Page 111 of Map of Pain

“Your maker told him to cut my fucking throat,”Nick snarled.

“Wesavedyou,“Shaw insisted, his grip tightening.“From a monster who was keeping you in a box, carving you up for fun. We gave you purpose.”

“You’re a fucking rapist and a hypocrite,”Nick spat.

Shaw’s face hardened.“I still believe in the mission. Get rid of vampires. Leave no room for quarter.”

“You killed innocent people!”Nick’s voice cracked with fury.“Haley and Alexei, all those neutral hunters—”

“I killed collaborators,”Shaw cut him offcoldly.

Nick felt a memory click into place, back when he had been confined to a hospital bed and unable to speak. Shaw told him about his wife and child, casualties that were simply random acts of violence by young vampires that drove Shaw to hunt in the first place. The tragedy thatsupposedlymotivated everything.

“And what would your dead wife and child think about you now, Shaw?”Nick asked, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Would they approve of this mission? Of all the collaborators you have now made by continuing to exist?”

Shaw’s face wentblank. For one crucial moment, his grip loosened.

Nick drove his forehead up into Shaw’s nose with everything he had. Cartilage crunched, blood sprayed, and Shaw stumbled back.

Nick spun the bread knife in his grip and drove the pronged end deep into Shaw’s side, the serrated edge tearing through fabric and flesh. Shaw’s howl echoed through the kitchen as Nick dropped low and rolled away from his grasp.

Shaw snarled, blood dripping from his ruined nose.“You want to play like that? Fine.”

Nick came up in a crouch near the kitchen entrance, calculating angles and distances.Don’t watch where he is,the hunter reminded him,watch where he’s going to be.

Shaw was faster, stronger, but Nick trained to fight vampires. The first lesson: anticipate their movements, cut off their options, force them into predictable patterns.

“Do the others know?”Nick called out, backing toward the dining area.“Do they know their leader is a monster and a rapist?”

“Stop calling me that!”Shaw lunged forward, but Nick was already reading his trajectory.

Kitchen door’s too narrow,Nick calculated.Need open ground. More room to maneuver.

He feigned a stumble to the left, letting Shaw commit to intercepting him there, then jerked right at the last second. The bread knife slashed through the air as Shaw rushed past, catching him across the forearm and opening another line of red.

Shaw spun with inhuman speed, but Nick was already moving again, putting the prep counter between them as he backed away.

“Enough!”Shaw roared, his composurecrackingcompletely.“If you don’t do what we trained you to do, we’ll find a softer, more malleable replacement for you while you sit in a box for time out for the next year.”

The threat hit Nick like ice water. Another box. Another victim to break and reshape. Someone else suffering like he did.

Never again,all three voices said in perfect unison.Not to anyone.

Shaw’s smile turned predatory as he saw Nick’s resolve falter.“I heard your brother is a good fighter. How long do you think he’ll hold out before he fractures? Hmm?”

The words stopped Nick dead in his tracks. Images flashed through his mind—Caleb’s scarred face, his gentle nature, the way he’d forgiven Nick for everything. The Society getting their hands on someone sofundamentallygood.

Shaw’s smile widened as he saw the effect of his words.“We can avoid all that nastiness if you just behave. You remember how to behave, right, Nicholas? We can leave your brother alone. Hell, we can leave all those deluded vampires down there alone, if you just come back to the Society. You were our best. We need you.”

He’s lying,the hunter voice saidimmediately.He’ll never leave them alone.This is manipulation.

But what if he’s not? What if Caleb gets hurt because we fought back?

Caleb would rather die than see us enslaved again.

But the fear was real, visceral. The thought of his brother in Owen’s hands, in Shaw’s hands, being broken the way he had been broken.

“Why does it have to be me?”Nick asked, his voice smaller than he intended.