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ChapterTwenty-One
“One of your many boyfriends decided he was done with you?” Heath Connor leaned against the wall, hands tucked into his pockets. “Don’t worry, I know how desperate you are for dick, so I’ll be happy to fill in. Get it? See what I did there?”
My tears evaporated in an instant.
First of all, he was disgusting. Second, I loved a good dirty joke, and he had just ruined them for me forever. And third, I wondered if I was strong enough to hold back the large men on either side of me.
As soon as Heath had spoken, they had tensed, ready to spring at the threat.
The real question was if I wanted to hold them back.
The answer was an emphatic no.
“You know, I spent the last few weeks thinking about you. Thinking about how you’ve done nothing but ruin things for me since the moment you got here. I wondered how I could pay you back for all of that.” He pushed off the wall and stood straight. I looked him over cautiously. I had underestimated him once. Never again.
“Pay me back? Pay me back? What in the hell have I done that deserves any kind of payback from you?”
“Well, killing me comes to mind.”
“Hmm, let me think, if someone is trying to rape me and I kill them, am I in the wrong? I’m thinking not.”
“Oh please, there was no rape. You wanted it. You’d been flirting with me since the second I found you alone in that hallway.”
“Not only is that a revolting lie, even if I had, flirting doesn’t give you the go-ahead to try to stick your hand in a woman’s pants. Especially when she’s screaming ‘no.’”
I could practically feel Remy and Darrio vibrating with rage beside me, Sam at my back. Honestly, it was a miracle they hadn’t already pounced, but I was glad for it. I needed to handle this on my own.
“Say what you want, pretty girl, but I think we both know the truth. I suppose we can always ask Varon to come back. Oh, but then he doesn’t seem to want anything to do with you anymore, now does he?”
I clenched my fists beside me, heat rising in my chest and that dark ball of energy flaring to life inside me.
“Ooh, don’t like that, do you? I told you I’d been thinking about you. I realized the best way to get back at you wasn’t by hurting you. It was by taking away what you love.” The vicious glee on his face was hard to look at. “I never got the chance to make you forget what happened between us, so I made him forget.”
I reeled from the depth of Heath’s deviousness. If it hadn’t just ripped out a piece of my heart, I may have even complimented him on just how fucking diabolical he was.
“You didn’t.” The whispered denial came out on its own. I already knew what Heath said was true. I’d just experienced the brutal evidence, but my heart refused to accept it.
“Oh, I did. One down, three to go. I wonder just how desperate you’ll be when all of your little boyfriends cut you off because they don’t even know who you are.”
The threat made my blood run cold. He’d already proven he could do it with Varon. What was to stop him from doing it to the others? Remy would be nothing but a shadow in my dreams again, and Darrio’s walls would be ten feet tall, utterly unbreachable. Sam had cared for me right off the bat, but who knew if things would go the same way when he had to get to know me all over again?
And what if he made me forget? What if he took away every memory I had of my men and what we’d come to mean to each other? My skin prickled as energy hummed through my blood.
“I can already see what you’re thinking, but don’t worry, your memories will remain intact.” He stepped closer, his bravado increasing with our inaction. “You have to remember everything that I’ve taken from you. When you go to bed cold and lonely, I want you to know exactly what’s missing, and that they’re not thinking about you.”
I could barely make out Heath’s features in front of me, my vision blurring through a mix of unshed tears and the haziness of pure, unadulterated fury. He could take everything from me. This place had already stolen my family, my sense of self, my choices. And now, this pathetic bastard was going to try to take away the new life I was creating. And who was to say he would stop with the guys? He’d probably go after River and Rocky next, chipping away at my support system until I was well and truly alone.
“It’s too bad you kept fucking up and breaking the rules. Otherwise, you may have been able to do something about it. But since the headmistress is already on your ass, there’s no way you’ll dare lay a finger on me. Enjoy your time with them while you can. How about I promise you a week before I take the next one?”
I couldn’t let that happen. I had to stop him. Do something before he could steal everything that mattered to me, all because I’d dared to reject his advances. He didn’t deserve his power, not if he was going to abuse it like his. He shouldn’t be allowed out into the human world when school was over just so he could make them miserable, too. Someone had to end this.
Ihad to end him.
The steadily increasing buzz of my power had reached a fever pitch without me even noticing it. Remy had, though. His hand clutched mine tight enough to grind bone together, but I couldn’t look at him. No, all my focus was for the waste of life in front of me. He didn’t deserve to be here. He didn’t deserve to be.
Without any direct thought from me, that taut band of my power inside me snapped. One second, Heath stood before me, smirking in presumed victory. The next, he was screaming in agony.
This was different from my first night here, when my power had burst out to protect me from his assault. Fear wasn’t fueling me.
