I turned back to Byron, realization hitting me like a slap when I took a moment to observe the faces appearing over his own features.
They weren’t random people. They were my victims. Every single one of the nameless humans that Spector forced me to feed on.
One by one, they zoomed before me, each of them gagged by my webs, their eyes lifeless and haunted. Some of them were crying out from when my fangs pierced their skin, others had dazed looks of lust in their expressions, their lips already blue.
I felt sick to my stomach.
“Continue, Miss Coven. He won’t stop until his demon calms down. Use your pheromones if you must.”
Dropping my eyes down to the floor, I took a deep breath and let my spider know I needed her. If I kept stalling, I had no doubt Spector would punish another hybrid. I couldn’t let anyone else get hurt because of me.
Slowly, I was able to get a hold on my emotions enough to tamp them down and breathe. My spider sidled up beside me as if to bolster me, and along with her help, I forced my lust to rise to the surface.
When I looked back up at Byron, the flashes of faces were still rotating, as if shuffling the deck of my greatest fear. I almost expected Byron’s demon to show me a mirrored reflection of myself. After all, my greatest fear was what I was capable of.
But finally, he stopped flashing and settled on a face that I’d grown to know very well.
Tomb.
“Interesting,” I heard Lowell say at my back, making my stomach clench, my heartrate kicking up a notch as sweat slicked my palms.
Byron’s entire body morphed to look like Tomb, all the way down to his rounded fingernails. And yet, it was off. What made Tomb...Tomb wasn’t quite there. The kind openness wasn’t in his gaze. The steady comfort of home I felt when he was near was absent. I felt no attachment to the scarred, beautiful man standing in front of me, and my spider certainly wasn’t interested. But my heart panged all the same.
I pumped out more lust, subduing Byron’s demon and changing his emotions from anger to desire. He took a step closer to me, cocking his head to the side in order to study me. His hand came up, and bright joy filled his eyes when I let him stroke my cheek.
Then my spider lashed out faster than a blink, wrapping a web around his wrist. She did not like that he was impersonating Tomb.
Steady, girl.
As much as I wanted to let her claw our nails down Byron’s face and force him to stop mimicking Tomb’s body, I couldn’t. Spector was just waiting to mete out punishments to us, and I couldn’t give them a reason to.
I turned my back to find the real Tomb, and our eyes locked across the room. My spider instantly calmed. I stared at the angry gargoyle as Byron breathed down the back of my neck and wrapped his arm around my waist.
My spider hissed at the touch, and that nausea inside of me flipped like pancakes in my stomach, landing with a heavy splat.
We just need to feed, I told my spider. Just feed on the fucker, and then this can be done.
She didn’t like it.
Neither did I, but I knew we had to do this if we were going to leave this room. So with my eyes still locked on our real Tomb, I forced myself to hold still as Byron’s hand snaked over my stomach.
We can do this, I chanted to myself.
Byron’s hand moved lower, and I felt his erection press against my back. It was almost laughably puny. When I glanced down, the hand was Tomb’s. Dark skin, smatters of scars, rough hands that had held me before. But the touch wasn’t the same.
Tears filled my eyes, and I squeezed them shut. Saliva rushed into my mouth—not in thirst, but revulsion. Oh gods, I couldn’t do this. I hated his touch. I was going to puke. I was going to—
“Eyes on me, Wid.”
My eyes flared open, landing on my gargoyle.
He nodded at me across the room, helping me, trying to get me through this. Because Tomb knew the truth. He could fight, just as I could, and we might get a few good licks in. Maybe some of the others would even be brave enough to join in.
But we weren’t stupid. We were newly made hybrids only weeks after our rebirth. This place was guarded by hundreds, maybe thousands of highly trained Spector employees, some of them probably hybrids themselves. We weren’t getting out of this room even if we fought. And if we did fight, it would be at the expense of the others. Which is exactly why Spector threatened them. Because they knew I wouldn’t willingly get anyone hurt.
So instead, I forced myself to pretend like it was my Tomb holding me close, that it was him caressing my body. His hand snaked lower down my stomach, leaving hot trails of menacing heat in its wake. Hungry need filled me up.
Skin brushed against my cheek, and I turned to face Byron’s demon, still expecting to see him impersonating Tomb, but I found violet eyes and shocking blue hair. He’d changed into Crow.
Byron’s nightmare demon kept flashing between Crow’s and Tomb’s faces, showing me my greatest fear. Maybe to the others, it didn’t make sense, but I knew the truth. I wasn’t afraid of them. I was afraid to fall for these men that I could never have. I was afraid to hurt them. I was afraid that we’d never make it out of here.
I snatched up Byron’s hand, my spider and I taking control. Then I shoved it down my pants and slipped the barest inch of his pinky inside of me.
That was all it took.
Yanking his hand away and pushing
