Page 130 of Pretty Little Prey
“I didn’t belong here!” The basilisk shook off the dragon, shoving him to the side and standing. Towering in front of Daxton as the dragon remained on his knees, Bastille said, “You were the golden prince; you got everything you ever wanted. Everything I ever wanted. Everywhere I went, people treated me like a sewer monster.”
Daxton’s lips flattened into a frown as he stood. “You never told me that.”
“You wouldn’t have cared.”
“I would—”
“I killed Sansa.”
Daxton sucked in a breath. “What?” Daxton, Bastille, and Sansa had grown up in the castle together. Friendship led to more when Daxton pursued a relationship with her in their early young adulthood. But then she had…died.
“I killed her.”
Daxton shook his head in disbelief at hearing Bastille killed his old girlfriend when they were teenagers. “They said her heart stopped.”
“It was my basilisk stare,” Bastille admitted, his frustration breaking apart in his chest and leaving emotional shrapnel. His head swung down, chin pressing to his chest. “It was before I knew how to control my powers. We made eye contact in the hall and she just…she went down. Your mother saw the whole thing.”
“Shewhat?”
“She told me you would find out,” Bastille said. “And that you’d hate me for it. It was why I left.”
“I never knew…” Daxton rubbed a hand over his face. “Bastille, I killed our nanny with an accidental fire-sneeze. It… Losing control is not your fault. We were so young back then; our powers were unruly.”
“You loved her, Daxton. We both did. But it didn’t matter. I ended up just how everyone said I would.” Bastille exhaled roughly. “A killer.”
“Bastille, we’re all damn killers. We’ve had to be—either by accident or necessity. It doesn’t mean you’re evil.”
Bastille grabbed Daxton by the throat but didn’t squeeze. He held him like that, a silent threat and reprieve. “You don’t get it,” Bastille rasped. “As long as you live—the perfect prince—I’ll never be worthy of her. She’ll see that.”
Daxton’s claws extended, and he cut Bastille’s hand until it bled and the basilisk let go of Daxton’s throat. “No one is worthy of their mate. All we can do is try to be the best for them.”
“I’ve already fucking failed,” Bastille shot back, sounding agonized. Daxton’s brows furrowed with, not pity, butempathy. “I turned her into a vampire and now she hates me, Dax. There is no sharing her because she’ll never want me.”
“Not unless you make it up to her and prove you learned your lesson,” Sly commented. “And you’ll have help with that,” he reminded the kings that Luna had claim to more than Bastille and Daxton.
A tortured roar sounded several feet away, distracting them from the moment.
Kobe had thrown open the door to Luna’s room and stood frozen, ramrod straight, just inside the space.
“What?” Bastille yelled to him.
Nikolai traced—blurring through the space with his inhuman speed—into the room to see what Kobe reacted to. The vampire cursed.
“What?” Daxton asked as well, echoing Bastille.
“She’s gone,” Nikolai shouted. “She’s fucking gone!”
Chapter 51
“Do you smell that?” Nikolai asked as all the men scanned the room for clues as to where Luna had gone. There was no evidence of an escape. No rope to scale the side of the castle made from bedsheets tied to clothing.
“It smells like…”
“Prey blood,” Bastille finished for him. “It’s Luna’s prey scent.”
“The witches must have completed the spell to reverse her vampirism,” Daxton murmured as he searched the room. “Where could she have gone?”
Kobe sniffed the air, growling at the obvious scent. “Fear.”
