Eternal Beast: Mark of the Vampire Read Online Free

consent or control, the only way out of the weakness and fear was running straight through it.
    They weren’t taking her back.
    They weren’t deterring her from the vengeance that she had to believe would save her sanity, her life, and—shit—the soul that may still be lurking within her somewhere.
    She leaped onto the base of the tree and began to climb, her nails digging into the sodden wood like fangs through flesh. She’d deal with whatever met herat the top. She’d fight as she always did, always had, to hold on to whatever freedoms she could claim. Because they—the control and the choice—were all she had. They were the only things left to fight for.
    The growl, the bark of the wolf that sounded below her was menacing and all Lycos, but he wasn’t the one who concerned her. It was the voice of another, the water lord, the one she’d suffered the most with—been found with as a
mutore balas
—had truly loved as a brother, that finally halted her.
    “Stop running, Dilly.”
    Helo.
    Her claws dug farther into the wood, ready to spring.
    “We just found you again,” he called, his voice cool as the water he’d just emerged from. “
I
just found you again.”
    Fucking Helo. The six-foot-six, skull-shaved, caramel-skinned water Beast had always been a bleeding-heart little bastard. She climbed another few feet and hissed. Unfortunately, he was her favorite bleeding-heart little bastard and he knew it. He was the one who always let her crawl into his bed at night when she was a scared
mutore
shit who’d belonged to no one but Cruen. The one she’d wanted so badly to run to the night Cruen had watched her shift for the first time with greedy, clinical eyes after his servant had raped her. The pretend father of them all had been interested only in the fact that the assault had caused her shift—not in protecting her. It was then that she’d realized no one could or would ever truly protect her. No one but herself.
    Just a few feet above her, a massive snow-white hawk landed on a thick branch and trained his eyes, one brown, one green, upon her face. The panic within her threatened to steal her voice, but she pushed it back, as she pushed everything complicated and painful and terrifying back as far as it would go. Someday, all that suppressed shit was going to bubble to the surface and explode.
    But not today.
    The bird’s beak lifted slightly into a sneer, and Dillon hissed at the thing. “Get out of my way, Phane, before you lose some of those pretty feathers.”
    “We want to help you, Dillon,” Erion called from below. The flash of the eldest brother’s arrival was lightning quick and brilliant next to his animal brothers, who had used their speed and scent to track their sister.
    “If you want to help me, then walk, fly, swim, and flash the hell out of here,” Dillon shouted down at the Beast, so massive in his demon state, his diamond eyes moon-bright in the dark forest. “Let me finish what I started.”
    “Killing the senator.”
    Her nostrils flared. “Yes.”
    “This isn’t the way to get revenge, Dilly.”
    “This is the ultimate way!” she returned. Not to mention the only way she knew of to get control over her shift from vampire to jaguar back again. “Have you learned nothing from our adopted father? Or did Cruen teach you only to torture your prey?”
    She saw Erion’s eyes flash, Lycos’s too. The demon Beast shook his head, as though he were attempting toremain calm. “You will only draw attention to yourself.”
    “You will get yourself killed,” Helo added, his chest naked and wet from tracking Dillon in the river. “Get us all hunted.”
    Beside him, the wolf growled out an irritated, “She doesn’t give a shit.” Lycos looked at her with his narrowed canine eyes. “She didn’t give a shit back then when she ran from us, and she doesn’t give a shit now. There is no loyalty inside her. Look at her, brothers. She is an empty shell, selfish and without a