Page 114 of Dukes Are Forever
All three debutantes screamed.
"Run!" she yelled to the nearest girl.
Could they not see how much danger they were in?
Adele shoved her hand inside her reticule as Jelena stalked toward her. Damn it, where was it?
White drifted into her field of vision, and Adele tried to dart to the side.
A hand locked in the back of her pearl necklace, and she fell backwards as she was drawn to an abrupt halt. She clutched at the necklace, but Jelena twisted her fist, and every single pearl dug into Adele's throat.
Suddenly she couldn't breathe.
"You poor, pathetic little bitch," Jelena taunted, her face coming into Adele's field of reference. "God, what was he thinking? Marrying cattle?" She gave another malicious twist of the necklace, and Adele's eyes popped as the pounding in her temples intensified. "He was given a gift. A near-immortal god, and he casts it all aside to bed down with the filth. I should make this bloody and slow, just for that insult."
So hard... to think. Adele tried to push at Jelena, but the other woman was choking her. Darkness blurred at the edges of her vision, and the pulse pounded in her throat, as if blood was trying to force itself through her starved veins.
The choker of pearls suddenly released as the thin strands broke. Pearls scattered all across the floor and her throat opened as Adele sucked in a rattling half breath.
"Maybe I will make this bloody," Jelena mused.
Adele's lungs pulsed, starved for oxygen, and she thought she'd burst into a coughing fit, but there was no time.
There was suddenly the tip of a knife in her vision, slashing down her cheek. Adele didn't bother screaming; she flicked the silver thorn on her ring out and stabbed it into the other woman's midriff.
Jelena gasped, and then smashed the back of her hand across Adele's face. Thrown onto her stomach in a tangle of skirts, Adele caught sight of her reticule on the floor. Behind her, Jelena made a horrible strangled sound in her throat.
"You fucking... bish...."
Hemlock might not be enough to incapacitate Jelena entirely—its effectiveness was limited by how high a blue blood's craving virus levels were, and adhampir'sCV levels would be stratospheric—but it slowed her down enough for Adele to reach her reticule.
A knee slammed into her back, the knife sliding across her shoulder. Adele screamed as she drove an elbow back into Jelena's ribs. Thedhampirassassin was a heavy weight, her body clearly not working properly as she tried to grab a fistful of Adele's hair.
"Adele?"Malloryn's tinny voice in her ear.
He wasn't going to make it in time....
She was going to die. Right here. She'd never see her husband again. Never see Hattie. Never hold her baby in her arms—the one she'd wanted. Little Alex.... Little Alex, oh, God.... Lena.
Never kiss her husband ever again—
"You worthless scrap of nothing...."
Suddenly she was months in the past, as Lord Corvus clasped at his bloodied cheek and looked at her with fury in his eyes. "You little slut—"
And he'd come at her, knife swinging, before she'd darted under his arm and bolted through the gardens, fleeing directly into Malloryn's arms.
Corvus hadn't beaten her then.
And Jelena would not beat her now.
"If Malloryn wants you so badly, then he can have little pieces of you," Jelena whispered, the words barely penetrating the throbbing pulse in Adele's ears.
Like hell.
She was Adele Cavill, the Duchess of Malloryn, and she'd spent years fighting for the right to survive in this cursed world. Blue bloods had cut her and bled her and pinned her down. They had treated her exactly like the cattle Jelena called her. She was not going to be ended here, not like this.
Adele's hand curled around the small glass bottle of perfume. Her bloodied gloves slipped and slid, but she thought she had her fingers around the rubber bulb of the atomizer.
