Page 13 of Pucked Around and Found Out

How the fuck is any of this okay?

How can she sit there wearing my jersey, pregnant, and tell me it's okay that I'm about to carve her apart?

Fucking slice the bitch! Do it! Make her pay!

The voice in my head is screaming but my hand is shaking.

I press the tip of the scalpel into the side of her neck, right where her pulse flutters like a trapped bird. I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches, forcing all thoughts from my mind, willing the numbness to come back and wash over me.

But it doesn't.

I dig the blade in just enough to draw a single drop of blood. It wells up, crimson and perfect, then slides down the pale column of her throat.

Her eyes twitch. She flinches, barely, just a micro-movement but still she doesn't pull away. Doesn't scream.

Doesn't give me what I need.

The blood drips and I suddenly envision my sister’s pendant around her neck. She wore it every day without fail until the night of the bonfire.

Something inside me breaks.

My sister's necklace, stained with Toren's blood.

The symbolism is too much. Too heavy. Too fucking real.

“Do it,” Toren whispers again, her voice steady despite the tear that escapes down her cheek. “I know you need this. So do it.”

But I can't.

God fucking help me, I can't.

Because pressing that blade deeper means admitting that I've become exactly what I swore I'd never be. It means crossing a line I can never uncross.

It means killing the girl pregnant with my kid.

Killing the girl I⁠—

No.

No.

I don't love her. I can't love her. Love is weakness and I can't afford to be weak.

But my hand is still shaking and the scalpel isn't moving and everyone in this warehouse is watching me fail.

“Xaden.” Cas's voice cuts through the chaos in my head. “You don't have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” I rasp. “She's one of them. She's⁠—”

“She's pregnant with your kid,” Cas says quietly. “And she just watched you beat her brother half to death without looking away once. What more do you need from her?”

Everything.

I need everything.

“She needs to pay,” I grit out.

“For what?” Toren's voice is so soft I almost miss it. “For being born into the wrong family? For loving a brother who turned out to be a monster? For falling in love with you?”