Page 92 of The Depraved Prince
“She’s sick! She’s going to die anyway. Drain her for your powers, big brother. Her pussy can’t be that hypnotizing that she’s changed you. You’ve had hundreds of women before!” Kallum tells me, slurring his sentence. He must have laced his drink with alcohol because his honesty is taking me by surprise. I know he doesn’t mean to point out these facts, but he can’t help it sometimes. He always has to be right. It’s like he’s driving a thick wooden stake through my chest.
“No, stop fucking talking!” I try to interrupt him, desperation getting the best of me. I want to fall onto my knees and put my hands to my ears, but I stay standing, burning holes through my little brother like I’m about to ruin him.
“Or have you forgotten that that’s why their blood is rare?!” Kallum interjects me with an amused tone. “That that’s why they’re hard to find? Because they all die by the age of twenty-three! That’s why they’re called Valkyrie’s!” Kallum blurts out, downing the rest of his drink.
I don’t want to think about losing Millie. I can’t… I won’t.
“No…no…shut the fuck up! NO!”
I black out. I forget where I am and let the demons possess my body, and I can feel them grin sadistically inside my head as I let them take control. The thought of losing Millie drives me to the point of insanity and delirious rage. She is everything to me! I can’t focus when she’s not around. Millie Flores is the angel that’s cursed me with her love. She forgives my sins and I teach her to welcome hers. I need her like the Earth needs the sun. I crave her like the ocean needs the moon. I will always burn infinitely for her.
I grab the closest thing I can find and destroy it. I break into it over and over again until it’s in pieces. I stare at the broken chair as if that’ll solve all my problems. It isn’t enough, so I start to grab all of my dad’s precious bottled-up blood and start smashing them.
“Millie is going to die anyway when she turns twenty-three! You might as well put her out of her misery! Do the humane thing and let her go home and return to her family. Let her spend the last moments of her life with her loved ones who miss her. Or kill her.” My father growls and watches me. “Stop this madness! You’ve been trying to prolong her demise. Her death. You’re going insane just to keep her heart beating. You’re destroying yourself to find a way to keep her here with you! Enough!”
“If you dare look at Millie or talk about her in disgust, I won’t hesitate to end you,father. You don’t know her like I do. I know that she’s found her family within me. I can protect her! I can save her!” I roar, and I’m blinded by my own rage that I havetunnel vision. I only see what I want to see. And that’s my future with Millie Flores. My little Bambi. My angel.
“Stop it, son! Stop destroying my bottles!” He blares over the sound of glass.
“I amThe Depraved Prince! That’s what everyone calls me, right? I’m just living up to my name and the monsteryou raisedbecause you wanted me to be a strong King, able to take on everything thrown my way in this cruel world we live in! I’m just”—I smash another bottle—“Living up to my name!” I throw another bottle, but this time, it hits the side of the door, and my eyes widen with shock, paralyzing my senses. The beat of Millie’s heart replaces the sounds of glass shattering. I was so enraged and so lost in my outburst that I didn’t feel Millie come near. I’m always able to sense where she is, but I blacked out so severely that I didn’t listen.
Millie stands at the doorway, pale and shaken, with tears running down her cheeks. The room grows quiet, and the air feels tight. I’m frozen with every terrible, sick emotion overriding me.
“I’m going to die?” She looks at me with eyes full of hurt and betrayal. “I’m sick?” She questions me, her voice breaking, and it makes me want to die even more to see her look at me like this.
She’s looked at me like this before. The night I saved her the first time when she had a broken wrist. When I took her back home the first night we met. And then again the night she stabbed me with her kitchen knife. But over time, she changed the way she feels about me and hasn’t looked at me like that since I made love to her.
The TV my father keeps in the corner of his room joins the chaos. I must have accidentally turned it on when I started to smash things and pressed the remote. Millie turns to the TV, and we can all hearhisvoice, which makes Millie’s blood heat up and mine boil into wrath.
“We believe and have evidence pointing to whoever took Millie is the same person that killed Pete Flores, her father.” I watch Cole wipe away a tear, and a news reporter replaces him. A woman wearing a light purple suit holds the microphone tight in her manicured hands as she continues.
“Turn it off!” I snarl at Kallum, but he’s as glued to the TV as everyone is. But no one moves…hell, nor can I. It’s like watching an accident; all the secrets I’ve been keeping from Millie have finally unraveled. The truth of my father’s plans for her…what ittrulymeans to be a Valkyrie are all out in the open, and there’s no coming back from this. I can only watch as the one soul I’ve connected with…watch her world get destroyed, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I tried to protect her from this, even if it meant lies and deception. I wanted to protect her from our dark world and destiny that she didn’t ask for.
I failed.
“Twenty-year-old Millie Flores went missing about four months ago. The house was found broken into, and her father was found brutally murdered around the same night she disappeared.”
32
MILLIE
I throwmy diary on his desk, which slams against the wood. That’s how he knew things about me. Things I’ve never told anyone! He took it from my room, invading my boundaries even further than I’d thought. He stares at it with guilt written all over his blue eyes. I charge him, and something wild comes over me. I slap him across the face hard.
“My dad is dead? I’m going to die? Is that why you want me to become immortal like you so badly?” I slap him again. His head whips to the side, and redness paints his cheekbones. His black hair hides the despair in his eyes and masks his scrunched nose with flared nostrils. “I’m sick, and you’ve known all this time!”
It doesn’t do anything. He takes it and takes it with emotionless eyes, like whatever piece of sanity he had left in him isn’t there anymore. I slap his chest and face again and again, and I’m sure it’s hurting me more than him. The tender joints in my hand throb in pain, but it’s not enough to stop me.
My father is dead?I’m going to die?
What the hell is going on?!
“How could you! You killed my father! You told me that he would be safe if I went with you all those months ago! You monster! You fucking killed him!”
When I realize it’s not doing anything to him, I grab the scissors he used to cut open my bandage when he took care of my wounds for me. I raise it to stab him in the chest but freeze. My vision blurs with hot tears, and my chest heaves with pure devastation.
“Do it. It won’t kill me, but if it’ll make you feel better…” He shrugs with a broken tone. “Do it.” He grabs my wrist and tries to make me stab him in the chest. His grip tightens, forcing me to inch closer to wounding him.
My nose scrunches, and my eyebrows pinch together painfully. I feel a type of poison inside my soul, making me feel like I’m demented. The thought of putting a blade into Hayden’s unbeating heart kills me. Even though he’s everything I fear, I don’t want to hurt him.
