Page 115 of Cruelly Bitten
No fucking way.
He can’t?—
“As you wish, my liege,” Michael murmured. “Consider it done.”
“Good. I have more important things to tend to.”
“Understood, my liege.”
The door to Cam’s suite opened, but not all the way. “Do what Michael says, Ismerelda.”
My lips parted.What?He wasn’t even going to give me a chance to talk to him?
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I breathed out. “No. No!” I ran to the door, prepared to go through it and grab him by the shirt.
But he was already at the end of the hall, his suit-clad back all I could see before he disappeared into the elevator.
“Cam!” I shouted.
The doors shut without him even bothering to turn around.
“I’m sorry, Izzy, but I warned you,” Michael said, his shoulder braced against the wall across from me. “He’s done. Which meansyouare done.”
I stepped backward as he pushed off the wall, my head shaking back and forth. “No,” I said. “He just needs to let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain. You’re a glorified blood bag who has proved to be incapable of respecting her superiors. He’s already found one to replace you. One who, what did he say exactly?” He glanced upward and snapped his fingers. “Right. A blood virgin who knows how to properly perform in the bedroom.”
I narrowed my gaze. “I’ve been his mate for over a thousand years.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But the man you mated died over a century ago. This is the new and improved Cam, and he no longer needs his blast from the past.”
Michael grabbed me by the back of the neck, his movements lightning fast.
“Walk with me, little blood whore,” he demanded. “I’ve been given very specific instructions to let you die the way nature originally intended for you to die.”
He uttered the words as he dragged me into the hallway. I tried to stop him, to anchor my bare feet to the ground, but my legs moved against my will, suggesting he’d silently compelled me to cooperate.
Or maybe Cam did that when he ordered me to do whatever Michael said,I thought, shuddering.
“The Liege said he finds itfitting,” Michael mused, repeating the statement I’d already overheard. “I suppose it’s his way of correcting a wrong and resetting fate on the appropriate path.”
“That’s only because he doesn’t know who I am,” I snapped, furious and terrified that my legs were still moving without my permission.
“And he never will,” Michael returned. “Lilith’s protocols fried the part of Cam’s brain where theErositabond exists. All his memories of you were erased as a result, and there’s no way for him to get them back.”
I ground my teeth together. “There is if he looks in my mind.”
“That would require him to actually care enough about you to try,” Michael drawled as we entered the elevator.
He selected the number thirteen, causing the lift to spring into action.
“You’ve had roughly ten days to convince him of your true importance, and you’ve failed. Why? Because he’s no longer the Cam you knew. Instead, he’s the Cam he was meant to be—a king destined to rule the alliance and bring all the rebels to heel.”
“He never wanted any of this,” I argued. “He stood against it.”
“For you,” Michael murmured. “But as Lilith predicted, without your mortal influence in his mind, he’s a proper vampire. We just had to be sure of that before we unleashed him on the world.”
I frowned. “What?” I asked as the doors opened to a new floor. “Sure about what?”
