GOOD PREY

ZEVIAN POV

“Welcome to your new hell, Amaris Dormount,” I muttered slowly as I watched her eyes widen in terror.

Immediately, she began shaking violently in the chair, trying to free herself from the ropes I had skillfully tied around her. But her efforts were to no avail.

Then the chair toppled to the ground as it lost balance, causing her head to hit the concrete. She winced in pain.

Something strange bubbled in my chest, but I ignored it. The anger I was feeling was already enough emotion. Every single thought I had narrowed down to one question: How dare she hurt my mate?

“Please… I’m sorry,” she begged as she tried to inch herself toward the door. But seeing that the distance between us wasn’t increasing, and that I hadn’t changed my mind, a stream of tears rushed down her cheeks.

“Please…Zevian,” she said my name ever so sweetly, causing my eyebrows to furrow.

“Even a rogue still has some sort of respect for their family. But you’re nothing but a lowlife who can’t differentiate… first your parents, now your twin? What’s left, Amaris… your biological parent?”

I squatted so I could come face-to-face with her, then used the end of the gun to tilt her face toward me. “Even a dog can differentiate foes from family.”

Although death was currently her biggest fear, I wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of dying. That was mercy, and I’ve never been known for giving my enemies any.

I was simply going to leave her in the same condition as her twin. In a much more painful way, and I’d definitely keep her conscious while I did it.

There was no telling if she’d die afterward, but did I care?

No.

I cocked the gun, aiming at her knees.

“Zevian…Zevian!!” she screamed, shutting her eyes as she anticipated the pain that was to come.

But her screams only angered me more, reminding me of what she had done to my mate. The fact that I had been so close, yet I couldn’t protect her. The fact that when she woke up, she was never going to be the same again.

My wolf stirred inside me. He’d been silent—a wolf as ferocious as mine had been silent for a while.

But I was going to make up for it. I was going to avenge our mate.

“How does that saying go… an eye for an eye?” I said, watching the sickening terror on her face.

But just before I could pull the trigger, just before my boiling blood could be satisfied, the door flew open as the sound of hurried footsteps echoed behind me.

“Zevian, wait,” Lucas, my beta, called from behind me.

I turned to look at him. Beads of sweat covered his face, and he still had on the labcoat he was wearing from earlier when I left the hospital.

“I’m busy,” I said, turning back to the girl who had now shut her eyes tightly, willing herself to disappear into the ground.

“It’s urgent. You need to listen,” he said, approaching.

I swear, I contemplated just getting everything over with quickly and answering my annoying beta, who didn’t know when and when not to interrupt his Alpha. But there was always a pleasure that accompanied slow torture that I couldn’t deny myself, so I stood up and turned toward him.

“What?” I asked, annoyance written all over my face.

“It’s Amaris… Amoria… both,” he stuttered, looking briefly at the girl behind me, who I could still feel was shivering, not even bothering to listen to our conversation.

Good prey.

“Has she woken up again?” I asked.

I had left the hospital in a rush after Amoria slipped into a coma again upon waking up and realizing she couldn’t move most parts of her body. She had cried, convulsed, then suddenly gone silent.

“No… not yet.”

Lucas walked past me, squatting to examine Amaris, who shivered from his touch.

For some strange reason, that didn’t sit well with me.

Whether it was the fact that I didn’t like my prey being soiled by the hands of anyone—even my beta—or the blisters on the places he touched, I couldn’t tell.

But why should I care?

She did worse to my woman.

“What are you doing? I never asked you to leave Amoria to attend to this one.”

“I came just because of this,” Lucas beckoned, pointing at the blisters the ropes had caused, the marks of my claws on her hands, and the bruise on her head from when she fell.

Lucas stood up and pulled me a short distance away.

“Speak,” I said, wondering how much longer he intended to waste my time.

“I don’t think you should be touching Amaris,” he said, still deep in thought.

My brows furrowed as I wondered what nonsense my beta was on about this time.

When he noticed I wasn’t following, he apologized before adding, “You can’t kill her.”

“Who said I was going to kill her? She’s still my sister-in-law,” I lied.

Lucas gave me a look that was all too familiar, one that clearly said he knew what I was about to do was practically equivalent to death… or worse.

But I ignored him and walked back to my prey, who still had her eyes shut.

‘Was she taking a nap?’ I wondered, puzzled by how disoriented yet peaceful her face looked.

“You’re not listening to me, Zevian.”

“Say it already and get the fuck out of here!” I hissed.

“Everything you’ve done to Amaris…it’s happening to Amoria. And when I say happening, I mean every bruise you’ve given Amaris has appeared all over Amoria’s body! This is the first time I’ve come across anything like this in my entire career. I’ve heard of it from my professors, but I never really thought I’d see it—”

Lucas rambled, but I was no longer listening. His earlier words were still echoing in my head.

“Wha… what?” I asked, confused.

“Ahm…you cannot harm or kill Amaris. They’ve become linked.” Lucas adjusted his glasses.

“If she dies, Amoria dies.”