Page 52 of Veradel
Just like Arad. His nostrils flare, eyes bulging, as realization dawns on him that I’m no longer someone he can bully around.
He crouches, his face mottled with rage, and spits, “They turned you into a werewolf?”
“I wish,” I laugh, which only makes me grin harder and bear my fangs, revealing the truth. I can’t help myself. This moment is so sweet, I can taste it on my tongue. To bolster it, I lower my hood and shoot him a glare with my new crimson eyes. “Try again.”
Arad gasps, too stunned to move.
With the extra second, I raise my middle finger just like Lucan showed me.
Then I scoop Claudia up over my shoulder and clamber back up the Wall.
It only disarms Arad for a moment. I can feel the air stir as he leaps, flying up behind me, cursing me, or maybe himself, as I pull myself up, faster and faster and faster.
When I reach the top, I don’t hesitate. Launching myself off the edge, I soar through the air and land perfectly on my feet, right between Vivian and Lucan, still in their werewolf forms. Instantly, Lucan leaps in front of me, putting himself between me and the Wall with his back arched, teeth bared, and claws digging into the earth in preparation.
Far above us, Arad hesitates on the top of the Wall between two spikes.
Do it, Lucan thinks.Jump, motherfucker.
But the clouds clear, causing moonlight to spill over all of us, and he jolts back just as quickly, clinging to the spikes.
“One vampire who can touch the Wall still doesn’t mean anything. Come back again, and it’ll be twelve against one.” Even from way up high, Arad’s voice carries to us on the crisp night air. Or maybe that’s just my new vampire hearing at work. My eyes also detect how he zeroes in on Lucan, lifts a lip in a sick, one-sided grin. “And next time, I’ll gladly take her away from you. Give her something to really scream about—”
I stop listening, blocking the rest of Arad’s words out, because his idle threats don’t matter. Neither he nor the centrifuge matter right now, with the weight of this body in my arms.
We need to bury her,I tell Lucan instead, choking on my words.
He half-turns toward me, his hulking silhouette more terrifying than anything else in these woods, but his ears twitch, and the amber in his eyes seem to melt when they look at me. Relief fills them, but allIcan feel right now is guilt and grief.
Of course. Vivian?
Yes, alpha?Vivian’s tail flicks.
Guard the Wall until Arad slides back into his lair. Have the others run the perimeter with you. And if a Guardian tries to come after Saskia… tear them to shreds for me.
Would be my pleasure.
At that, Vivian flings a howl up at Arad, one that seems to bite at the air with jagged teeth. I don’t look up to see if he flinches or not, or even if he’sstill there. I just turn my back on the Wall, Claudia in my arms, and put as much distance as possible between her and her former cage that she never got to escape alive.
We march through the brisk night air until the dirt road turns into grass, through the wrought-iron gate circling the graveyard.
“This way,” Lucan instructs me as he veers to the left.
I follow on his heels, weaving around tombstones, an iron bench, a worn statue of an angelic woman with wings.
Lucan stops in front of a group of headstones laid out in neat rows.
Each one is blank. No names. No dates.
He steps carefully between them, stopping on the last row, all the way to the right. There, Lucan gestures for me to lay Claudia’s body at the end.
“These are the graves of every citizen who has jumped before you,” he says, wrapping a comforting arm around me as soon as I straighten, his thumb rubbing circles against my shoulder. “I don’t know their names, but I was born to protect each of them. Just as I was born to protect you.”
The emotion comes on suddenly, knifing up my throat. I swallow the sting, but the tears still fall.
“While you dig,” I say, blinking through them, “I’ll clean her.”
Lucan nods and shifts without a word.
