“I was the one that got raped.”

“I was the one that failed to save you.”

“And because you blamed yourself—”

“I wasn’t the only one blaming me.”

“I didn’t blame you for not saving me,” I growl. It’s nobody’s responsibility to save me but mine.”

“You blamed me for letting them live.”

“I did—” not is what I intended to say. But I’m startled to realize that he’s right.

Deep down I was harboring a grudge. I’d despised that Barrons hadn’t killed them the instant he learned what they’d done to me.

“I wanted to,” he says tightly. “They were fucking linchpins.”

V’lane had needled me that Barrons permitted my rapists to live, to go on after the hellish things they’d done to me. I’d hungered for him to go bloodlust crazy for vengeance, to do precisely what he’d done tonight, rip their heads off and bring them to me in a silent I may not have saved you but I fucking avenged you. All this time some part of me was measuring him by his failure to retaliate on my behalf, holding a piece of myself back. How could he not want them dead?

He’s right about the other part, too. I could have hunted the princes months ago. I didn’t want to. They changed me. Before the rape, I was good, genuinely never had a mean thought. If I hurt someone, it was by accident and I felt bad about it. But when they were done with me, there was something new inside me: something ruthless and feral and beyond law that hungered to be the one perpetrating the savagery, because when you are the savage, no one messes with you. I’d wanted to be bad. It’s safer to be bad.

When someone hurts you—and I’m not talking about forgivable offenses, some things are irrevocable and demand recompense—you have two choices: slice them out of your life or slice them into delicious, bloody pieces. While the latter would be infinitely more satisfying in an immediate, animalistic way, it changes you. And, although you think the memory of the battle won will be a pleasure—if it is a pleasure, you’ve lost the war.

They raped me. I survived. I moved on. I wanted someone else to be the animal I didn’t want to become.

I could have cold-bloodedly stalked into their goth mansion months ago. I would have enjoyed mutilating and torturing them, killing them slowly. Savored every minute of it. Painted my face with their blood, reveling in my dominance.

But it wouldn’t have been a sheepdog that walked out that gothic, towering front door.

It would have been a wolf.

“Wolves don’t kill with hate,” Barrons says. “They kill because it’s what they do.”

“What are you saying?”

“Only humans kill with hate. When you kill, you must kill like an animal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What happens when a sheepdog gets bit by a wolf?”

“Duh. It becomes a wolf.”

“No. It becomes a sheepdog that fights with the savagery and lawlessness of a wolf.”

“Debatable.” I feel like a wolf inside and I don’t know what to do with it. I think my soul was turned. It worries me.

Two of the princes who raped me are dead, their heads lying at my feet. The third one, Dani killed months ago. The fourth one—about whom Barrons knows nothing—is imprisoned behind bars of ice.

I have a bad feeling if he ever gets out, I might grow those fangs I don’t want.

“The princess is waiting for their heads,” Barrons says. “She will not give us Christian’s precise location until she receives them.”

I sigh and say something I never thought I’d hear myself say to a completely, beautifully, naked Barrons. “Get dressed. I’m ready.”

As he leaves the room, I glance at the severed heads, the tortured expressions, and I feel a festering, messy wound inside me finally begin to grow a thin covering of healing skin.

It’s over. With the deaths of those who so deeply cut me, I can finally put the horror to rest.

I add softly, “And thank you.”

Walking invisible behind Barrons through Chester’s many subclubs is annoying as hell. When I rode his wake before, between being aggravated with him and intoxicated by my new super-sleuthing state, I hadn’t spared a glance beyond his wide shoulders.

Tonight I’m looking. Tonight I see the dozens and dozens of heads rotating to follow him as he passes, the blatantly sexual looks the women give him (and more than a few men!), and I growl with irritation.

“Problem, Ms. Lane?”