I watched in horror as her body began to convulse, the veins in her arms flashed blue—then black.
“Feed.” A voice carried across the wind.
My mouth was on her neck before I could process the thought, I drank deep, and when I felt her life leave, I sucked the remaining parts of her soul and kept them for myself.
I saw her fears.
I saw myself the way she saw me.
A monster.
And before my very eyes, I became exactly what I always feared I would become.
Powerful beyond all measure.
And trapped for an eternity in a man’s body I did not choose, with memories of people’s deaths of which I was the cause.
My hell was not death.
My hell.
Was life.
TIMBER
Present Day, Seattle
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—one of the most realistic books ever written. It may as well be an autobiography. I scratched my nails across the seed tattoo in the middle of my palm and winced when it pulsed back at me.
It had a heartbeat.
Two days ago, it started itching.
Two days ago, I dreamed of the goddess who cursed me.
Two days ago, I saw the goddess who had sworn to love me forever only to go back on her promise the minute the goddesses of earth were welcomed back into the realm.
It was coincidence.
It was concerning.
“Stop fidgeting.” Mason my prickly werewolf colleague—he’d rather die than consider me a friend—was currently trying to cut it from my skin, and doing a shit job at it. “I think I have it.”
His nail dug into my palm deep.
So deep I had to grit my teeth. I knew it wouldn’t kill me, it was impossible for a demon to bleed out or really die unless they were sucked dry by another supernatural.
Mason would probably raise his hand first, followed by the rest of the remaining council.
Each of them had their reasons for despising me. Even though I was on their side, they would always see me as a demon.
One with a blue soul pulsing inside his body right alongside a very dangerous used one who never seemed to let me forget it.
I shoved the thought away and jerked as Mason pulled skin from my hand and then held it up front of his face. “You did it?”
“I’m a werewolf. I can do anything,” he said smugly.
Searing pain stabbed my skin, running up and down my arm like tiny needles pressing into my flesh over and over again.