Page 89 of Fated In Ruin

I needed Malachi to see my mate strong and fierce. To see her content and satisfied and cared for. To know that while he might use and endanger her,Iwas the one who would always protect her.

He would never come close to the love we shared, even if he lived another thousand years.

And when the bastard’s head shot up as we emerged from the house, eyes narrowing, face tightening—his jealousy was the sweetest revenge I could have ever hoped for.

* * *

“Stay here,I’ll check on progress.” I carefully settled Evie on a stone bench overgrown with ivy, giving her cousin a hard glare that told the sniveling human he so much as looked at her wrong, I would gut him like a pig.

“Was that really necessary?” She sighed, still caught up in that foggy, post feeding trance. “Virgil is scared out of his mind right now.”

“He’s a human in fucking enemy territory, he should be scared.”

“Yeah, well, Virgil took a good share of beatings on my behalf, so don’t be too hard on him, okay? He’s a decent person, despite having Dante as a sperm donor.”

“What do you mean, beatings?” I growled, before I could stop myself. Evie had always been close lipped about her past. What little I’d gotten out of her was mostly about Aurora and Angel, and the night Silas found them.

“Oh, you know…” Her focus faded in and out as she blinked dreamily up at me. “Running too slow, moving too slow, not reacting fast enough to an attack. Getting pinned on the mat, getting cut during hand to hand. Basically, any failure of any kind. We got whipped pretty much every night. But Virgil was the only one who cared, he was….” Her eyes drifted closed and I motioned to the wide-eyed human.

“Get your fucking ass over here and make yourself useful.”

He hoofed it over, gaze bouncing between me and my mate. “See that she sleeps off the feeding and nobody disturbs her. I’m checking on a few things, then I’ll be back. You so much asthinkabout hurting her, I’ll give you the most painful death you can imagine.”

“Blake, stop,” Evie whispered in her sleep.

“Tell me this.” I fisted a handful of his shirt and dragged the little fucker closer. “Is everything she told me true about how she grew up? Your shit-for-brains family abusing her? Hurting her?”

“They were hard on all of us,” Virgil murmured, his gaze sliding to Evangeline, “but especially her. I think Silas wanted to break her. She spent way more time in the hole than the rest of us put together. Once they even…”

“The hole?”

“A hole dug into the ground with an iron grate over it. You couldn’t move, couldn’t sit or lay down and the walls were dirt, so it was always cold and wet. Silas left her in there for five days once. It rained, and by the time we got her out, the water was up to her chest. I thought she was dead when they hauled her out, but….”

Motherfucker.

I was going to rip that thrall motherfucker’s head off and piss down his throat.

And that was after I made him suffer.

“But Evangeline was stronger than they were. That’s what pissed them off the most.” Virgil dropped his voice. “They tried for years to break her, but they never managed. Joke’s on them now, I suppose.”

“Watch her.” I stalked away, violence gnawing away at my control faster than I could shove it back into place. All of this…I didn’t know what to do with the pictures now in my head, the fury pounding in my veins, this overwhelming need to hurt something.

Kill something.

Despite the previous urge to prove my dominance, I passed Fiona and Malachi without a second glance, heading straight for Riordan, on the far side of the grounds with Nash and a small contingent of guards.

I need to show you something.Rohr’s head snapped up, tracking my approach as I poured everything the cousin had just told me, plus Evie’s own revelation, into Riordan’s head.

By the time I stopped before him, Riordan shook with the same cold fury as me.

“Ravok needs to die, obviously,” I noted, in a voice somewhere between a rasp and a growl, “but Silas and the uncles are fucking mine.”

“Unless I get to them first.” Then he pointed out the obvious. “How could we not know any of this?” He was staring past me, to where Evie drowsed on the bench, the cousin standing guard, as if a human could protect her from anything.

“He tried, Blake,” Riordan said softly. “At least someone tried.”

“What are you two wankers looking so glum about?” Malachi ambled up, his naked torso encrusted in dried blood, his braided hair matted, and yet somehow, the fucker still managed to look imposing.

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