Page 30 of The Monsters We Are
Wynter didn’t care if she stood out, because this would be an occasion when she wouldn’t hide what she’d been forced to do. But shedidcare that she hadn’t been able to quite simply enjoy an evening out with her coven. It had been going so well up until that point.
Delilah blew out a breath. “Your man is gonna bepissedwhen he hears about this, Wyn.”
Totally. “And no doubt disappointed that he wasn’t able to administer some punishment himself.” She truly hoped that Cain wouldn’t start to again argue that she needed guards, because he really wouldn’t like it when she refused to back down on this.
Folding his arms in a petulant manner, Xavier glanced at the corpses again and sighed. “Your monster never leaves me anything to play with. I could have had so much fun reanimating the bodies and sending ’em running after people. It probably would have been a while before anyone realized that the witches were actually dead and not just acting scary for the street party.”
Anabel gaped at him. “You’re really thinking about how you were deprived offunright now? Wynter was almostkidnapped, you tool.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t the first time. Probably won’t be the last.”
Wynter snickered. “I really wish I could say you were wrong.”
Anabel huffed at him and held out another vial. “Here. Make yourself useful and clean the scene.”
“No,” Wynter objected, closing her hand around the vial before Xavier could take it. “People need to see what happens to anyone who fucks with a revenant. They need to understand that Iama revenant.”
“This will definitely make that clear, so all right,” said Anabel. “What do we do with your monster’s leftovers? Leave them here?”
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 intellectuallyknowingthat someone could target her, and there washearingthat 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 anythingdeeply.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 whatyoudid. 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.”