Page 78 of A Velvet Kiss After Dark

"Well, you can't kill what is already dead, sweetheart," Ezekiel drawled.

To think: the president of the vampire and werewolf council was standing in her doorway fighting with his wife—this was going to make one hell of a story if Tabitha lived to publish it!

Ezekiel stepped toward his mate with far more courage than Tabitha had. "You will tether your darkness, Mistress Olivia, and come join me for a glass of sweet iced tea," he said succinctly.

The woman shook with rage, and Tabitha swore this woman's fingernails were growing longer by the second—they had transformed and now looked far more like a talon than a humans own hand.

"I will never belong to you, Ezekiel Hunter!" Olivia's shout was so loud that Tabitha had to cover her ears and block out the sound.

In the blink of an eye, Ezekiel towered before Olivia and grasped her by the arms. With stellar dexterity, he literally lifting her up into the air until they stood eye to eye.

"You are my property," he insisted in a dry, unyielding voice that brooked no room for argument. "You very well belong to me. Now, we can have a cup of tea the nice way or the hard way. Which is it, love? And be cautious, precious one, for I am almost losing my patience right now."

Tabitha could hardly believe her ears.

He was offering this woman tea…

Of course, the papers all called him "The Mad Were" for a reason. He was considered by many to be "insane" himself. Now, seeing his female counterpart neck to neck with him, she could see the balance of scales. A tour de force of nature.

Madness begot madness.

Olivia's chest began to heave as if she struggled to be so near to Ezekiel, as if his mere presence did something to her. Her black gaze flitted across Ezekiel's face, and then drooped low to his mouth.

The black witch grew more agitated, legs swishing and reckless as Ezekiel easily held her aloft the ground. "The Mad Were", as the press always called him, dipped his head as if to lay a kiss upon her lips, but then paused at the last second to withhold the caress.

Olivia the witch sighed and cooed, but the sound was husky and animalistic, unnatural to Tabitha's human ears.

And, just a moment before he pressed his lips to his mate's, the leader of the werewolf nation said to Tabitha out loud, "He's waiting for you outside in the hall."

And then he kissed her.

34

Numbly, Tabitha did as she was told.

Out in the hallway, Tabitha didn't know who would find. For some reason, her brain strayed back to thoughts of her father; whom she had no choice without any true confirmation, but to assume dead.

Yet, she found her way into the hall and away from the banshee and her mate, Tabitha found a whole new experience indeed. For it wasn't her father, much to her sorrow. It was…Kane Gunner. She shook her head once, then blinked multiple times to see if his vision would fade. Yet, the corpse-like body lying bloody on the red-carpeted hallway looked like one specific man she knew oh so well.

"Is he…dead?" Tabitha called out to the Alpha.

A grunt of a retort was Ezekiel gave her in response as he spooned up his evil witch of a mate against him, which made her emit a loud purring sound, like that of a giant lion or saber-toothed tiger.

Weird. Strange. She so wasn't touching this "story" with a ten-foot pole.

Tabitha made a disgusted face as this evil witch literally moaned inside her apartment after nearly trying to kill her..

She was just so numb, Tabitha couldn't even feel herself move as she squatted down next to the nearly-dead looking werewolf who'd sucked up so much of her life in such a short period of time. The loss she'd felt at missing him felt like a burden inside her heart taking up all the space that existed.

"Kane," Tabitha whispered gently, as she stroked a hand across his cheek where a hefty dose of beard had grown in. "Where have you been, my heart?"

He coughed and choked in response, but his eyes did not flutter.

He was alive!

"Help me get him inside," Tabitha cried out suddenly.

She couldn't stop touching him. It's like she needed to convince herself any of this was real; that this wasn't all some nightmare, that she'd truly been living here on earth for an entire eight months after she'd been sent home by the king of Hell.

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