Page 23

A whole-fucking-club Malgrave just made part of the price if I refuse.

Raze gives me the smallest nod.

Not permission.

An apology.

My hellhound fights me the second I make the decision, pushing against my skin, hellfire burning through my chest as if the beast knows exactly what I’m about to give away.

I swallow against the heat. “Do it.”

Two words… the last two I might ever fucking speak.

The clubhouse goes dead silent.

Malgrave crosses the space between us.

Sentinel catches my arm, and I look at him. His jaw is locked hard, gold still burning along the edges of his wings. “Don’t,” he says.

I grip his forearm.

One hard squeeze.

Then let go.

Malgrave stops in front of me and raises one gray hand. Every instinct I have screams at me to knock it away.

I don’t.

His fingers close around my throat. Heat punches through me so hard my knees nearly buckle. My back locks as it drives through skin, muscle, and bone, sinking deeper until it reaches the place where my hellhound lives.

The beast fucking loses it.

He slams forward beneath my skin, hellfire exploding through my chest as a roar builds fast and violently. I open my mouth and let him have it, one last warning aimed straight into Malgrave’s face.

The sound never makes it out.

Malgrave speaks a single word.

The roar stops inside me.

My eyes fly wide.

It’s still there. I can fucking feel it, huge and furious, tearing at my chest, fighting to get up my throat, but there’s no sound.

Malgrave speaks again as pain rips through my throat. I grab his wrist on instinct as something tears loose inside me, dragging upward through my chest with enough force to bow my spine. My hellhound digs in, fighting it, claws ripping through me from the inside as if the beast can somehow hold on to the roar if he buries himself deep enough.

He can’t.

Malgrave’s fingers tighten against my throat, and something inside me fucking tears.

The roar is the first thing he takes.

I feel it wrench loose from somewhere deep behind my ribs, dragged through my chest with enough force to bow me toward him. Years of hellfire come with it. Every roar I’ve thrown into a fight, every time that sound has shaken walls or sent something running before my claws ever reached it, all of it ripped through my throat in one brutal pull that leaves me gagging around the space it used to fill.

I suck in a breath and open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.