Page 11 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

I lean close, lazily swiping my thumb across her bottom lip with a predatory grin on my lips.

“Remember that when you try to love me again.”

I’d told myself for years that all I’d wanted was to shatter the light in her eyes. Smother it out with my hands around her throat. Who knew this was what would do the trick.

It flutters away into the darkness, and I want to keep it. That last good piece in her, tucked away inside of a jar. But it’s gone before I have the chance to savor it.

Even though this is exactly what I wanted, had been wanting, I don’t feel triumphant. Power doesn’t lace through my veins.

I just feel damp.

And I despise the look on her face, the one I’d purposely put there.

Vacant, unmoving, hiding.

But I was left with no other choice.

She shoves my hand out of her face, her jaw grinding, eyes slit and narrowed, glaring at me like prey. Her hands are balled up into tight fists at her sides, and I think she might actually try to kill me.

Good, I want to praise.Protect yourself from me—you need it more than anyone.

“Then why come back? If not for us, then what, your ego?”

My laugh is cold, lacking humor.

“Don’t act so surprised, pet. You know who I am. It’s all about my ego.”

I’d thought Colin here was her final cut for the night, but she quickly shows me that she isn’t finished making others bleed.

“After all these years, you’re still chasing your daddy’s approval.”

I feel the sting immediately, her knife hitting right on target, and she knows it, standing in front of me with a stilled spine. I’m standing toe to toe with my mirror.

Gone is docile, loving Lyra Abbott. She is tucked away, and in her place stands something far more bloodthirsty. I doubt the little girl who once went by Scarlett even exists.

I want to tell her that if Henry saw me right now, he’d deny my genes. He’d know exactly why I’d gone off the grid to hunt his copycat killer, and it sadly had nothing to do with my ego.

My father would be disgusted by me.

Yet, I remain quiet, even as she begins digging a hole in her backyard for a body to fill.

I stand there in silence, holding on to the acceptance that, yes, Henry gave her the trauma that birthed a curiosity, planted the seed of morbid desire. A hunger. A craving.

But it wasn’t my father that turned Lyra into a monster.

It was me.

TRAITOR

FOUR

Thatcher

Alistair Caldwell is known to think with his fists first. Fighting is a calling card for a neglected boy who turned into a vicious man.

As his fist collides with my jaw, delivering a solid blow to the side of my face, I almost feel empathy for all the people who’d taken beatings from him in the past.

Almost.