wrist. Meridith drops to her knees beside her fallen lover as another wave of lust makes my knees crumble. That lust is immediately overcome by a fierce sense of pride. I’m the strongest Fate in this room. I embody the characteristics of all four divisions of the Afterlife. And then the pride transitions into greed, and I find myself wanting more. More power. More. More. More.
“Stop it!” I scream, grabbing at my hair. I can distinctly hear Lilith’s deranged laughter from behind the army of Fates. To Caius, I implore, “We can’t kill them! They’re not in control. We need to stop Lilith.”
Someone—Auston, if his smell is any indication—begins to rub his arousal against my ass, murmuring praises into my ear.
“I want you so badly, baby,” he whispers, licking at my lobe. His hands grip my breasts and squeeze.
Caius’s face scrunches with pain as he battles against the powers emanating from the other Fates. In my peripheral vision, I can see Karston surging forward with his daggers, only to immediately stop and turn towards me with a possessive glint in his eyes.
“She’s mine!” he growls out, already forgetting the fight. Abruptly, he stops walking and sags to the ground, a dopey, peaceful expression on his sleepy face.
“You go after Lilith,” Caius tells me as Auston continues to moan and gyrate his hips. Caius’s brows furrow as he watches my Angel lover, and in a blink of an eye, he’s hitting Buttox—Adam—with the hilt of his dagger, sending him to the ground. Eve immediately whirls towards her lover, the anger in her eyes momentarily softening.
Like a bug bit his ass, Auston releases me and huffs out a harsh growl.
“I can’t control myself,” he hisses as I spin to face him. “My emotions are fucking everywhere.”
“Because of the Fates,” Caius reasons, his teeth still gritted and his face creased in agony. “But you need to fight their influence. We need to hold them off so Hadley can get to Lilith.”
“Fucking hell,” Auston murmurs, and I notice that his hands shake when he loads his bow. His eyelids begin to flutter shut, and he sways unsteadily on his feet. “I just want to sleep…”
“Auston!” I move until I’m directly in front of him, my face consuming his entire vision. Only when I have his undivided attention do I lift my hand and slap him across the cheek. Lilith laughs gleefully, no doubt thinking one of the Fates is fucking with my emotions, but I don’t turn away from Auston. I watch as he blinks rapidly, his gaze sharpening with awareness, before he shoots one arrow into Paul’s knee. The Pride Fate releases a hiss of pain and collapses to the ground, dark blood oozing from the wound.
It’s funny that we can still bleed.
Because if there’s one thing I learned—if something bleeds, that means it can be killed.
That means Fates can be killed.
That means Lilith can be killed.
“Go!” Auston tells me, sharing a look with Caius before the two of them turn towards the others.
With Caius and Auston back in the battle, I charge forward, elbowing Eve in the face as I pass. I try not to feel guilty when she howls in pain, but any remorse I feel dissipates when she swipes at me with her Fate dagger.
“Eve!” I beseech, circling her. “Aggie, this isn’t you.”
Those frosty eyes hurl daggers at my scalp as she lunges at me, swinging her arm out to cut my midsection. I jump out of the way before her blade can make contact and try to ignore the lust that dampens my panties. I could try to turn the tables on her and use my own Fate powers, but I have a feeling Wrath will do more harm than good at this point in time.
Our daggers meet in the air, sparks flying, and my arms strain with the effort of keeping her blade away from my skin. Those dead eyes…
They aren’t the eyes of my friend.
Hell, they’re not the eyes of anything remotely human. They belong to a mindless zombie, consumed by an insatiable rage that only my death can satisfy.
She continues to press down on my dagger, forcing me to release my hold on the handle and roll to the side. I watch in horror as my dagger slides across the ground towards Braxton, who is fighting Rebecca, the Gluttony Fate. His eyes keep flickering towards a bottle of water on Administer’s desk, and I know Rebecca’s power is causing him to be consumed by thirst. But