Chapter 35
Hearing those words from Eric was a breath of cool relief, and years of wound-up fury seeped from me in an instant.
He knew who I was.
I shut my eyes, feeling it fall away. In its wake were hatred and madness. In its wake was the person who would do anything to protect her.
“You should be dead,” Eric stammered.
“If I were dead, wouldn’t sickness have consumed your precious pack lead by now?”
“We thought…” He trailed off, a spark of uncertainty in his eyes as if he didn’t think he should say what he had been about to.
“What?” I asked. “What did you think?”
“That maybe when you died, it cured him.”
I sneered. So willing to believe what was convenient for them.
“What do you want from me?” Eric asked.
“I want you to tell me where she is.”
His eyes darted to the door, and I realised my mistake. He was terrified of what would happen if he gave me what I wanted. “Look, we can figure this out. If this is about making fools of us?—?”
“Making fools of you? You think that’s what we care about?” My voice was hateful as I slammed him against the wall again.
“Hold up,” he stammered. “This is about Flynn, n-not me. He’s the one with the sickness. He’s the one that needed the trials. I swear, I had nothing to do with it?—”
“You hurt her more than any of them, Eric.”
It was my darkest secret, the thing I had never admitted to her. The thing I should never have done. But this monster lurking, slowly stirring and lifting its head, it had won.
Then and now.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered.
“I know every mark you gave her.”
She’d let me in. Let me see those scars even when she had been hurt by them. It was a betrayal of her, but I’d spent so long examining them, fingers tracing her skin as she lay curled in my arms. And as if it was burned into my twisted, alpha instincts, I recognized the difference between each. She was mine to protect. “I know which bites were yours,” I breathed, clamping my hand over his mouth. He fought me, aura flaring, but nothing happened. “I knew you decided bites weren’t enough to make her suffer. You decided you wanted more. But she’s mine. She was never yours, and any teeth that touch her flesh, those are mine, too.”
My thumb pressed against his teeth, and his growl turned into a low whimper of pain. I pressed harder, and there was a sneer on my face as I cracked his perfect smile. As I dislodged a tooth and he let out a whine of agony.
Her scars weren’t all I’d seen. I’d betrayed her. The video they’d sent out to the whole school, I hadn’t been strong enough not to watch, not like Dusk and Ransom, that vicious part of me needing to know what it was I would punish.
What he’d taken from us. From Dusk. From her. I needed him to know the fear he’d given her.
I pressed my palm over his mouth, my lips drawn in a snarl.
“Swallow it.”
His eyes widened and I could feel the hot blood sliding between as he tried to spit it out. I crushed him harder against the wall as he fought.
“I said, swallow it.”
I smothered his mouth and nose, relishing the strangled sounds coming from his chest, the terror in his eyes as he fought me and got nowhere. As his air began to run out.
I waited until his struggles became more desperate, but still, his strength was nothing compared to mine.
I knew when he had done it because he almost choked. I waited another few seconds to make sure, and when I let him go, he buckled, blood still pouring from his mouth.
“Now,” I said again. “Tell me where she is.”