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Kaden slurped his drink obnoxiously loud. “What do I get?”
My muscles screamed with effort. “What do you want?”
“You know, I love love.” He tapped his finger against his glass. “So easy to manipulate.”
Sweat formed on my head, my feet slipping as Xavier strained against my hold.
“Xavier, put your blade away, and have a seat, please.”
Just like that, a switch flipped. Xavier’s blade withdrew into his ring, and he retook his seat, doing exactly what Kaden commanded. I dropped my hands, my heart beating wildly.
Kaden chuckled. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” he asked, nodding toward Xavier. “Seeing the one you love the most completely under the spell of another. It burns your gut, makes your heart race.”
“Is this some sick fucking game to you? Is this payback because you can’t have Dianna?”
“You and I are a lot alike, Cameron.”
“No, we aren’t.”
“We bury ourselves in others because we cannot have the one we truly want. We don’t feel worthy of them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Kaden smiled. “Don’t you?” He leaned back in his seat and gestured toward my empty chair. “Did you ever tell him why Kryella sent his entire unit to that desolate planet?”
Guilt and fear twisted through me. Kaden patted the seat near him and filled my glass again. Against my will, I sat.
“How do you know about that?”
“I know a lot of things, especially the guilt that eats away at your soul. Why do you think you aren’t good enough for him? You feel guilty for the family he lost, the sister he lost, but it wasn’t your fault. You only followed orders. Athos’s orders, right?”
I picked up my drink and downed it in one gulp.
“You try to drown your guilt with lovers and jokes, but the truth is you’re just as much of a monster as I.”
“What do you want?” I asked again, setting the empty glass down.
“I want you with me, and I think you’ll follow my rules willingly, too. You know why?”
My fingers traced the ridges on the glass. “Why?”
“Because you love him. You see, as I said, I love love. And I think you love him so much you’d do anything for him. Am I right?”
“I’ll ask again, what do you want?”
Kaden looked at me. “It’s not what I want. It’s what you will want, and you will have to want it for it to work. I think you will comply once you learn what’s coming. I think you will do anything to keep him safe.”
He raised his wrist to his mouth, his lips curling back, exposing canines, sharp and deadly. I knew what was coming, yet I let him force his blood upon me. My very soul seemed to burn. It screamed as I swallowed, and then there was nothing but absolute darkness. My last thought was of him. It was always him.
Eighty-Five
Dianna
“... time has run out.”
My body jerked up, yanking me from my sleep. I blinked, trying to get my eyes adjusted. The memory of the voice echoed in my head before disappearing completely. I rubbed a hand over my eyes and took a shaky breath. What was that?
I reached for Samkiel but came up empty-handed. Right, he was off mind walking with a super-powered deity who was also his ex. Sighing, I folded my hands in my lap and blew a strand of hair from my face. What could have woken me up so aggressively? I’d run around the whole damn perimeter of the castle until my legs and body gave out and then fallen so deeply asleep that I hadn’t even dreamed last night.
