With the tips of my fingers, I begin to push into this asshole’s chest cavity at an ungodly slow pace. “I had to protect her from the likes of you, from my bastard father, from everything and everyone that would too quickly try to take her away from me. I ruined a goddess, my fuckingmate, and I did it because of—”

“Wraith!” My head whips toward the doorway as Zephyr shouts my name and slams the ornate wooden door then proceeds to stomp through the foyer. “Wraith, you asshole, I can feel you in the house. Show yourself, you…”

She comes to a screeching halt as she appears in my line of sight, Zephyr’s brows up under her bangs, golden eyes wide while she surveys the wreckage in the sitting room.

And though my heart leaps at the vision before me, my anger flares to life again, hot and searing under my skin. “What in the bloody hell are you doing here,mate?”

Zephyr’s eyes snap to mine and I make sure they stay locked on me as I shove my hand through Atticus’s soldier’s chest and grip his heart. And even though she watches, her eyes narrow while she does. “You trashed your fucking house.”

“Observant.”

“And you’re killing people?”

I rip my fist from the male’s sternum, his heart desperately trying to pump in my hand as his body drops to the floor with a thud. “What gave it away?”

“Why?”