Destructive Embrace Read Free Page A

go off without a hitch was good.
    It was nearly dawn when I
returned to the castle. The silence was stifling, so I headed to
Reid’s section of the castle, ignoring the painful twinge I got, in
search of Elyssa.
    After searching the whole
area, I cursed. Where the hell was she, if she wasn’t there? Could
she have moved into my area? Or Wyatt’s?
    I frowned. “Or Zeke’s?” I
asked aloud. There was no way. He’d beaten her. She hated him –
didn’t she?
    She had to hate him. There
wasn't really another answer that was plausible. If Elyssa didn't
hate Zeke – who'd drugged her on her first night here, along with
beating her later down the road – then she was crazy. So when I
stepped into the main hall and caught a whiff of her scent leading
down the hallway beneath the stairs, I shook my head. Elyssa was
crazy, for sure.
    I followed her scent to the
room she chose, and knocked once. I heard grumbling on the other
side of the door and chuckled quietly. Still the same old grumpy
Elyssa. When she threw the door open, eyes fixed in a dangerous
glare, the laughter fell from my face. She looked more vampiric
than I'd ever seen her.
    "Elyssa," I said quietly.
She lifted her eyebrows and made a motion with her hands for me to
get on with it. I frowned. "What the hell is wrong with
you?"
    "Absolutely nothing,
Dmitri," she trilled, turning on the spot to traipse over to her
bed. The springs groaned as she sat down, and I followed her into
the room, glad that I'd fed on fresh blood. If it was what it
looked like, and Elyssa had released her emotions to become a true
vampire, then she might not have any qualms about attacking me, and
I would need my strength to fight her off without hurting her
seriously.
    "Then why are you acting
like this?" I asked, knowing the answer already. Elyssa shrugged,
flipping her hair over her shoulders. I noticed that she'd washed
up and wasn't covered in Reid's blood anymore, which reminded me of
why I was there.
    Before I could speak my
mind, Elyssa spoke. "Maybe I'm acting like this because you came
knocking at my door at the crack of dawn and it's annoying?" Her
tone was sarcastic and a playful smirk touched the corner of her
mouth. Her smile was alluring…
    Great. She was a flirty
vampire.
    Shaking my head free of her
nice little smile, I asked, "Who exactly killed Reid?" The question
made her snap her eyes up to mine, and all signs of a smile – of
her pleasant attitude, even – disappeared. I braced myself for a
possible attack from her.
    "I did," she said. Her tone
was dead, like she didn't care that she'd been the one to end my
brother, her Mate. It only confirmed my theory that she'd turned
her emotions off in favor of being a true vampire. It only served
to piss me off, though.
    "Do you even care that
you're the one who ended Reid's life?" I asked harshly. "That you
took your silver Kodachi and drove it into his heart?"
    "I ended his suffering,
thank you very much!" Elyssa snapped, jumping to her feet to stand
before me. She was over a head shorter than me, so I turned my head
downward to meet her gaze. "Tywin was ruining his life and making
him a prisoner in his own damn body, so I ended that. I set Reid
free."
    I shook my head. "Who made
you believe that?" I asked bitterly. "Did Zeke tell you it would be
better for Reid that way? Was this just cooperation between you
two? What's in it for Zeke, huh? His family just lost one of the
Master-rank vampires, so that isn't good. So what is he getting out
of this?"
    I should have stopped, I
knew it. But something urged me on, and I kept talking. "Is he
getting you ?" The
disgust on Elyssa's face made me smirk, and I sighed. "Oh, Elyssa.
How could you have been so easily swayed by Zeke? He isn't that
good looking," I teased.
    Before I could continue my
stupidity, Elyssa rammed her body into mine, sending me flying
backward. I hit the stone wall of the hallway with a painful
cracking sound, and hissed. "You bitch," I coughed out. "How