Page 37 of Protected by the Vampire

I didn’t stand alone either. Everyone would know I had the Blackwood brothers and Dashiel at my back.

“Please,” he begged. “I lo?—”

I didn’t let him finish. Didn’t let him breathe another second of air I owned.

There was no pause. I felt no hesitation or flicker of doubt.

I dug my fingers in and pulled.

Bone tore.

Flesh split.

And his head came clean off his body.

Blood sprayed hot across my hand as his body collapsed in a useless heap at my feet. The sound of it hitting the floor echoed louder than it should have.

Or maybe everything else had just gone silent because no one moved.

It even seemed people were holding their breath.

Maybe it was because power still crackled under my skin, begging for me to end more lives. It wanted destruction and to give punishment.

Then, when I turned and saw him, everything stopped.

There was no fear in his eyes or in the way he held his body.

But there was something burning within his gaze.

Something I wanted to understand.

My chest tightened as an unfamiliar, vicious pressure clawed its way through me.

I could have lost him.

My grip loosened, and Patrick’s severed head dropped from my hand like it didn’t mean anything, and that was because it didn’t.

Nothing mattered but him.

And that should have made it easy to move to him, but it didn’t.

I stood there, rooted in place, staring at Theo. I could have lost him.

Adrenaline still burned through me.

He’d seen me tear a man’s head clean off.

My gaze dropped to my hands. Blood coated them. Sticky. Drying in places. I flexed my fingers slowly, and for the first time since the fight ended, doubt crept in.

He now might see me as I truly am.

A monster.

When I heard Theo move, I looked up as he stepped toward me, and everything in me reacted; every instinct pulled at me to get closer him, pushed at me to meet him halfway, to feel the warmth of his embrace.

But I didn’t move.

Couldn’t.