Chapter 270. Marginally Unhinged II

Chapter 270: 270. Marginally Unhinged II

Maisie’s Lycan

The order had barely made it past her lips before I closed the distance, in a split second, and wrapped my hand around her pale neck.

She choked, her feet and hands kicking as I lifted her off the ground by her neck with my, cocking our head as her heartbeat erratically against our palm.

The silver haired girl was long gone, fleeing down the passageways. I let her run. She couldn’t outrun death. It would always catch up. I would catch up as soon as I was done here.

A hand closed over my wrist, wrenching my hand off her. She dropped to our feet, coughing, and I cocked my head at the intruder.

His teeth was bared at us, his fingers crushing the bones in our wrist. I smelled the distant royal line in his blood, smelled his strength and his rage. He was a mate of hers. "Get your filthy hands off her."

My gaze lowered to where his hand mapped my skin, before lifting to his. "Presumptuous," I said, and backhanded him.

He crashed into a stone pillar with a wet, heavy thud. But it didn’t end there. Orders rang out through their ranks. Protect the Queen, they said. Subdue her, they shouted. They came for us, touched us, tried to put chains on us.

It didn’t take very long for them to discover just how terrible and idea that was when I blew through their ranks easily, spraying blood on my way through.

I wasn’t killing them. Killing required me to care, and they simply weren’t worth the effort. Plus, the girl wouldn’t like it if she found out she’d killed someone.

She’d probably try to jump off a cliff or something. It was hard, being in the body of a girl who was... The word made me feel sick. Good. She was good.

And now, I was busy learning killing was a crime and the meaning of conscience. Disgusting.

Her fifth mate roared as I closed my clawed hand over his face and slammed his head into the ground, hard enough to crack his skull.

His eyes rolled back in his head and blood pooled under him. I didn’t check to see if he was still breathing as I finally returned our gaze to my prey.

"Now, where were we?" I asked.

For someone so foul, she looked so small in that moment. At our feet, scrambling back, eyes wide with a fear that paralyzed her, made her forget she could fight back.

Perhaps it was because she knew it wouldn’t matter if she did. I knew that feeling. I’d felt the same that night I had been silenced by the ash, felt it burn me alive as the girl struggled for her life.

I closed my fingers around her ankle and yanked down hard, cracking the joint.

And when she made to escape me, I grabbed her neck again, hauling her violently upward until her toes barely scraped the bloody stones. She gagged, her hands flying up to claw uselessly at my forearm.

"Ah, yes. I have a vision for you," I purred. "You should find it as creative as I do, seeing as we share a particular perversion in killing helpless prey."

Our claws gouged from our fingertips, our free hand curling as we battled the urge to finish this quickly. But I needed to savour this, needed this to last as long as the girl’s pain had. "In my vision for our future, Majesty, the first thing I do, is rip that fetus out of your womb."

Her lips pulled into a grim line, and that familiar mockery lined her eyes and she stopped fighting. "You won’t touch me. Harming my guards and mates, laying a finger on me, you’ve already committed treason. Killing me would merely cement what was already in the talks. Your execution."

My mouth curved. "I can smell you, Lysandra. The fear oozing out your pores. But it isn’t me who frightens you, is it?"

Her complexion paled even further. "You see everything she could be. Everything she could have. She’ll be an even better Queen than you’ll ever be. And you can’t stand that. You had to have her killed. And when you couldn’t get it done, you sent others to finish the job."

"This is the part where you beg me to spare your life for your child’s sake," I whispered, tightening my grip just enough to hear the cartilage creak. "Because while the girl may have something to prove, I do not. She might temper mercy for the sake of the child in your womb, but I am not as merciful."

She choked, jerking wildly in my grasp, relishing in the blood that pooled from the cut of my claws into her skin. She managed to force out a single, raspy breath. "Mercer... would never... forgive you."

The girl stirred inside me. I paused, snuffing her out again, and I laughed. "Using your son as a shield. Predictable."

Our head tilted. "But as they say, out of sight, out of mind. You’ll have to die first, then we’ll see how long it takes him before he gives in and returns to my bed. Our relationship with Mercer has never been straightforward. The silly hatred does make it spicier."

She had the audacity to look repulsed, even as her face turning a mottled purple. "Moreover, I’d wager his inclinations will shift when he discovers you were behind her losing his child."

"What did you say?"

I turned my head. Mercer stood closely, the gun hanging limply at his side. At some point, the others must have joined because they were all standing there.

The physical wounds from their fights were nothing compared to the absolute, shattering devastation cracking across their faces. All the color had drained from the red head’s skin. His eyes were wide, blown out with horror as they darted from my bloody claws to the breathless, guilty face of his mother dangling in my grip.

I grinned, thoroughly enjoying the complete implosion of his world.

I arched a brow at the Queen. "Won’t you tell them what happened on Samhain? Won’t you tell him why I disappeared? Who orchestrated our kidnap and--"

Something pressed into the nape of my neck, and I only registered the high-pitched, ozone crackle a fraction of a second before a massive surge of cursed lightning slammed directly into the base of our spine.

What was that?

The girl’s brain supplied a useless, gods awful answer. We were being tasered.

My spine arched, a feral, interrupted roar tearing from my throat as every nerve ending in our body short-circuited. My hand went slack, dropping the gasping Queen to the dirt.

Our vision whited out, bleeding into a heavy, crushing black and the ground rushed up to meet us.

***

I half-expected to wake up in a facility, behind bars. Instead, I woke up with my face pressed tight against a warm chest and something hard rumbling underneath us.

Our lashes fluttered.

A moving car. Transport to a holding cell, perhaps? Wouldn’t be the first time.

I tensed, ready to slaughter whoever had dared to bag us, but a deep voice rasped against our ear, "Relax, malyshka. It’s over."

The car came into focus. The dark-haired one was in the driver’s seat. The blonde was beside us, sitting stifly like he had been strapped to a grenade, and I was tucked snugly between the silver-haired one’s thighs.

Mercer was nowhere to be seen.

I tried to move, but found that I couldn’t even sit up straight. Couldn’t move our limbs. The burnout had hit. I had known the power surge would demand a tax, but I hadn’t wagered on being this swift.

I was going to have to feed soon.

But I was more tired than hungry and our eyes slipped shut again, my consciousness drifting until the car door slammed and cold air whipped across our skin.

"Here," I heard Jericho say, passing my dead weight off like a sack of blood-soaked potatoes. "Take her. I’ll be up soon."

Quinlan looked down at us and froze. "Shit. I’m never getting used to that."

He was referring to me. The girl was still fast asleep in the dark, and I could see our reflection mirrored in his eyes. Our eyes were glowing ruby red.

Though someone must have taken the crown from us, I still felt the effects of using the ruby. The effect of our drained life force.

"What?" I said. We sounded tired. Weak. The pit of hunger in our stomach had begun to swell and expand. The emptiness inside begged to be filled immediately. I ignored it and tried to sound as humorous as I could. "Scared of a little girl? I promise, I don’t bite."

His eyes narrowed, but he carried me anyway, tucking me against his chest and I ignored another painful pang of hunger when his scent filled our nostrils.

Our fangs lengthened, pressing sharp against my bottom lip. He smelled delicious.

I squeezed our eyes shut, holding back a raspy chuckle. The girl wouldn’t like it if I did that, and she would throw an absolute fit if I drained her little boyfriends dry while she was taking a nap. But I couldn’t fight it for much longer.

The pit in our stomach was widening, and it was going to take a lot more than Quinlan, more than three of them to satisfy me.