"I should have killed you that night with the rest of your pathetic pack," he growled, his fingers tightening around my throat until stars danced behind my eyelids. "Instead, I kept you. Fed you. Gave you a place in my world."His thumb traced my racing pulse, and I saw the exact moment he felt how my body betrayed me—how it sang for him even as he choked the life from it."But the cruelest thing I ever did to you, little omega," he whispered against my lips, his breath hot with promise and threat, "was making you fall in love with the monster who murdered your family. And the most beautiful part? You'd choose me again. Even knowing what I am. Even knowing what I've done."His smile was sharp enough to cut souls."Wouldn't you, my sweet Aria? Look me in the eyes and tell me you wouldn't choose your monster all over again."The worst part wasn't that he was wrong. The worst part was the breathless "yes" that escaped my lips before I could stop it.Because somewhere between the first night he branded me and this moment where he held my life in his hands, I'd stopped being his victim and become his willing accomplice. I'd learned to crave the darkness he fed me, to hunger for the twisted love only he could provide.We were poison and antidote, destroyer and destroyed, monster and mate—perfectly matched in our mutual destruction.
