My Alpha Stepbrother is My Bully (Nevaeh) novel Chapter 128

Chapter 128

Camden

It doesn’t take long to find the abandoned warehouse where Beta Ken brought Eli after he kidnapped her. It also wasn’t hard to figure out it was him-Eli and I are connected through the mate bond. Did he really think he could take her away from me without me noticing?

The scent of rust and decay hits me before I kick through the rotting warehouse door. My claws are already out, fur rippling along my arms as the wolf snarls beneath my skin. Ken’s laughter echoes down the corridor ahead-a sound I used to trust, now curdled into something vile.

“You’re finally here,” I hear Ken says. “I thought it would take you longer.”

The men behind me snarl, but I hold up a hand to signal that I can handle this. I’m angry and need to take it out on something before I burst.

As if answering my prayer, three vampires drop from the shadows before I’ve taken five steps.

Pathetic foot soldiers. Their fangs gleam as they lunge for me. I tear the first one’s throat out before his hands leave his sides. The second dies mid-leap, my claws shredding his chest open like wet paper. The third manages to scratch my cheek before I snap his neck with a twist of my wrist. Their ashes coat my boots as I stride forward.

‘Cam?’ I hear Eli’s voice inside my head. Her fear licks at the bond between us like a flame, guiding me deeper into the maze of concrete and steel. I can smell her now-honeysuckle and blood laced with something sharp and chemical. My ribs tighten. They have done something to her.

“Have you figured it out yet, Camden?” Ken’s voice rings out from a catwalk above, smug as a vampire, though he used to be one of us. “You’re too late.”

I look up just as he drops a silver net over me-coward’s weaponry. It sears through my shirt, branding lines across my back as I roar and thrash. Ken leaps down, his eyes glowing amber with borrowed power from his vampire mate’s blood bond-it’s obvious he is playing house with them. The speed he is using isn’t his.

“What have you done to my mate?” I ask calmly.

“She’s not yours anymore,” Ken sneers, circling me with a silver dagger in hand. “Julius is very interested in what happens when you crossbreed species, and Eli? Well, consider her our first successful experiment.”

They experimented on Eli?

Anger swells inside my chest, and the net snaps under my claws as I shift fully, bones cracking into place. Ken barely dodges me when I lunge for him in my wolf form, but I quickly turn and get him pinned underneath my chest. His eyes flash with fear, but then he starts laughing even when I’m a second from killing him.

“You think you can save her from what she has become? Think you can love her even when-”

I don’t let him finish his gloating this time-my jaws close around his neck before he can scream properly. In the shadows, I register a vampire coming for us, but it’s too late. I snap off Ken’s neck a second before I’m pushed off his body by the force of a truck.

A snarl leaves my mouth. I’m about to bite the vampire fighting me, but freeze when my eyes lock on none other than…Eli, my mate.

Her growl is different-lower now, threat and silk all at once-but her fingers tremble by her sides. New instincts at war with the bond we share. Should she run or attack?

My heart breaks seeing her like this, and I shift back into a human to speak to her with my mouth, not with thoughts since I fear Eli already hears a billion voices. She looks so confused and afraid. So damn broken from whatever they have done with her mind.

“Eli, it’s me…” I whisper, about to approach her, when I hear a new voice from the shadows.

“How poetic,” the voice purrs. “A mutt and an abomination playing at love.”

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Chapter 128

My eyes narrow. I’ve heard of the pureblooded vampire they call Julius. I just never thought I would be faced with him. I stand still in my place, watching his arrogant smirk be replaced with a face filled with…horror?

“Ken?!” He suddenly shrieks and rushes forward to kneel beside my dead Beta. He picks up Ken’s mangled body in his lap, and then it hits me: Ken is Julius’ mate.

Julius’s scream shreds the air like glass. Ken’s blood smears across his pristine white shirt as he cradles the corpse close, amber eyes burning black at the edges-pureblooded vampires don’t cry tears; they leak shadows when unraveling. The ground trembles as his power ripples outward, cracking concrete beneath us.

I brace for his attack even as my gaze flicks to Eli. Stay with me, I plead through the bond, but she’s hunched over now, clawing at her temples like there’s something inside her skull splitting it open. Her whimper guts me worse than silver ever could.

Julius rises slowly, Ken’s body dissolving into ash between his fingers. “You took everything,” he hisses, his voice splintering into harmonics that make my bones vibrate. Ancient power coils around him like smoke as he steps forward, and then he turns into a blur of color.

I barely shift in time to meet him fang-to-claw. His strike cracks against my ribs hard enough to send me skidding into a steel beam-a human would be paste on the wall. The wolf within me surges forward again but stops cold when Julius pivots toward Eli.

His lips curl. “A mate for a mate.”

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