Page 168 of Jagged Souls

I can’t heal and leave her behind.

Cradling my belly in my arms, I scream on broken sobs.

June 26 1907, St. Augustine, Florida – Antonio

I have fallen asleep to the screams of men dying. I have pulled shrieks from the mouths of many, cutting them into pieces, torturing them without a care. I have ignored the cries of pups as I slaughtered their parents. But hearing her whimpers, her moans of pain as she thrashes in bed –

I cannot bear it.

“Siome,please!” I beg as I hold her, wrapping my arms and legs around her. She fights me as I try to raise a bottle to her lips. “You need to drink something!” She needs to eat too. She’s a bag of bones, wasting away, refusing anything that isn’t V. I don’t know how long it’s been since she’s had a proper meal, don’t know how long she’s suffered in that witch’s den, but it’s been three days since I rescued her, and she hasn’t eaten a damn thing.

“So give me V!” she shouts. Then she jerks her head and bites me in the wrist, her canines digging deep. I clench my teeth in pain, but I don’t try to shove her off. At least blood is something. It has to be better than nothing.

She releases me quickly enough on her own anyways, screaming for me to let her go. To let her run back to the men who “really love me.” Who “actually care.”

I want to go back and kill them all over again. I want to raise them from the dead and take my time.

But I’m terrified if I leave her, she’ll find a way to kill herself – or leave to find more V. The Shadow Domain has hundreds, if not thousands, of drug dens over their territory, and the Mattos twins have suppliers all over the world. If she can’t get it in St. Augustine, she’ll just keep moving until she can.

A fist bangs on my door. “Antonio –” My Boss shouts over the screams of my only treasure. I can smell his alpha scent, the power he’s trying to push out to bring me to heel.

My head whips in his direction, shifting into that of my wolf. A feral snarl rips from my throat, shaking the walls, and his fear permeates the place even through the closed door.

He might be an alpha, but he knows I can kill him. That the only reason I haven’t is because I haven’t had a reason to. But for her, I will. I’ll kill them all and damn every other innocent caught in the bloodbath afterwards.

I’m never leaving her again. Never trusting her safety to someone else. I trusted the gods, and look what they have done to her.

Because of me.

Because I was too greedy and selfish, keeping a piece of her with me, keeping her light shining in the darkness I had wrapped around my shoulders.

“You know what will happen if you stay with her,” Oscar says, trying for authoritative but sounding too damn scared. “The gods will see this as an act of defiance. They could kill us all. Let someone else –”

I shift back into my human form so I can speak. “Let. Them.Come.”

I hold Siome close as she shrieks herself hoarse. I keep trying to coax her to drink the water; she keeps trying to demand I give her V.

That’s the only thing she wants.

She used to only ever want me.

“Siome, please,” I murmur in her ear. “Come back to me.”

“Go away! I hate you! Ihateyou!”

I release her, my chest cracking open to leave my heart bare to the crows, but I’m not giving up. I’ll never give up on her. Stepping quickly from the room, I go to grab a vial of V I have hidden at the back of a kitchen cupboard.

Disgust twists my stomach as my fingers wrap around the small bottle of glass. Every two to four years, I am reduced to my primal urges, caught by the scent of a bitch in heat that I can’t refuse. So I take a Rick to make it more bearable to be inside someone who isn’t Siome, and I force the poor substitute to take a V.

But I’m always sickened with myself as soon as it’s over, so I kill them. Slowly. So they know they’re being punished for their sins and mine.

I slip the vial into my pocket, then head back into my bedroom. She’s on the bed, her fingers inside her. She did it as soon as I released her, trying to chase a poor man’s high. Tears fall down her cheeks. Frustration pants from her lips.

Feeling the hole in my heart spread, I dig into my pocket and pull out the V. As soon as I pop the cork, she freezes. Then her head snaps to me, and she scrambles off the bed to crawl across the floor, where she kneels at my feet.

“I’ll do anything you want, big daddy,” she says, and I flinch.

“Just close your eyes, little helfire,” I murmur, my tongue feeling thick in my mouth.