Chapter 504: Go back to your damn family!

In the room where Zoe was being kept, she stared wide-eyed at Nick, whose own eyes had gone equally wide with shock, clearly not expecting her to shoot him, let alone three times. Zoe’s hand trembled as she watched blood spread from his shoulder where she’d hit him. She almost threw the gun down, but held onto it when she saw the anger and disbelief burning in his eyes.

"Not you too..." Came Nick’s words, thick with surprise. He’d let his guard down, certain that out of everyone, Zoe cared for him enough that she’d never, in a million years, actually pull that trigger on him.

"I warned you to stop, but you wouldn’t listen." Zoe said, trying to stay brave, trying not to look at the blood soaking into his shirt. She watched his eyes turn bloodshot, tears gathering in them, and he looked at her as though he were grieving her already, right as he reached into his pocket and pulled something out.

Zoe looked down to see it was a dagger, and she took a small step back, still holding the gun trained on him.

Nick felt a pain shoot through his chest, one that had nothing to do with the bullets and everything to do with her action. How could his own dear cousin turn on him like this? Hadn’t they always been on the same side?

Though the bullets burned, buried deep in his flesh, Nick had the means and the cure to remove them easily enough later. But he couldn’t look past what Zoe had just done, and he couldn’t let her simply walk away either, not when pulling that trigger had, in his mind, killed the Zoe he’d once known.

"I tried to give you everything, and you turned out no different from Camilla, the bitch who gave birth to me. I thought you and I, that you and I would always stand against the world together, my little sister, but you did this to me." He pointed a trembling finger at his bleeding shoulder. "Haven’t I done enough for you?!" He yelled, hot tears streaking down his cheeks, as he looked destroyed.

Zoe, seeing the tears and the raw hurt in his face, felt genuinely more disturbed by it, since it seemed her cousin had truly lost all sense of where good ended and evil began. Couldn’t he see the damage he’d caused in all their lives? Couldn’t he see how broken he was and how he was damaging others life along with his?

"I never asked for any of this. I just want to go home." She gritted out, trembling, the sound of gunfire and chaos still ringing outside, scaring her even more.

"So you really mean to turn your back on me?" Nick said, sounding genuinely wounded as he wiped at his cheeks with the back of the hand still holding the dagger. There was something almost childlike in the hurt on his face, as though he couldn’t understand how the one person he had expected to remain by his side could now look at him and choose to leave.

"You turned against us first, Nickolas. You’re no longer yourself. You are hurting everyone and yourself. Can’t you see I don’t want to stay here?" she questioned softly.

"Fine," Nick said, nodding his head slowly. For a moment, he looked as though her words had finally reached somewhere inside him, as though he had suddenly understood something he had been too blinded by his plans to see before.

"I’ll let you go, and I’ll never think of you as my dear cousin again. Go on, go back to your damn family. You all deserve each other." He gestured toward the door, watching her, with eyes that looked like that of a wolf.

Zoe glanced at the open door, then back at him, and swallowed hard. He was letting her go, and though he’d done far worse than what a few bullets could ever repay, Zoe knew she wasn’t the one meant to deliver that justice. Still holding the gun up in her own defense, she began backing toward the door.

She kept walking backward, eyes locked on him the whole way, until she’d cleared the doorway entirely. Then, on second thought, she locked the door behind her from the outside and broke into a run down the hallway.

Zoe felt her heart leaping with relief of being free and she knew once she stepped out, she would find someone from their pack and escape this nightmare. She couldn’t wait.

But Zoe hadn’t managed more than ten running steps before she stopped, not by her own will, but by the force of something piercing into her back that stole the strength from her legs.

At first, all she felt was a strange, warm wetness, and when she reached back to touch it, her fingers found the hilt of a dagger buried in her back.

"You don’t actually think I’d let you go that easily, do you?" Came Nick’s voice, as he stepped out through the door she’d locked, having used his powers to unlock it from the other side.

One thing Nick had realized he enjoyed lately was the chase of a prey, and by shooting him, Zoe had become nothing more than another prey he wanted to give a taste of her own medicine. He liked giving people hope before taking it away, just as they had given him hope that he had a family and someone who cared about him, only to take it all back and hurt him in the worst way possible.

Zoe didn’t stop moving, even as the intense pain shot through her spin, knowing stopping might be the end. She kept walking, refusing to turn back, wanting nothing more than to get home. She just had to walk outside and that was all...

But then she felt him behind her, his hands closing around her shoulders, yanking the dagger free from her back, and before she could even process it, he drove it into her stomach repeatedly, the wet, sickening sound of flesh tearing filling the space between them.

"Taste what betrayal feels like, bitch. You think you can just abandon me? I’ll kill you first," he gritted out, stabbing her again and again.

Zoe’s fingers curled into fists against his shirt, her gray eyes locked deep into his as he drove the dagger into her one final time. He then pulled it free and shoved her away from him, sending her falling down the staircase.

Zoe felt the world tilting around her as she hit the steps, rolling down them with enough force to knock what little breath she had left from her lungs, until she finally landed on the stair landing, blood quickly pooling up.