Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
“What does that even mean!” Anger true and burning clenched my throat. “We don’t have any business. We don’t have anything! If you hate me so much, why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone!”
Badr pushed between me and Orion, crowding my personal space. “You want us to leave you alone? It’s simple, Volana. Confess,” he hissed. “Confess to killing Hall. Confess the reason you killed my brother. And cough up the location of that girl on the other end of the phone.
“Do that, and we’ll never bother you again, because you’ll be buried too deep for us to find.”
“I didn’t kill Hall! I was standing right next to Orion when it happened. What more do you want?”
“I just told you,” he blared right back. “Give up that traitor, or get used to us showing the world what a pathetic, weak-ass psycho you really are!”
Frustration choked me. “You know what? Fine. Fine!” I shoved back, throwing up my hands. “You want to know where Lucia is? I’ll tell you. I’ll even give you her address right now.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes when I snatched a pen and notebook from Ava’s bag, and scrawled the address. Badr obviously didn’t think I’d give her up no matter what he did. But Lucia never needed protection from me.
I wrote the last letter, then flung it at him.
Badr snatched it out of the air, reading it eagerly. His triumphant grin quickly morphed into a scowl. “Wait— This town... Incepe Din. That’s— That’s a—”
“Vampire village! Ding, ding, ding,” I crowed, clenching his jaw. “There you have it, asshole. Lucia is a vampire living deep in vampire territory. Feel free to break the treaty and kick off a war just to go after her, but when I told Edric this information”—my fates, and my smirk, shone the spotlight on the tall, tense werewolf—“he thought better of that plan. I assume you will too.”
“It’s a lie!” Badr crumpled the note and threw it in my face. “No werewolf, not even one as vile as you, would ally with a vampire! More than that, no vampire would ally with a werewolf. They hate us. They hate our tainted blood. The leech would’ve killed you on sight!”
I snorted. “She tried, believe me. Lucia took quite a while to warm up to me. So long, it still hasn’t happened. But...” I shrugged. “In the end, there’s no such thing as enemies when there’s a bargain to be struck. I have something she wants. She has something I want. It’s a dysfunctional relationship but it work—”
Badr’s hand flashed out, throttling my throat. “Enough,” he gritted. “Fucking enough of your lies!”
I blinked lazily under his spittle.
“Tell me who and where she really is! Tell me now!”
All around us, our audience watched in stunned disbelief. No one was going to step in and stop this.
But one fucking should. My eyes narrowed on Edric. “This is the part where you open your mouth,” I rasped through my clenched throat. “Edric found out everything on Lucia a long time ago. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want me to tell everyone he breaks into girls’ rooms at night and sniffs their panties.”
“That’s not why!” Edric shouted.
“But you did know?” Orion shot back. “You knew about this chick the whole time and didn’t say anything?”
“Because I didn’t know if it was true, and I wasn’t about to go there to prove it,” he cried. “She’s got our balls in a vise, and she knows it. This Lucia is untouchable. There’s nothing we can do.” Edric turned hateful eyes on me. “We can’t stop the video... so we can’t stop her.”
“Finally,” I said, peeling Badr’s fingers off my neck one by one. “You’re getting it.”
“It’s not true!”
Badr really wouldn’t let a single damn thing go.
“Allying with a vampire is worse than the worst offense against Wolf Nation,” he carried on. “She’d be an outcast. She’d have her ears cut and be thrown out. She wouldn’t go that far, and if she did, she wouldn’t come right out and admit it!”
“Ugh, I didn’t come right out with anything,” I reminded. “Edric was the one creeping on my sim card, and you were the one shouting and bawling for me to tell you where Lucia is. I give you what you want, and now you’re mad and calling me a liar.” I heaved a sigh. “Some people are never pleased no matter what you do.”
His snarl raised my wolf’s hackles. It was taking too long, but I think she was finally starting to see Badr for what he was.
A threat.
“Besides,” I went on, not afraid of him in the slightest. “All the no-good, naughty things I’ve done over the past year and a half would get my ears cut. What’s a vampire friend on top of that?”
Badr’s face changed. He looked at me with such seething hatred, I swore he was going to do it. He was going to leap across and rip my throat out.