Page 85 of Pretty Little Prey
“I want this over with.”Finally. “Quickly. No endless torture.”
“But he deserves—”
“I want it over,” Luna shouted, her emotional meltdown just beginning. She had gone from certain death by her hunter of six years to the deadly hands of her protectors.
“You’d take orders from cattle?” Rohan asked, incredulous.
Bastille ignored him, raking his gaze over Rohan like he needed to choose the best place to injure. Then, he noticed the fly was down on Rohan’s jeans.
He flexed his jaw and slammed Rohan into the tree behind him so hard, the thick, old oak shook. “Why the fuck is his zipper down?” he asked Luna.
“He…He wanted to see if his alpha pheromones could make me…” She blushed deeply and looked down to the ground again. The implication was clear.
Kobe shot forward in his wolf form, the size of him causing Bastille to let go of Rohan’s neck. In half a second, Kobe’s jaw clamped down around Rohan’s throat. The sound of bones popping and blood gushing still haunted Luna when she closed her eyes.
It haunted her because a part of herlikedit.
As Kobe flossed his fangs with Rohan’s body, Luna began to breathe again.
She didn’t have to run anymore. How was she going to spend her life now that she didn’t have to run anymore? She could get back her real identity, get a real job, have a real future…
For the first time in six years, she would not have to fear the dark or constantly look over her shoulder.
Free.
She was finally free.
Chapter 33
“Where is your family, lamb?” Bastille asked softly.
Luna continued to stare at Rohan’s maimed body. “Dead. H-He killed them a long time ago.”
“He said six years,” Sly reminded everyone.
“You have been running from him for six years? All alone?” Bastille took a step closer to where she stood, frozen in place as she processed her hunter’s gruesome death.
“Never stay in a place…longer than three months,” she stated unevenly.
“Running since you were sixteen?” Nikolai repeated in a voice of disbelief. “Alone for six years?”
All of the men glanced at each other.
Bastille’s cold heart hammered in his chest.She’s…just like me, he thought to himself. Lonely, misunderstood, and a tragic past. Bastille’s family had been hunted by the army of Light shifters. Basilisks were thought to be so dangerous, dragons had once killed any that could be found. Adults. Children.
The king of the Light Ones, Daxton’s father, had been responsible for killing Bastille’s mother. Bastille had been a young child at the time—only a year old—and Daxton’s own mother had taken pity on the new orphan. She took him in and raised him, trying to convince everyone that she could teach the “evil” out of his natural species.
Funny thing about being raised around people who all assumed him to be naturally evil—it made him want to be.
He had grown up with Daxton, watching him get anything he ever wanted with the snap of his fingers. Yet, everyone there, in the palace the queen and king resided in, watched young Bastille with eerie unease, as if expecting him to strike. They called him “snake boy” behind the queen’s back. They left dead rats in his room. No one ever met his gaze.
Luna had experienced prejudice from what species she was born as—no control of her own. She had lost her family. She had been alone.
Just like him.
At least Bastille had found Sly, Nikolai, and Kobe when he rose to power. He chose them—outcasts of their groups. Kobe had been abandoned by his pack as a child for “delayed development” of his inner wolf. Sly was a rare kind of fox shifter whose family was hunted. Nikolai was a vampire who hated his species and struggled not to hate himself. All of the men understood each other. They had become their own little family.
My lamb had no one. Bastille’s hands clenched into fists at his side before he stretched out his fingers, flexing them. He took another step closer to her.She will never be alone again.
