The Female Hybrid Everyone Hated Chapter 18

The Female Hybrid Everyone Hated Chapter 18

“Yara,” he said. His voice was ruined. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I believed her over you. I’m sorry for every time I chose her lies over your truth. I’m sorry I put you in that tower. I’m sorry I wasn’t your brother when you needed one.” He pressed one hand flat against the grave soil. “I know it’s too late. I know you can’t hear me. But I need to say it anyway.”

He bowed his head.

Aldric hadn’t moved from his hands-and-knees position. When he finally spoke his voice came out rough and stripped of everything professional, everything clinical, everything he had ever used to keep feeling at a safe distance.

“I called your pain fake,” he said. “I held Rose while she lied about you and I believed her because believing her was easier than admitting what I felt for you and what I had let happen to you.” He looked at my grave. “I was a coward. I was worse than a coward. I was someone who knew better and chose not to.” His hands curled into the dirt. “I’m sorry Yara. I am so sorry.”

Dorian was last.

He sat back on his heels and looked at the grave with the eyes of a man who had finally finished the maths and found himself at the bottom of the sum.

“You gave me your blood,” he said. “You sat in Brian’s chair and gave until you could barely walk and you went straight back to work because I needed it done. You stayed beside me when I was nothing. When the kingdom was rubble and everyone else was gone.” He stopped. Started again. “I told you I would never let you down. And then Rose walked in and I handed her everything you had built.” He pressed a fist to his mouth briefly. “I am sorry Yara. For all of it. For every single thing I should have seen and chose not to.”

The clearing was very quiet.

Outside the circle, it was not quiet at all.

The wolves had moved when Brian began to cast – instinct overriding command, a dozen pack members surging forward toward the circle. The vampires met them before they reached it.

The fight that followed was not elegant it was fucking bloody.

Wolves shifted mid-stride, their bodies expanding, claws tearing up the frozen ground. Vampires moved in the spaces between those movements there and gone and there again, striking precise and vanishing before the wolves could find them. The tree line filled with the sounds of it – the crack of impact, the snarl of a wolf mid-shift, the cold efficiency of vampires who had been doing this for centuries longer than

anyone present.

One of Dorian’s senior wolves broke through the vampire line and made it three steps toward the circle going to attack Brain who was casting the spell with full focus before Victor appeared directly in his path.

The wolf was large. Victor was quite faster and stronger.

Victor grabbed him by the throat mid-stride and drove him backward into the treeline hard enough to split the bark. He held him there – one handed, completely motionless – until the wolf stopped fighting.

“Not today.” Victor said pleasantly.

Two more wolves came from the left. Two vampires materialized from nowhere and the exchange that followed was fast and brutal and ended with both wolves on the ground.

Tyson – now human, powerless, standing inside the circle with blood from Brian’s spell on his hands – watched his pack lose and made a decision.

“STAND DOWN,” he bellowed.

His voice still carried a whole weight and pressure even without the wolf. Despite stripped of every supernatural advantage he had ever had. Twenty five years of command lived in that voice and his pack heard it.

The wolves stopped.

The vampires stopped.

The clearing went still.

Tyson looked at his pack across the blood and torn ground.

“Stand down,” he said again. Quieter. “This is right. Let it be right.”

One by one, his wolves stepped back from fighting Dorian’s wolf.

Brian waved his hand and the circle broke then Zane walked into the circle.

I will not recount it moment by moment, because some reckonings are not for recounting.

What I will say is that Zane was ancient, determined, cold, fast and brutal. That he was precise. That he had watched Yara suffer for twenty five years from the shadows and that every second of what he did in that circle was a direct accounting for every one of those years.

When he reached Dorian in a blur, he looked at him for a long moment.

Dorian met his eyes. He didn’t beg. Whatever else he was, he had never been a man who begged.

“You told her you would never let her down and eventually you did” Zane said.

“I know,” Dorian said.

Zane drove his hand with speed and force as he reached into his chest and removed his heart.

Dorian’s blood flowed down his mouth and chest as he fell to the ground.

As for Aldric he did not let speak. There was nothing left to say and Zane had run out of patience for words. So his death was quick. The most powerful healing warlock in the territory ended without a spell or an incantation or any of the defenses he had spent a lifetime building.

Zane snapped his neck and removed his head while he was at it.

Rose watched every second of it in horror and she screamed help severally when she saw it didn’t work she rained insults.

She was still on the ground where Brian had put her, the mountain ash binding holding her in place. Her silver hair in the dirt. When it was over she looked at Zane with eyes that had finally lost every calculation and every performance and every strategy.

Just two eyes. Just a person.

Zane walked to her and crouched down to her level.

“She helped you once,” he said. “In the world before this one. She chased away the people who made your life impossible. She did it because she thought you deserved it.” He held her gaze. “And you drove a caring

her.”

Rose said nothing.

“You’re going to die a very very painful death,” he said and he meant it.

“No no no please, forgive me!” She raised her hand and held his leg and Zane broke the hand into two that it snapped loudly and the bone came out of her flesh.

“ARGGHHHH” She shouted and his hand struck her neck and broke her throat.

“You are loud. You don’t deserve to scream” He said looking at blood dripping from her throat but of course

she wasn’t dead.

She was a werewolf so for all it was she would heal.

She seemed to notice begging was a big mistake so it was better to run.

She tried turning over and crawling away but Zane was damn fast he slammed his leg on hers and crushed her two legs.

Rose made an irritating noise, groaning in pain and unable to speak yet I just gave it to her. She was quite tenacious and determined to live.

Seeing that Zane decided to end it. His eyes changed looking at her blood all over.

He was feeling hungry at this point and he didn’t fight it this time around.

He hissed and his fangs came out sharp so he moved fast, grabbed her, raised her to her feet and then he hissed again and brought down his fangs and bit her neck.

Rose trembled and continued shaking as Zane sucked her blood down to the last drop until she lost her life and then he tossed her body away.

He walked to the center of the clearing.

Brian appeared beside him. They looked at each other – this ancient vampire and this finally uncowardly warlock – and something passed between them that had the weight of years.

“Thank you Brian” Immediately he said those words blood splashed on Brian.

Brian looked down with huge shock on his face and looked at where the blood came from.

It was from the sharp silver dagger that stabbed Zane’s heart from behind.

Zane spat out a mouthful of blood and coughed out.

He turned and saw who stabbed him right in his heart.

It was his closest friend.

Victor!