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Lysandra lifts a hand up to gingerly touch the arrow’s sharp point.
“God’s, I’ve been wanting to stake you for so long you hateful bitch!” Yesenia says as she comes up beside her, holding a recurve bow and quiver filled with more arrows.
“What have you done!” Alaric cries as he pushes through the fray to where his mate has sunk to her knees.
A deathly silence falls over the room and the vampires that had, moments ago, been circling, quickly fall back. I search the room for my brother and Mercy, only to realize that they have disappeared as well. Slowly, my beast retreats and I’m left standing in my shredded suit.
Lysandra is breathing with sharp, shallow pants as she collapses against her mate’s chest. Before our eyes, her skin turns to the color of gray clay.
“No. Lys, no!” Alaric sobs, cradling her in his arms even as she crumbles into a pile of soft ash. When she’s nothing but dust, he snaps his head to Isabelle.
“You!” he shouts, lunging to his feet and stalking towards her. “This is all your fault.”
Shaking off my shock at what’s just happened, I move to Isabelle’s side, putting myself between her and her irate sire.
“You were meant for one thing.One fucking thing, and instead you betray me and your entire faction! You ungrateful slut—” Alaric freezes when Yesenia steps in behind him. She’s much shorter, but it’s obvious that she has another arrow nocked and pressed to his back, just over his heart.
“That’s enough,” she says quietly. “Although I really hope you give me a reason to send you straight to hell, to be with your mate.”
“This is a coven matter,” Alaric snaps without taking his eyes from Isabelle, “It doesn’t concern anyone but me and my daughter. Now unhand me, so we may leave and handle this elsewhere.”
The way Isabelle stiffens behind me makes me realize there is more behind his words than she’s told me. Seeing the interaction with her parents, it’s not hard to guess at what has really been going on.
“Isabelle is my mate,” I tell the vampire alpha. “She is not some errant child you can bring to heel with a snap of your fingers.”
“Luka, don’t,” she whispers at my back even as her fingers clutch at my tattered jacket.
I ignore her. This ends now.
“She is not a means to your power trip. She is not your pawn,” I’m speaking to Alaric, but my words are also meant for Isabelle. “And even though she’s my mate, that doesn’t give me any kind of power over her. It gives her my protection. My strength.” I turn so I can look at her and softly add, “And my love.”
Alaric scoffs and I bring my attention back to him. “Do you deny that you tried to use her to gain access to the Alpha? Thatyou were willing to take out our Alpha’s mated female and son and put Isabelle in her place?”
Alaric’s eyes narrow on me and I know that my guess is correct. There are gasps all around the room and Yesenia presses the arrow deeper into Alaric’s back, making him hiss.
“Those are brazen assumptions,” he scoffs.
“Yes. That’s exactly what he planned,” Isabelle says, stepping out from behind me to stand at my side.
My heart swells with pride and when I look over at her I can’t hold back my smile. She’s not paying me any attention though. Her eyes are narrowed and glaring at her father.
“He and my mother threatened me with a lifetime of torture, if I did not follow through with their plans to put me at Jarik’s side.”
More rumbling echoes through the ballroom. It doesn’t escape my notice that the vampire faction that is left is slinking deeper into the shadows.
“Before Jarik, they pushed me on Marcus. Before Marcus, it was Petar, and so on.”
My stomach sours. “You were still a kit when Petar was Alpha,” I mutter. The sad look she turns on me is enough to want to put Yesenia’s arrow through Alaric myself.
“Your father didn’t want me, for obvious reasons, but I was punished severely for my failure.” Isabelle’s voice is soft, her words only meant for my ears.
My head snaps to Yesenia who is watching me. I nod.
She steps back and without any hesitation lets the arrow fly straight through where Alaric’s heart would be, if he had one.
8
ISABELLE
