Page 149 of Crave
My mother didn’t scream.
She didn’t cry. Didn’t fight.
She was motionless, her dead eyes already fixed on me.
As if she knew.
As if she’d always known.
Pull the trigger, Angel.
The dark whisper kissed against my ear, venom and silk.
Kill your father. End it before it ends you.
The voice wasn’t a whisper now. It was a command.
I choked on a sob as my knees buckled.
I hit the brush hard, the impact slamming pain through my body—knees skinned raw, hands scraped and bleeding.
And then my fingers curled around something cold and heavy.
A stone.
I lifted it with a shaking grip, my chest heaving, and for one agonizing second, I knew.
I was going to smash in my own goddamn skull.
Before I could move, a snarl cut through the night, sharp and lethal.
Then something massive slammed into me.
The world collapsed around me as Theo tackled me to the ground, his weight crushing me into the dirt. His grip unforgiving, punishing. My hands were wrenched away from the stone as it clattered into the darkness.
His rough hands grabbed my wrists, pinning them down, caging me beneath the sheer, suffocating force of him.
“You think you canfuckingleave?” His voice was a raw, guttural sound, so thick with rage it coiled through my veins like poison.
I screamed, bucking, fighting, but he was fucking relentless, his strength unyielding. My mind snapped between reality and the past, between the ghosts in my head and the beast pinning me down.
His fingers fisted in my hair, yanking my head back with brutal possession.
“LOOK AT ME!”Theo bellowed.
My breath hitched. Something cracked inside me.
The whispers screeched in protest, but the moment I locked eyes with him, everything stilled.
Not because I was afraid.
Because I wasn’t.
Theo’s pupils were blown wide, his chest heaving, his entire body tense, shaking with rage.
And I felt it. All of it.
The darkness. The hunger. The uncontrollable need to own, to claim, to ruin.
