Despite his earlier entreaty not to kill his daughters, he truly didn’t give a shit about them. He dismissed them with a coldness that told everyone present how dead he was inside. He had no emotion, no caring. He would destroy the world to gain what he wanted.

I screamed then as power descended over the room, and if I thought he’d rolled me before, that was nothing on now. The tantalizing sweetness of the honey flowed again, filling me, drowning my senses. Locked in the arms of a psychotic dragon-shifter-sorcerer, I knew he was about to take me off to worlds unknown. The last thing I saw was Braxton’s face, lines of fury on his ancient features. I would have given anything to be in his arms instead of this asshole’s. But I knew he would come for me. The Compasses, Louis, my dad, would never stop, I just had to hold out long enough for them to find me.

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Braxton

Jessa! Mine!

The stone wall magicked itself back to being solid and darkness snapped the world into a fucking hellhole. Need had me throwing my body against the stone. Again. Again.

It crumbled but didn’t give.

I felt the head of the twin closest to me in my hand. She blasted out at me with power, but the dragon was immune. I snapped her neck. A twist, no thought, just action. Her lifeless body fell away.

Yes, they can fucking die!

Everyone needed to die.

Turning, smelling pulsing hearts that my fists wanted to crush the life out of, three bodies threw themselves at me. They were me. I could feel their kinship, their sameness, but they were not Jessa. I pushed them aside, threw them like leaves, and the cave rumbled as they hit the walls.

“Brax,” one of them tried again. I looked harder. “Brax,” Maximus said. “Focus, we have to think. Thinking will find Jessa, not killing.”

I stumbled, letting go of my brother, and my legs collapsed out from under me.

“Jessa.”

The anger inside was like a rushing flood of lava, burning, reshaping, reforming as it moved. Jessa had been gone for no more than five seconds and already I was different, death housed in the body of a supernatural. I wanted blood … I needed blood.

I stood. The blue flames were back, their light flickering off the underground tunnels, off the stunned and furious faces around me. Maximus stepped to my side, Jacob and Tyson on the other, although they kept some distance. I had thrown them away in my initial rage, and my control was not much better now.

My body vibrated, like it did when my dragon was fighting me for control, which he was right now. Thoughts were like blades slicing through my mind … memories … images. The male had her, had laid his hands on her, had touched the one that was mine to protect, mine to cherish. Mine forever.