Everything started happening so fast—too fast. I didn’t even have time to process that these people were stealing my demon and, in addition, my mates.
I was terrified. Shaking so hard that the metal chains bound around my hanging body were echoing with morbid rattles around the room.
“Don’t fucking touch her!” Crow yelled as five hooded figures came forward to stand around my own ritual circle.
Tomb was grunting and straining, his neck muscles popping as he tried with all his might to break free of his bindings. But it was no use. “Risk! Wake the fuck up!” he shouted hoarsely, but my demon was still passed out cold.
The figures started to chant.
“Oh gods,” I whimpered, tears blurring my vision.
This was it.
They were going to take her from me.
“Please don’t,” I begged, my blue eyes pleading as I stared at Belvini. “Please don’t do this. I need her, and she needs me.”
He walked forward until the tips of his shiny dress shoes touched the outside of the chalked lines. “Begging now?” He tutted his tongue. “It’s a bit late for that, Miss Coven. I’d hoped that your punishment with your aunt would force you to behave and submit, but you didn’t. You brought this on yourself.”
“She’s my spider!”
He shook his head slowly, making his dark hair glint in the dim light. “No, Miss Coven. Spector gives, and we can take away,” he said evenly. “As of this moment, you are no longer eligible for an internship. You don’t deserve the demon we bestowed on you.”
The chanting from the five started getting louder. Latin words long forgotten that I had no knowledge of sunk into my skull. It was a taunting sort of chant, coaxing out parts of my soul with devastating yanks. Belvini watched with morbid fascination as my body began to steam. Slowly, single rays of black light began to erupt out of my skin in dancing tendrils. Two beams on my right arm. Three on my left. One through my hand, and another at my chest. More and more and more, they shot out of me, like splinters of light trying to be plucked from my body.
And that’s when the pain came.
It tore through me like an electric pulse. Like something in my soul had been electrocuted with a lightning bolt. Screams gutted my chest and lacerated my throat. My tongue burned with blood that filled my mouth as my fangs punched through my lip. My fingertips bulged, like webs were trying to come out but couldn’t, the ends of them filling like helium in a balloon, the pressure so painful that bile rushed up my gut and spewed through my lips.
It hurt. Gods, everything fucking hurt.
“Let her go!” Crow sounded anguished, his supplication heart-wrenching to my ears. I didn’t want him to see this. I didn’t want any of my mates to see this.
Tears ran down my face like a dam breaking free. I was going to lose them. Spector was taking everyone that I cared about away from me. First my aunt. Now my spider. And once they did this, my mate bonds would sever. I would lose the connection to my men forever. I would have nothing. No one. Crushing sadness and agonizing loneliness spun out of me even as more beams of black light stabbed through my form.
My mind spun, my body trying to push me into unconsciousness so that I wouldn’t have to feel such agony anymore. But I held on. I couldn’t hide from my grief behind the strength of my spider like before. I was left empty and shaking, forced to fight for myself all alone.
“I’ll fucking kill you for this,” I heard Tomb say.
Collector chuckled. “You won’t get the chance, Gargoyle. You’re next.”
No.
Another sob tried to pass through my lips, but it was cut off with a terrible scream. My body jerked forward, like someone was picking me up and trying to throw me across the room. The chains groaned and snapped as my body jerked free of the bindings, and I hung suspended in the air in paralyzing stillness.
And then there was fire. Not around me, but inside of me, and I heard my spider scream. The shocking sound lacked humanity. It was otherworldly and hellish. It was hisses and roars and clicking all rolled into one. My spider sounded feral and furious and made the hair on my skin stand up at attention.
Pain. We felt unbearable, scorching, tearing pain.
The chants pulled at her, like phantom hands from hell latching onto her body and ripping her away. We screamed together. We held on. We held on so fucking hard.
But the forces that pulled her were too strong. And at the middle where our souls had merged, we ripped apart.
I felt her yanked out of me like someone had stabbed my heart and ripped it from my chest. Hanging strings of bloodied webs were all that was left in the gaping hole where she once was.
The force that had held me was suddenly gone, and I slammed to the ground in a painful heap. With my cheek and chest plastered against the floor, I watched as my spider’s demon form was dragged toward the awaiting woman who’d bought her. My spider hissed and clawed, her form only about three feet tall of writhing black light and smoke.
She fought against the pull toward her new host, and that fact alone made me both filled with pride and unfathomably sad. They were forcing this on her, but no matter how hard she tried to stop it, she couldn’t.
Glenda Wind gasped, wide-eyed and fearful, and then my spider was forced down her throat.
The woman writhed and gurgled, her body being surrounded with the same black light that I’d had. The transition lasted seconds, yet it felt like hours.
And then...it was over.
The hooded people were done chanting. The light and smoke were gone. Glenda Wind had gone still, her breathing slow and even as she
