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If I wanted to live a life relieved of the influence of his cruelty, I had to let him go.
Everything he did—hurting Billie, killing innocent people, taking my fated mate—was making it much easier to hate him. I’d never hated my father before, but as the minutes ticked on, I was rapidly forgetting what it felt like to love him anymore. That small part of me was getting smaller and smaller until I knew with certainty that he had to die.
Chapter 25: Kiara
M
y consciousness flickered in and out after I was dragged away from the accident. Bumping along in the back of the truck, I slumped forward and let exhaustion and pain whisk me into fluttering half-sleep, but it didn’t feel so much like sleep as it was just shock that blinded and numbed me to all else. I had a vague sense of where I was being taken, assuming that we were plunging back into the mountains to the silver mine. But when the truck rolled to a stop, and I looked up, I was surprised to find trees closing in around me and, ahead of me, the monstrous facade of Hexen Manor.
“Why are we here?” I groaned. The dragon guard grabbed my arm and hoisted me out of the truck bed. My legs nearly gave out as I hit the ground.
“Does it matter?” he grunted.
Somebody handed nylon rope to the dragon. “Wrap her up real good, Kipling.”
Nodding, Kipling took the rope and wound it tightly around my wrists behind my back, all the way up my arms to my elbows. He circled the rope so firmly around my throat that it was hard for me to swallow, then looped it around the bindings on my arms, tipping my head uncomfortably back. Once he was finished, the dragon shoved me forward. “Into the house.”
I staggered up the stairs onto the porch and inside. The smell of the manor choked me because not only was it the stench of David and the dragons that filled the house, but Colt too, afflicting me with mixed anger and pain and the desperate desire to be with him again. How similar Colt's and his father’s scents were didn’t sit well with me. I allowed Kipling to guide me through the parlor and down a hallway until we arrived at an office with the door open. Sitting at his desk was David, looking cleaner than the last time I had seen him. In front of him was a glistening, opalescent horn, its base bloodied—the visceral evidence of my mother’s slaughter. Grief burst inside me as I fought back tears, staring rigidly at the horn.
David smirked. “Sit her down.”
The dragon pulled out the chair across from David’s desk and forced me to sit. Then, he closed the office door and stood in front of it, arms folded, silently guarding me as he had before.
The truth of what the horn represented stalled my tongue.
“I haven’t decided yet if we’ll kill you or not,” said David. He steepled his fingers on the desk, meeting my eyes while the horn sat tauntingly between us. “You’re equally as valuable to us alive as you are dead. Perhaps more so alive since we already got what we needed from your mother.”
“You fucking monster,” I said under my breath.
“All shifters are monsters,” David said nonchalantly. “Our existence inherently oppresses someone or something else. The animals we kill for food. The humans we silence to protect our identities. Even amongst ourselves, we slaughter indiscriminately so that our strongest can survive. Don’t tell me unicorns have never caused deaths in order to continue hiding. You may not have slit a throat, but reserving your magic for yourselves has inadvertently taken lives too.”
“It’s a bit of a reach to call us murderers for trying to protect ourselves from being exploited,” I growled, testing the strength of the ropes around my wrists with subtle squirms. It was too tight for me to break out with how I was sitting right then.
“Nonetheless,” continued David, “your selfishness has ripped lives away from their loved ones. Your mother is at fault for the death of Sibyelle, and you… well, that baby girl might still be alive had you not tried to steal her away.” He frowned. “As I said, we’re all monsters in some way.”
I shook my head, forcing back the unpleasant sense of responsibility I had for Lothair’s daughter. “So, in your eyes, it’s fair to poach my mother for her horn and use me for my magic?”
“I’m very much justified in doing this,” he agreed. “The Mythguard will claim my actions warrant extermination, but I intend to show them the hypocrisy of their ways. They, too, are monsters for suppressing and persecuting us. We are within our rights to rise up and fight back. We deserve every bit the same degree of freedom as humans—if not more, for every new regulation and law the Mythguard imposes in order to oppress us.”
My mouth hung open with the beginnings of an argument, but truly, I didn’t know if I disagreed with David entirely. I’d been forced to live my life in secrecy because humans would have exploited me had they known the capabilities of a unicorn shifter, just like other shifters already do. I wanted to live as freely as humans do and embrace my hybrid beast without fear, but… this wasn’t the way to do it. A growl brewed in my throat. “Killing people isn’t going to get you what you want. It’s only going to cause a more violent backlash. You’re going to make it worse for shifters, not better.”
“This is going to get me exactly what I want. The world is too soft for a gentle, mindful approach, Kiara. It’s time we assert ourselves whether or not the world is ready for us.”
Arguing with David was futile. I knew nothing I could say would change his mind, but it was at least validating to tell him to his face how wrong he was. I bared my teeth, and he grinned, standing up from behind his desk. “I’ve made up my mind,” said David, taking hold of the unicorn horn. “I actually have no need for you after tomorrow, but it will please me so greatly to bleed you out and know that my traitorous son will suffer as he feels you die.”
Cold dread made me feel heavy and hopeless. “Bastard!” I snapped back at him, struggling in the chair as if that might help me at all. It didn’t. All I could do was watch David walk around me with the unicorn horn, admiring it as he reached the door.
“Bring her downstairs. I want her to ponder her mother’s sacrifice in the few hours she has left while we prepare the atrium for the ritual. Come, I’ll show you where to keep her,” said David.