Page 163 of Lured By Shadows

The thought tightened painfully inside my chest.

“You want me to speak it aloud?” he asked quietly, his eyes darkening with something I couldn’t fully name. Hunger, devotion, or violence. They all bled together inside him until they became indistinguishable.

“I want the truth,” I said, steadier than I felt. “Did you have to do it? Kill them?”

The question lingered thickly between us.

I’d only seen the photos for a second, barely more than a flash over Sienna’s shoulder before she’d yanked her phone away in horror, but it had been enough.

More than enough.

The images were burned permanently behind my eyes now: limbs twisted at impossible angles, bodies sprawled like discarded dolls, flesh mutilated with grotesque purpose. But worse than the violence itself was the intention behind it. The message was carved into skin. The dismembered pieces were taped carefully back onto their foreheads like some ritualistic display.

And sitting here with Culver kneeling between my legs, staring at me like I was the only thing tethering him to sanity, I realized with sickening clarity that it had been personal.

Their dicks had been severed and then reattached.

Even now, the thought made my stomach churn violently.

Culver hadn’t simply killed them.

He had unmade them.

Reduced them down to the ugliest, most pathetic pieces of themselves and displayed the remains like a warning carved out of rage itself. Their bodies hadn’t just been murdered. They had been transformed into a statement.

It should have repulsed me completely. It did. And yet—

“Yes,” he said simply, lifting one hand to cup my cheek. The same hand that had coaxed pleasure out of me with unbearable patience now rested against my skin after tearing human bodies apart without hesitation. “They had to pay with their lives for what they tried to do to you.”

I leaned into his touch, like it was the only thing that seemed right. The hand should have felt monstrous against my skin. It should have made revulsion claw through me.

Instead, it soothed something raw and panicked inside my chest, quieting the terror that had been screaming through my body since that night.

I searched his face desperately for some fracture beneath the surface. A flicker of guilt, doubt, or regret.

There was nothing. Only terrible serenity.

The kind carried by gods and monsters alike. The certainty that his violence had been righteous.

I knew I should have been afraid of him. I should have pulled away, screamed at him, and hurled every ugly word I possessed straight into his face. I should have recoiled from the blood staining his soul.

But I didn’t. Because I wanted him too much.

Even now, with the corpses of my enemies practically lingering between us, I still wanted him. The pull between us had become something primal and deeply wrong in ways I didn’t even have language for, and somehow that only made it feel more real. His presence steadied me. His voice quieted the chaos in my mind. His eyes pinned every shattered thought back into place until breathing felt possible again.

“But did you really have to?” I asked softly, the words barely making it past the knot tightening in my throat.

Even while saying it, I already knew the answer.

He didn't need to do anything. He could have walked away. He could have left their sins to rot beneath the weight of time and human consequence. He didn’t need to hunt them down. Didn’t need to touch them.

But he had wanted to. He wanted to kill them.

Maybe it was the vampire in him. The ancient thing beneath the human exterior, the part of him I was still wrapping my head around. I didn’t understand him at all, but I knew I wanted every aspect of him. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

I thought of Rupert and the way he looked at people sometimes, like they were insects crawling beneath his shoes. Things to toy with. Things to discard.

And Culver…