The last lingering tears that even Dominic couldn’t totally heal inside me meld together good as new.
I’m stronger—so strong. Stronger than I ever imagined I could be. Stronger than anyone else could have guessed.
More foes fall like dominos, and the surge of giddy elation propels me to my feet. My scream still resounds through the building.
With every thump of my pulse and heave of my lungs, I obliterate another life.
Until there’s only one left, other than the four clustered around me.
One woman huddles at the far end of the kitchen, trembling with both rage and terror. Spittle flecks her lips as she tries to force out words.
I don’t want to know what the experimenter who made us has to say about me now. If I’m a monster, then I learned it from her.
She made us, she raised us, and then she set us up to be slaughtered. Howdareshe expect any better in return.
My shriek hitches even higher. Bones burst into cutting shards from Engel’s toes across her feet, through her ankles and knees up her legs.
They carve waves of pain out of her to feed the fire burning inside me. It’s so fucking bright now.
I could take on the whole facility. I could raze an entire fucking town.
But her torment is most satisfying of all. The closest thing we ever had to a mother—the attempted murderer of her own children.
Her spine bows back. Her ribs split from her chest.
Every horrible thing she thought about us, every vicious plan she had for our demise will disintegrate with the agony ravaging her mind.
Then I wrench her heart in two, and she collapses into a puddle of blood and urine.
The scream whips around for a new target, and I suck it in with a gasp.
No. No fucking way. We’re done now.
We did what we needed to do.
The hunger clamors for more, but I tense my entire body, hauling it back. I will not let this horror take me over, not completely.
The sound peters out. My jaw swings shut.
And I find myself standing, my muscles quivering with restrained power and the flavor of blood coating my mouth, in the middle of a tableau of carnage.
Contorted bodies lie sprawled all around our shelter. The sight of them sends a jab of shame and a splash of revulsion over me, but the high of the moment is still humming through my veins.
The guys are standing too, staring at the massacre: Jacob gripping the edge of the island, Zian’s shoulders held at a lopsided angle but looking full human again, Andreas with his arm looped around Dominic’s shoulder while one tentacle mends his wounded body. The guardian slumped at their feet lies still and lifeless, but nowhere near as grotesque as the deaths I wrought.
Their gazes slide from the deformed corpses to me, and the bottom of my stomach drops out.
I rescued us all. I seized our freedom.
And deep down inside, I loved every second of the butchery I carried out.
Now I get to find out whether I’ve lost everything after all.
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