Page 105 of Mate of a Monster

“Good. Hope it chokes you.”

“I threw you into a wall.” The Nightkin shifts inside my chest at Legend’s self-punishing tone. “I watched them come for you and I did nothing.”

“I remember.” I hiss, glaring. “I was there.”

The Nightkin fucking purrs like a kitten.

“I think I hate you,” I tell him. “Truly fucking hate you.”

Regret cracks his expression for a blink, then a dark smirk spreads over his face. “Mmm. You said that already.”

I laugh, a sarcastic dying tone. “Actually, I fucking—” I stop. Wait. I didn’t say that out loud. There’s no way he can hear my thoughts—

The Nightkin cackles enough to rattle my ribs.

Legend fists my collar and pulls me close, stopping when his lips brush mine. “There is a way, and yeah, Hellpet.” He drags my bottom lip between his teeth before whispering, “I fucking can.”

There’s no tenderness in his kiss, no softness, just teeth and heat and the taste of the blood still coating his lips.

I bite down, drawing a groan from his mouth. His hands lock on my waist hard, yanking me flush against him, and heat detonates through the bond until my vision whites out.

For one heartbeat, exactly one, it feels right.

His mouth opens against mine and he breathes me in like he’s been suffocating for months. The Nightkin surges inside my chest, thrashing with recognition of his owner.

One heartbeat.

Then my hand finds the hilt.

My dagger. The one I carried from Exile and lost at the ball. The blade that’s drawn more blood than I can account for is tucked into the back of his jeans.

Because I didn’t lose it. He took it.

He kept it.

Kept me with him. All this time.

Creed’s words come back to me, and my heart fucking hurts with longing. But the bond? The bond damn near purrs. Proud of our mate.

I void my head of all coherent thought, replacing it with noise, numbers, iron on my tongue, grit in my teeth, until all he hears is static and heat.

My fingers close around the hilt of the dagger, and the weight of it settles into my palm like a homecoming.

I drive it into the back of his skull without breaking the kiss.

Bone pops under steel and heat floods my mouth.

He smirks against me before stumbling backward, blood spilling from his lips as his knees start to give.

I just buried three inches of steel into the man I’d die for. Kill for.

His eyes turn bone-white, and the bond refuses to break , writhing through me like a living wire.

Shadows prowl through my chest, leaving their owner’s talon prints all through it. The Nightkin.

Good girl.

I don’t feel like a good girl. I’ve killed thousands, but this… My throat tightens as Legend begins to fall.