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“Too far forward.” I checked the date on my phone. “By a couple days.”

“I’ll try again. Hang tight.” He disconnected, and I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my dove lying fucking lifeless, brutally slaughtered on the cold ground.

What the fuck had happened here?

Clayton started toward me, stopping several feet away, still behind the safety of the ward.

“I’m going to kill you,” I growled.

“Why the fuck do you care? You left her.” His lips curled up. “She called for you, you know, and you never came.”

She’d called for him. He roared in fury, in pain.

Clayton’s expression darkened. “Then she forced me to stab her, ruining my plans. That won’t stop me, though.” He glanced back. “We didn’t even get to consummate the wedding…although, she’d still be warm. Would it be wrong if I…”

“You will know what it feels like to have your limbs torn from your torso.”

“Oh, I’d like to see you try that.” Clayton frowned.

I looked down at my hands, I was fading. I looked back up at Clayton and grinned, then I was gone.

I was back in Willow’s bedroom, and again, she wasn’t there. I exploded out of the room. Same fucking night. Only it had to be earlier because the house was still on fucking fire. I looked in the open doors of the bedrooms as I bolted for the stairs—empty—then exploded through the fire and sprinted outside.

Clayton fucking Whitlock was about to die.

* * *

Willow

Clayton stood behind our ward surrounding the cemetery, unable to pass or get to us. He held Mags tight and pressed his lips to her cheek, looking at me. “I had a feeling you’d flake on me, Wills, had to have a backup plan. And she made it so easy for me, she came right to me all on her own.” He nuzzled my baby sister. “Meet my fiancée.”

Mags was shaking, and she tried to wrench away. “Oh, no you don’t,” Clayton said.

Her lips trembled. “I-I’m so sorry, Willow,” she said. “Rose…I just…I wanted to help Rose…” Tears streamed down her face.

She’d broken her blood vow to Rose to try to save our sister.

Clayton smiled and looked at Cora. “I told you I could do it. I told you I could get you what you wanted.”

Cora smiled. “Yes, you did. I’ll admit, I underestimated you. But you’ve more than proven yourself worthy of my Emily.”

Emily? What the fuck was she talking about? “Let Magnolia go,” I said. “Please, just let her go.”

“Why would I do that?” Clay said. “She belongs to me now. Through her, I have access to all of this. What’s hers will be mine, and all that. And seeing as she’ll be the only member of this line of the Thornheart family left alive by the end of tonight, it means we get it all, right, Cora?”

Cora was watching him, eyes calculating. “Right.”

“We’ve treated you and your little shit of a grandson like family, and this is how you repay us?” Else said to Cora, disgust lining her face.

I looked from Cora to Clay. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I deserve it; I deserve power and respect,” Clay said, eyes bright with fury. “My parents treated me like I was nothing my whole fucking life. I was a disappointment, not powerful enough for them, not smart enough. The handsome idiot, the face of the family business, but nothing more. No one respected me because of the way my own parents treated me. I should have been in charge of the company. I should have taken over from that fucking prick after I killed him, not her. Now I’ll show them, I’ll show everyone.”

“You killed your father?” I asked, but I knew the answer, it was written all over his deranged face.

“He was weak, and he’d ruined my life.”

He sounded like a spoiled child. “And what about your mother and her familiar, did you kill them as well?”