The magic that had been under Michael Bennett’s skin, the weapons they used to carve out his flesh—they were the same ones the ODP found in the crime scene of my home. I’d studied those reports, seen those pictures possibly over a million times. Always trying to find a trace, to find something that would get me a step closer to finding out who had cursed us with this fate and why. But it was impossible. The high fae who’d done it had wiped their tracks to perfection. Not a string of hair, fingerprint, shoe print, or drop of blood at any of the crime scenes they left behind.
The first time I laid eyes on the pictures of dead Michael Bennett, I knew. At first, I’d forced the Chief to put me on this mission by making sure Aaron Mathews couldn’t come here if he wanted because of Teddy. I wasn’t about to leave her alone in this place, to deal with these people by herself, and end up dead.
And then I’d seen these same pictures in this same folder, and everything had changed. Because the same people who’d done this to Bennett were the people who’d killed my parents.
The bedroom door opened, and Teddy walked out, head down and shoulders hunched, cheeks flushed in that pink that made the blood in my veins rush. My eyes searched her face, her body, every little inch of her, as if looking to find something bad about her, just one little thing that would make looking away from her easier. But it was impossible. I’d tried before. I’d been trying for two years. She was damn perfect, and my beast was at it again as soon as he saw her through my eyes.
She went and sat on the couch, completely oblivious to how the agents looked at her, especially Jacob Garcia, Edmond Harris, and Anna Taylor. The scent of them made me sick to my stomach. They all reacted to her as if she was their sun, too, and it pissed me off so much, I was about to rip the entire folder apart.
Mine! my beast growled, now desperate to show these people why they couldn’t even look her way ever again. She was ours and nobody in this room could even get close to her. She didn’t imagine their mouths on her sweet pussy when she touched herself. She didn’t call out their names when she came, but ours.
Ours, ours, ours.
The thoughts got the best of me before I had any strength to stop them. Dragging my eyes away from her and to the pictures again was physically painful. Gritting my teeth, I pushed my beast back as far as he would go. Her panties were dry for now, though that was going to change the moment she touched me. And despite the satisfaction that that knowledge brought me, I suffocated it, too. The sound of her heartbeat tripling when I spoke to her or whispered in her ear went next.
The feel of her small hand in mine, of my fingers around her tiny waist, of her ass pressed against me while she danced like a fucking mermaid under water, of her big tits flush against my chest, rock-hard nipples begging to be sucked…
Stop, I demanded from my own self, but the beast was relentless. He would not stop thinking about any of it, and since our mind was one, I was forced to replay everything over and over again.
My family, I said to myself. My father, my mother…Nora. They were important. This mission was more important than I ever knew. Everything I’d come to the ODP for. Everything I’d lived for, for the past six years.
The men who’d killed Michael Bennet were the men who did this to us. The ones who deserved my full attention and wrath. The ones I was going to kill with my bare claws.
But even when the agents started talking, going over the details of the meeting tonight, I couldn’t keep the pixie out of my mind for a single second.