Page 25 of Dominion

It would be a cold day in hell if he ever did.

“Don’t be like this, Skylar. You already know that you belong to me. There’s no use denying it.”

“I don’t belong to anyone, you sick fuck,” I spat out, aiming the gun directly at him. Maybe I’d never held a gun. Maybe I never had to hold anyone at gunpoint before, but if there was one person I wouldn’t mind killing, it was the monster smiling at me.

He stole away the best years of my life, fed me poison, when all I wanted was a little bit of compassion instead of the hard lashes of his belt on my back. My skin crawled, remembering the feel of his lips on me, his hands on the nape of my neck as he held me down, his dick tearing away everything that I ever was.

A good girl… that’s what he always called me. His good girl.

“I told you, Skylar.” The maniac took another step forward, walking toward me as if he was the one holding the gun and not me. “I always get what I want, and what I want right now is you.”

“Stay back!”

“Tsk.” He grinned. “We both know you won’t shoot. And do you know why?”

“I’m not fucking joking, Judah! Stay the hell away from me.”

“Because I know you, my darling girl,” he murmured. The tips of his shoes were almost touching mine. The barrel of the gun pressed to his chest, his hand lifting up, covering mine, as he gazed down at me, looking at me in the same wayas he always did. “You look so much like your mother. The same stubbornness, the same need to run away from me, to go somewhere else, but you both always belonged to me. From the first moment I saw your mother, I knew she was meant to be mine. I waited, patiently, but she had to go with that motherfucking monster,” he spat out, his eyes clouding, haunted by memories.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, trying to move my hand away, but he wasn’t budging. The safety was still on, and I couldn’t do anything from this position.

“I knew your mother long before she became the Red Maiden in my Order. I knew her when she was almost your age, when she fell for a monster on the other side of town.”

His lips opened, his eyes closing as if he were remembering the time long gone. “Silky blond hair and the attitude of a fierce warrior, she would’ve been my chosen one if she had chosen me. But she chose Lazarus Morass instead.”

Morass? As in the abandoned Morass Asylum on the East Side of Winworth?

“But I got her in the end,” he said, those empty eyes opening. “Just like I got you. Trying to run away would never work, because as you can see, destiny has a way of putting us together again.”

“You’re fucking sick,” I bit out, pulling my hands from his grip harder. “I will never again be yours.”

“You will never be anyone’s but mine,” he growled, his grip on me tightening. “I made sure of that.”

No.

No, no, no, no… “What have you done?” I asked breathlessly, understanding slowly dawning on me.

“I made sure they would never want to touch you again.”

“Skylar!” a familiar voice boomed through the forest. The birds that were nesting nearby protesting at the new noise. “Where are you? Skylar!”

“He—”

But I never got the chance to yell back, to tell Cillian I was here. To hurry.

“Shhh, shhh.” Judah pressed his hand against my mouth, shutting me up momentarily. “We don’t want them to destroy this moment.”

What he didn’t understand was that I wasn’t an afraid little girl anymore. I had teeth that knew how to bite now. I went to hell and back to survive these last two months. Just as he started pulling me toward him, I managed to lift my finger where the safety of the gun was, and I unlocked it.

His eyes widened as my finger went toward the trigger. Just as I was about to press the trigger, he moved away from me, running to the opposite side, toward the thick forest. I lifted the gun, aiming nowhere specific, and started shooting.

The sounds of the bullets erupting from the barrel echoed around the entire forest, and the voices calling for me earlier started shouting frantically, their footsteps barely audible through the cacophony of the noise the gun made. But I couldn’t stop.

I wanted him dead, gone, destroyed.

I wanted him to suffer just like the rest of us did. It wasn’t fair that people like him got to live when the rest of the world suffered.

“Skylar!” came from my right side. In the moment of insanity, I turned toward the source, keeping my gun up high. “Jesus fucking Christ, Skylar,” Cillian murmured, lifting his hands up in the air. “Lower your gun.”

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