Chapter 75: Seventy-Five

Drew (Part 3)

Dageian’s eyes were completely red, from his pupil to his sclera. It was like I was looking into the soul of a devil. Then, I felt his hand dig into my chest, and I closed my eyes as I waited for death to come.

But it didn’t.

“Rectume, es lostoerop!” a voice shouted from behind us, and suddenly Dageian was being elevated from the ground.

I fell to my knees as I clenched my chest, coughing up blood in my hands. My eyes shifted around the area, and relief flooded me when I noticed that the twins and Elma had joined us.

Mason was kneeling before Amber, entirely out of this world in thought, while Max rushed towards me. Elma’s eyes resembled Dageian’s only seconds ago, except her eyes were completely white and glowing as she held him paralyzed in the air.

I could see that it was a very powerful spell for her to endure, but we all knew it couldn’t kill him.

“Did—did you bring it?” I asked through coughs as Max slid beside me.

He nodded frantically as he whipped the dagger from his pocket, and I nodded in acknowledgment as I pointed to Dageian.

“Kill…him.” My words were only a mere whisper, and though I could already feel myself healing, I would be weak for a while.

But Max shook his head, and I didn’t understand why until his eyes lingered on Amber, where Mason was now sobbing over her body.

Max rested the dagger in my frail hands as he met my eyes again. “No,” he said. “You do it. He had taken too much from you.”

I understood exactly what he meant, and I couldn’t have agreed more. So, he helped me to my feet as I stood in front of Dageian. Elma still chanted her spell under her breath as she lowered him to the ground, keeping him paralyzed and, surprisingly, terrified.

“Please,” he begged. “Don’t kill me. What if—what if I see her?”

I rested the dagger just above his heart as I met his eyes again. I remembered once I overheard Elma telling Amber that she had reached out to Marina once. It’s a perilous thing to speak to the dead, but Amber wanted to know more about Dageian’s deceased wife. Marina wasn’t angry at Dageian for what he had done to her. In fact, she understood that she was the one who requested him to be turned, just to save him. She knew she turned him into a bloodsucker, and it didn’t hurt her that he lost control of her.

However, she despised the person he became after her death, and if they should ever meet again, it would not be met with hugs and kisses.

He will see her briefly, and she will express her utter disgust in him before he is plunged into the depths of hell forever, where her words will linger in his mind with no escape. That was the fate he chose for himself. And I, for one, wasn’t willing to show him any mercy.

“Then I hope it is a woeful reunion,” I said. I saw him gulp, and I never once let my eyes leave his as I plunged the weapon in his chest, causing his eyes to widen even more as black blood leaked from his lips. He seized below me for a while, never once letting his gaze drop from mine until he took his final breath.

Then, just like ashes, he floated away into the air, piece by piece, until he was completely gone. I knew he died because I felt something in me shift as if a dark spirit had left my veins. The twins felt it too, and I assumed that all hybrids would. We all, after all, came into existence from him.

I fell to the ground in exhaustion as the dagger also disintegrated. Elma fell into fatigue, and with all the strength I had, I crawled over to my mate and held her in my arms.

It was over. It was all over, yet I felt like I had lost.

Silence had fallen all around us; even the banging on the door had stopped. The only evidence of sound was Mason’s silent sniffling and the chirps of the crickets around the castle.

She felt so cold in my arms, and her body was frail. Yet, there was no way I could even think of letting her go. Not yet.

I wanted to join her, and I knew that I’d join her there—wherever ‘there’ is once everything was cleared. No way could I think of going on without her. She took a part of my soul when she died, if not all of it.

I couldn’t go on without her. I wouldn’t.

“Did you see that?” I heard Max ask, and I raised my head from Amber’s neck to regard him in confusion, seeing that he was staring at Amber.

“Did I see what?”

He pointed at her hand as he frantically trembled. “Her—her finger moved.”

I shook my head as my chest clenched, and I even grew annoyed by Max. I had her in my arms, and I could feel no life. Saying something like this only hurt me more.

“No, he’s right,” Mason added as he shuffled closer, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I just saw her finger move.”

“She isn’t breathing,” I said through clenched teeth. “She’s… she’s dead.”

But just then, Max’s face lit up as if he had just remembered something, and he met mine with urgency. “Drew, you fed from her yesterday,” he said, and it was just then that I realized what he was referring to.

My eyes widened as I lay her on the ground and watched her. My heart pounded against my chest when I saw a slight twitch in her fingers as well.

It couldn’t be. Could she really be…

“That means she died with venom in her system,” Mason added as Elma inched closer with expectant eyes also.

I could hear my own heart pounding, as well the twins’ and Elma’s. But soon, I heard another heartbeat—a heartbeat that I had spent countless nights falling asleep to. I cupped her cheek in my hands, feeling the rush of warmth invade her body again, and my entire being leapt in joy as I moved even closer to her.

I waited—anticipated, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t impatient.

But then it happened, and I was stunned out of my mind when it did.

Her eyes snapped open, but they weren’t red like I thought when a hybrid came back to life. No. They were golden, literally shining gold like a beautiful, majestic angel.

And then, they found me.