Page 41 of Claimed

His face swims before me, features shifting between the creature holding me now and the man who once held me captive in a different way.

I’m going to die here, at the hands of a ghost. At the hands of my past. His fangs are slick with saliva.

He’s going to rip my throat out and I’m going to let him.

But then something moves deep inside me. The rage I felt when I sensed his presence outside the mansion is back. Years of suppressed fury that I never allowed myself to feel. Never allowed myself to express.

Not like this. Not like this.

The thought echoes through me, gaining strength with each repetition. I didn’t survive Steven’s abuse, didn’t find my power, didn’t discover my true nature just to die in his grip.

Deep within me, something breaks free.

And this time the shadows don’t just respond – they erupt. Not from the darkness around us, but from inside me, as if my very soul has cracked open to release them. They pour from my eyes, my mouth, from beneath my skin, a deluge of living darkness that engulfs everything.

Steven’s grip loosens as he’s thrown backward, his body contorting and snapping and breaking. The shadows wrap around him, but they don’t stop there. They spread outward in all directions, a tidal wave of darkness that devours everything in its path.

The walls creak. The floor trembles. The entire mansion seems to shudder under the onslaught of power surging from me. Above us, the glass ceiling cracks.

Splinters rain down on us.

I collapse to my knees, unable to control what I’ve unleashed. The shadows are no longer mine to command – they are commanding themselves, feeding on my rage, my fear, my pain. Growing stronger with each second.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear Kim, I see him crawling toward me. Glass is still falling. The metal beams that form the frame of the conservatory creak and bend. One falls, battering Lucien’s orchids. Another falls, destroying more of Lucien’s pride and joy.

Another falls.

Kim screams.

I want to help him. I want to shield him like I shielded myself but I don’t know how because too much is happening all at once and I’m not on the ground anymore. I’m rising higher. Higher.

And so is Steven.

Through it all, I see Steven. Suspended in front of me, arms splayed, completely naked. Mangled skin where his cock should be. Hollow chest where his heart should be.

The darkness doesn’t just envelop him – it unmakes him. Peels him apart layer by layer, molecule by molecule, until there’s nothing left.

And as he disappears. So do I.

20

Lucien

Renfield meets me at the tree line of the campsite. His shoulder’s been bitten, but it’s healing already and his shirt stinks of wolf blood.

He’s breathing hard and looks totally out of his depth.

“We’ve held the perimeter. No one has left the field – I put men on every exit the moment we arrived, sealed it tight. But we can’t push in without breaking the line, and they know it. They’re staying in the middle, in the tents, where the humans are.” Renfield grimaces. “The SDB will catch wind of this. They’ll be all over it. This many humans⁠—”

“If we stop it, they may look favourably on us. Overlook the fact we allowed it to happen in the first place.” I meet Renfield’s eyes as I say the word ‘we’ to make it very clear I blame him for this.

I look past him. Beyond the blockade of my men, the field is more chaos than slaughter. Humans are being chased. Tents ransacked. But I don’t smell as much blood as I expected to.

For fuck’s sake. My fangs itch with irritation.

This is for show.

Nix’s way of playing with me. Drawing attention to me, to my city, embarrassing me. Making the supers of Cambridge doubt my ability to keep control.