And I was empty.
A husk. A crumpled form on the ground with bile on my tongue, tears on my cheeks, and smoke in my nose. Everything was gone. Everything.
I didn’t have the strength to move, but I knew my fingertips were barren of webs. My soul felt like it had been cleaved in half and then ripped into shreds. She was gone. The other half to my soul was just...gone. And my mate bonds, the strings that I hadn’t even realized were tied to my heart...they’d all been severed.
I felt nothing. I was numb. Hollow. Utterly desolate.
“Motley? Motley, baby, are you okay? Talk to us,” Crow pleaded, but I didn’t have the strength.
When Glenda Wind woke up and the audience clapped, I heard nothing, saw nothing. When Belvini droned on about the next auction, I felt lost. He seemed giddy about the new bidding war beginning, but my mind couldn’t even keep up. I felt like a ghost, haunted by my own loss.
“How do you feel, Glenda?” Councilman Wind asked.
The blonde shifter turned to her husband, getting up on shaky feet as Spector guards helped her. She touched the spot on her throat where a red hourglass now marked her. The spot on my own throat felt cold and wiped clean.
“I feel...strange, but…” the woman’s voice trailed off.
“But what?” her shifter husband asked, crossing his bulky arms in front of him.
“But strong,” she said with a thrill in her voice, her eyes glittering.
Without warning, she lifted a hand and webs shot out, hitting the wall with a splat. She made a noise of surprise, before she started to laugh with excitement. “Oh my gods, this is amazing! Look! I’m Black Widow!”
Those shattered pieces of my heart stabbed deeper into my chest.
“Yes, dear,” the councilman said placatingly. “And it’s a good thing, too, for all the money you just spent.” He then chuckled in dry amusement, making the people in the audience laugh along with him.
“Don’t worry, I’ll use my new lure power on you later after you get one of the demon mates in you,” she said with a wink. “I can’t wait to test out feeding. I bet it’s positively feral.”
Her husband’s eyes widened with lusty greed. “Yes, I think I’ll go for the gargoyle one, President Belvini. My wife is particularly interested in that one,” the shifter councilman said.
“It’s because you’ll have a solid stone cock,” someone joked crassly.
The shifter barked out laughter. “Indeed.”
I wanted to vomit. They just...joked about it all. As if they weren’t talking about ripping half our souls out and taking our mate bonds from us. I lay prostrate on the ground, forgotten and discarded, as tears pooled beneath my cheek.
“Alright, let’s get the gargoyle ritual started,” Collector said amicably. “Councilman Wind, if you’d be so kind as to take your seat inside the gargoyle’s circle?”
I watched through wet, heavy lashes as the shifter’s feet scuffled by. I could hear the chains around Tomb’s body jingle and creak. They were going to do to him what they’d done to me. That thought...triggered something inside of me. To imagine my strong, protective gargoyle mate reduced to this hollow shell? It sparked a fire of black rage from spitting flint in the dark. I guess when you’re empty inside, there’s plenty of room for rage to catch fire.
I wasn’t going to lie down and die. All my life, I’d been the kicked dog, taking everything the world threw at me. But I wasn’t going to just take it anymore. I was done being the lonely, bullied girl who rolled over with every kick. I may not have my spider anymore, but she taught me that I didn’t have to take it. She taught me to fight back.
It was a mistake to leave me on the ground, forgotten and overlooked. With my ritual circle now broken, I could tap into my vampiric abilities again. I was dizzy, in pain, with soul-deep vertigo and a feeling of wrong emptiness, but I pushed past it all.
As the Spector figures came around to take their places around Tomb’s circle, I forced my fingers to move. Twitch, twitch, twitch. Each miniscule movement took considerable effort, but I was determined.
Once I was able to flex both of my hands, I did the same to my toes. Then my legs, my arms, my shoulders. Like a ripple moving up me, my brain reconnected to my body, and my fangs dipped out of my gums in greeting.
The room was still dim, and everyone’s attention was on Tomb and the figures who’d begun to chant around him. I couldn’t see him or Risk at this angle, but when I moved my chin up a tiny fraction, I saw Crow looking right at me. His violet eyes were locked on me, his normally bright blue hair looking like dusky shadows. I didn’t know how he knew what I had planned, maybe it was the resolve in my eyes, but he gave the smallest shake of his head, his eyes begging me. But I looked steadily back at him, letting him know with my expression what I couldn’t say to him with words. You’re all mine, and I’ll protect you until the end.
Crow’s face screwed up in anguish, but then his spine straightened, and he gave me a resolved nod, telling me what I needed to know. He was with me. Always.
My heart squeezed. I wished I’d told my mates I love them when I had the chance. I wished I’d done things differently. But all I could do now was protect them until my last dying breath. So I would. My spider had protected me from the beginning. She’d protected them.
It was my turn now.
I had one shot at this. One weakened vampire girl against a room of the most powerful supes in existence. I had to be smart. Driven. Resourceful. I nearly smiled. I was Motley fucking Coven. Those words were my middle name.
I plastered a look of confusion on
