This guy had made me hate, truly hate, and I let him see it in my eyes.
“But now, cousin, I think I should kill you for poisoning him with Rush. He almost died because of you. It only seems fair that you should face the same end.”
I swallowed, then licked my lips. When had they gone numb?
Engel smiled at me then, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms across his chest. “Die? Today? No, dear, I’m afraid that’s not quite what I had in mind.”
The room started spinning and I squinted at him. “What…?” The thought stopped, half formed as my vision got hazy. I felt the blaster fall from my lax grip. Soon, my body slumped, hitting the side of the chair in which I sat.
My eyes were open, but my vision was blurry, like trying to see underwater without goggles. Everything was fuzzy and distorted.
I knew Engel rose from his seat and placed his palm under my chin, lifting my face to look up at him.
“As you said yourself, stupid Earth girl. Did you really think you could outwit me?” He peeled the gloves off his hands and stuffed them in his pocket. “The gloves weren’t coated with an antidote for Rush, sweet cousin.”
He lifted the necklace and placed it back around my neck, the brush of his fingers sending an icy chill down my spine. But my horror never showed on the surface. I was like a mannequin. I felt completely detached. Emotionless. I knew, if I really wanted to, I could talk. I could blink. I could spit in his face, but I didn’t have the energy and the rest of my body was dead weight.
“The necklace really was for you, dear.” His grip on my chin turned painful, and still I could not move. It was as if my entire body was paralyzed from the neck down. “And now, you will tell me where the real one is.”
“Go fuck yourself.” The words were quiet and slurred, but he couldn’t miss hearing them.
He lifted me from the chair as if I were a feather, his hands around my throat. “Where is the necklace?”
I struggled to breathe, but I couldn’t fight him, couldn’t grab his hand and tug it away. “You poisoned Deek,” I coughed out.
He laughed, and the sound was pure evil.
I wanted to scratch his eyes out, but I couldn’t. “I hate you.”
“I don’t need your love, Tiffani.” His gaze raked up and down my body with blatant male interest. “Perhaps I will fuck you before I kill you, see what magic your pussy has that could save an Atlan beast from an overdose of Rush.”
I couldn’t even shake my head. “No.”
“Deek may have survived this time, but I can have him sent to the front lines again, to a Hive mission where he’ll be captured and turned. Yes, that’s a fate worse than death, isn’t it?” He tossed me onto the floor like a rag doll and I could not defend myself, could not even tuck my head and roll. “But you’ll die first.”
Luckily, my body was mostly numb, but my head hit the hard marble floor and felt like an exploding melon.
A roar sounded from somewhere nearby. Opening my eyes was like shoving hot metal pokers into my mind, the light an explosion of pain. But I knew that roar. I knew that Atlan. That beast. And they were both mine.
***
Deek
Rygor and Westar escorted me to the back entrance of my home and we sneaked inside like burglars. They’d filled me in on the way, covering everything I’d been missing. The more I heard, the more my beast started to take over. I knew Tiffani was confronting Engel, trying to force a confession from him. I knew she was being monitored by both Atlan guards and Warlord Dax.
It wasn’t enough. My beast raged and my eyes remained a constant black as I fought to wrestle him down. Tiffani didn’t need my beast in a blind, killing rage. She needed me to think.
Which was fucking impossible when the only thing my beast could envision was Engel touching her, hurting her.
I rushed up the back stairwell to a room where Warlord Dax and three armed members of the Atlan guard watched my mate and Engel on a system of monitors. I knew they were recording every word, but I couldn’t hear any of it.
I watched as Tiffani smiled and sipped her wine, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Seeing her safe and whole helped calm my beast’s protective rage and I silently nudged Dax, forcing him to hand over his earpiece. I wanted to hear every fucking word.
Logic demanded that I let her finish what she’d started. If I interfered now, Engel would walk away to threaten us again and again. As long as he was alive and free, he was a lethal threat. As much as I hated this, Tiffani was right about that. We had to stop him, and we would need a confession to do it, something he couldn’t cover up. But if that asshole even looked like he was thinking about threatening my mate, I was going to rip him in half with my bare hands.