Page 4 of A Velvet Kiss After Dark

"D-don't do this. I'll free you," Elustrian gasps. "I'll let you both go. Just don't ki—"

His words are cut short. Kánnérd snap his teeth around the feebly vampire's neck and bites down hard. Blood gushed in his mouth, bones crunch like the snap of a celery stick—maddening him and arousing his instincts to kill more. Always more!

Mayhap later he'd regret not going slowly, but in his Beast form thoughts and plans were not a capability he had.

Kánnérd tosses back his head and howls as Elustrian's blood slides in gulps down his throat as he drinks from the man who'd stolen from him so many times.

More of those silver swords—once a dire threat to he and his brother, now a nuisance—stab at him. He bats them away like annoying gnats.

"Come brother," Konner says. He limps and wheezes, his complexion a pale and sickly color. "Let us be free of this hell."

Kánnérd's Beast growls in agreement. He hefts his brother into his strong arms and cradles him like a cub, then he takes off sprinting. With a leap he flies over the balcony as arrows alight with flames whizzed near him, singing his hair. Another hits his leg, but he merely growls and continues on. He doesn't care. Nothing they could do could hurt him now.

If not for his brother's plea, he'd still be there ripping them all apart. Piece by piece. Until the walls ran red with blood.

Many hours must have passed, because the moon stands over a different part of the sky, but he doesn't stop running until his brother begs him to.

He sets Konner down next to a babbling brook. The sound like tiny explosions to his sensitive hearing.

Panting he gazes all around with his new animal eyes, seeing the world anew: from the tiny spikes on the edge of a leaf to drops of dew on a flower.

"Can you transform back, bratku?" His brother's words are a strain for him to speak.

Kánnérd stills himself and asks his beast to revert to man. Slowly but surely muscles revert to their original form. Agony tears through him as his muscles burn and twist to right themselves. He drops to his knees and bites down on his forearm until he tastes blood to keep from screaming and revealing their location. He couldn't risk exposing them now. Not after they'd finally escaped.

Dazed, he meets his brothers gaze. Konner wears a tired grin. "Told you we'd escape." He is even paler now. Something is wrong. His brother is holding his stomach and hiding behind his arms.

He shoves them away and stills.

"No. Don't look!" Konner cries. But it was too late.

Konner had been ripped clean through his stomach with a silver blade. It was bleeding deathly fast. There are vampire bite marks all over his body, some places he was even missing flesh and meat as if they'd eaten from him. . The silver acted like poison to werewolves. Already the injury turned green on the edge.

Kánnérd shakes his head. No, this can't be. Tears well in his eyes. "You're not too weak to heal from this. You're not. You'll be fine in the morning."

Konner's eyes glistened and he shrugs, trying to laugh. They both knew it was a lie. If he could change into his Beast, then that might save him as he'd heal so much faster, but Konner's Beast hadn't responded to him yet. Not even on this night.

Konner stares up at the moon, a wistful smile on his face. "Thank you, bratku."

Kánnérd chokes. "For what?" Loathing consumes him: He couldn't even save his brother.

"For freeing me. I didn't want to die there. But this—this is pure beauty." He sighs, blood dribbling down his cheek and into the shell of his ear.

The vampires had taken too much from him. Hurt him too badly with their "play."

Red overtakes his vision, making his hands shake. The stab wound had simply exacerbated his death.

"No," he shakes his head. "This can't be. I didn't free us for you to die!" He shouts openly, a long, agonizing howl of pain which abruptly halts and turns into a sob.

"Bratku," Konner says, his voice a whisper. He sucks in a rattling breath. It sounds wet as if blood drowns his lungs. "Thank you for this. For saving me. Do something for me, please."

"Anything." Kánnérd can no longer see his brother's face past the blur of tears running down his face.

"Please—" he lifts a hand and touches Kánnérd's. "Live free and be happy. For me."

A promise he surely couldn't keep. Being happy was what his twin was good at, not Kánnérd. Kánnérd was always the dismal one, forever hunting and working the fields.

He opens his mouth to guarantee the promise anyway. "Anything for you." What else could he say?

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