Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 125179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Wynter touched the edge of her incisor with her tongue. “I have a better idea than that.”
*
Pausing in his pacing, Cain blinked at his consort. “You . . . you all you played catch with Missy’s severed head near the bonfire?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Well, it caught people’s attention.”
He’d bet. Bodiless heads tended to do that.
“And it delivered a message that they needed to hear loud and clear.” She went to drop onto the leather desk chair but then hesitated, scrunching up her face as she looked at the blood matting her long hair. “I don’t think people thought that it was a real head at first, what with the street party being a Halloween celebration and all. But then a lycan came over to mess with Xavier, who promptly tossed the head at him. The dude spat out a seriously loud curse when he caught it. Kind of squeamish, for a lycan. Don’t you think?”
Cain ground his teeth. He didn’t care about lycans. He cared that people—worse, his own people—had dared try to deliver Wynter to a man who likely meant to put her through a shitload of pain for cursing his land.
When she’d walked into his ledger room looking like she’d had her head dunked into a pool of blood, Cain had pushed out of his desk chair so fast he’d sent it skidding backwards. He’d seen her in this state enough times to conclude that she must have been forced to free her monster to save herself. And when he’d heard what exactly went down tonight, he’d almost lost his mind.
Yes, he’d known something like this might happen. But there was intellectually knowing that someone could target her, and there was hearing that people had actually attempted to take from him the one person he needed.
Until Wynter waltzed into his world, it had been a long time since Cain felt anything deeply. Even the strongest emotions lost some of their impact when you’d lived so many years that you’d experienced them over and over and over. It was inescapable, really.
But having Wynter in his life . . . Everything seemed so much more vivid nowadays. Hence the rage pumping through his veins, hot and thick like lava. His creature was equally furious.
“Afterwards, we threw all the body parts on the bonfire.” Her nose wrinkled. “We later regretted it, though, because it made quite a stench. I forgot how much I hate the smell of burning flesh.”
“How exactly does one forget that?”
She shot him a sour look. “I know what I did was pretty gruesome, okay, but I had to make a statement.”
“I’m not angry about what you did. I’m angry that the Oasis Coven dared touch you.” He was also a little pissed that none of the witches were alive for him to punish. He’d owned rights to their souls, which meant he could have subjected them to an overload of pain that would have threatened to fracture their sanity. That would have gone a long way to making him feel better.
“Yeah, join the club.”
Cain scrubbed a hand over his face. “I should have exiled them after you killed Demetria. I shouldn’t have allowed them to stay.”
“Why? They gave you every indication that they were ashamed of what she did and that they had no intention of seeking vengeance for her death.” She scratched at her bloody scalp and then eyed her red fingernails with distaste. “Honestly, I don’t think the coven would ever have so much as touched me if Adam hadn’t offered that bounty. They considered it a risk worth taking.”
“And, despite what you did tonight, there may still be others who feel the same. It would be better for you to have a few guards until—”
“No.”
Feeling his nostrils flare, Cain forced his back teeth to unlock. “I won’t take chances with your life.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to, so I suspected you’d start with this again. But everything I said last night still applies. Also, consider this: No one will try to kill me. Adam wants me alive. Besides, being immortal now, I’m not so easy to kill anyway. And it’s not like I’d permanently stay dead.”
“We’ve already covered that we can’t be sure that there won’t be a time when you don’t come back.”
“Cain, you won’t get your way here. I won’t agree to have guards. And be honest, you’re suggesting this out of anger, not good sense.”
“Of course I’m fucking angry. Did you expect anything different?”
“Nope. But you’re not a stupid man. You know I have to deal with this matter on my own, just as you know you wouldn’t truly trust any guard to not at some point betray me—we’ve been over this already. We both agreed it made sense for me to handle this my way.”
Cain inwardly cursed. His monster wasn’t annoyed with her. It believed she could take care of herself and it agreed that she needed to make it clear to one and all that she was not easy prey.