Chapter 74 Seventy-Four

Chapter 74 Seventy-Four
Drew (Part 2)
I should’ve been more prepared. I shouldn’t have let my guard down, knowing that Dageian wouldn’t stay dead. It’s my fault she’s dead. I knew his nature. I was with him for over twenty years, being his puppet. I knew he never did anything without reason, and he always had a second plan. Killing me at the house and changing Amber was his first plan. Tonight was just his second.
“Come on, Drew,” Dageian slurred as he stumbled to his feet, keeping his sinister smile in place. “Fight me like you used to do. Fight, because I know you really want to. Fight, Drew. Fight!”
I watched him in silence as he stumbled closer to me. He was already healing, but he was still weak.
It then occurred to me. Why would he kill Amber after asking her where the twins are, then leave me alive to fight him? I’ve seen this before.
Even after all those years, Dageian hasn’t changed. He was still a lonely bastard who longed for company, even if the company hated him. It was the reason why he sired hybrids. He liked having minions to do his bidding, and perhaps that was one reason he took the twins. With their power, he could do anything he wanted. But the tiny fact still remained that he earned for someone else to be with him.
Siring a bunch of hybrids can get tiring, especially when they constantly beg for freedom. He had done this with me before when he changed me. He caused my own mother to fear me, and I had to watch every one of my sisters grow old and die, thinking I was a monster.
I hated him for that, and at first, I didn’t go back willingly with him, even though the sire bond was strong. I fought him until I was too weak, and when I reached my limit, he used his mind tricks on me, taking me in my most vulnerable state and twisting me to his will.
Dageian always had multiple layers of his plans with different outputs. Yesterday, he was willing to kill me and change Amber, and today, he killed Amber and wants me again. He knew that even a second with the twins would deem it impossible for him to ever have his way with Amber, even if he waited a thousand years. So, he killed her.
As for me, this looked oddly familiar. First, he emotionally depresses me, let me fight him to release my anger, then I bend to his will.
But not this time. Not ever.
I rested Amber a few feet away before rising to my feet again. Dageian’s smile grew wider as I turned to him with guarded eyes. I watched him circling the area as he waited for me to charge at him. But little did he know that I was in no mood to fight him. Not anymore.
“Why’d you do it, Dageian?” I asked tauntingly as I wiped my face dry.
His head tilted to the side as he watched me in confusion. That was precisely what I wanted.
“Why did you kill your mate?”
His eyes widened as I said this, and I knew I hit the nail right on the head. Decades ago, when he turned me, I didn’t know anything about him. But Elma revealed a lot when she told us why he was the first hybrid to ever exist. And I was going to use it against him.
“You don’t know anything,” he mumbled as his body shook in anger.
“Oh, but I do,” I taunted, slowly circling him just as how he was doing earlier. “I know that you couldn’t control your urge for blood after trying to survive on animals. But she was there, wasn’t she? Marina was there at the wrong time, and you couldn’t control it!”
“Don’t you dare say her name!” he screamed.
It was my time to smirk, as much as my chest was now an empty hollow. He broke me, so I sure as hell wanted to break him too, before he decided to kill me too out of anger.
“You killed her, and you hate yourself for it! You live to kill the Rousseaux’s because you are afraid. You are afraid that if you die, you’ll see her again, and you are afraid that she will hate you. But that isn’t all, is it? After five hundred years of torturing people, you know that she’d despise the man you’ve become.”
It was only a blink, and he was in front of me, gripping my neck as he glared at me through angry, red eyes.
Still, I didn’t stop talking, even if my words came out as muffled coughs.
“You want to die? Don’t you? You have wanted to die for centuries! Probably from the day you killed her. But you are afraid.” I laughed as I kept my eyes trained on him. He was dying inside; I could see it, and I could feel it.
“If you don’t shut up right now…” he warned through gritted teeth. I coughed and gasped for air, but I did no such thing as shut up.
“Because if you die and see her in whatever the afterlife is and she hates you for what you have done and who you have become… you—you will endure more torture than what you face today in the realm of the living, don’t you, Dageian? Don’t you!”
“Shut up!” he screamed before flinging me across the balcony. I landed a few feet away from Amber, and my head was busted open as the image of Dageian grew blurry.
I watched as he strode towards me, chest heaving and eyes as red as I’ve ever seen them. I tried to focus my dizzy gaze, and I winced as I lifted my weight on my elbow in an attempt to get up. And throughout all that, my smile never faltered because I got under his skin-deeper than anyone has ever gotten before.
He killed my mate, so I wanted to kill every sliver of his soul that he had left. Since we didn’t get to kill his physical body, I knew it would be another thousand years before he got over the words I said to him today, and that, in my eyes, was punishment enough. Death would be merciful.
“I’m going to kill you,” he snarled as he grabbed me from the ground. “Just like I killed her.”
He pointed to Amber, laying on the ground still and unmoving. My chest clenched at sight again as my eyes stung, but I wasn’t going to let him win. Not this time.
“Well,” I managed to talk as I coughed up some blood. “At least I’d be happy with her in the afterlife. The same can’t be said for you.”
And that did it.