Page 62 of Beautiful Madness

His stare was fierce, his bodyhealed. “No daughter should ever have to kill her father.” Then he lookedbehind me where my father stood. “Fuck you,” he said. “Sir.”

And maybe that was the moment Itruly understood something else. My father was real. He was real, he was there,and I would not have to kill him. Even though I’d believed that he was reallyhimself and not a creation of the magic, similar to the image the elder hadshown me in the training room, I’d not truly and with everything inside mebelievedit.

But I believed it now.

My mother flew to me then, andright beside her was Lucy. She’d fought her own battle in the caves, and thoughher eyes retained the sheen of the white power they’d held when she’d beenpinned high on the wall, she was no longer out of her mind. Maybe her eyeswould always shine with that particular white light. Maybe something hadhappened toallof us that day, that night, that chapter in our lives,but the only thing that mattered was that we were together.

And that we emerged from italive.

Joe separated from the crowd ofwolves and vampires and jogged toward me, and I watched him come, my hand outto welcome him as I sank into the embraces of my mother and Lucy.

And then everything happened atonce.

My father shifted into hiswolf, his muscles bunching as he prepared to launch himself at the alpha, andmy mother appeared beside him. My birth mother.

She put her hand on his back,her crazy, mad eyes sparkling with silver fire, and she stared at me with blackhatred swirling in those silver depths. “I never left him,” she said. “I’vebeen with him all along.”

Jared roared and went for myfather, and I flung out my arms to protect my mother and Lucy, who even nowclung to me in an attempt to protect me as I protected them. But the womanwho’d birthed me, tortured me, and gave me some of her awful madness did nottry to fight or kill me.

She went for Joe.

She knew what would hurt me themost. She understood the best revenge was taking someone I loved. One of myhumans.

Joe.

I screamed and threw myself athim, but I was too late.Shehad magic, too, and she slammed it into hischest before I could reach him. Before I could cover him with my own body andabsorb her evil.

In the background waspandemonium. My wolf mother shifted and attacked my shapeshifter mother, Jaredwas locked in a battle with my otherworldly, powerful father, and Joe…

Joe was dying.

The magic spread over hisentire body in less than a second, enveloping him in a white-hot fire. Theflames licked at him greedily, burning him, hurting him, killing him.

When I threw myself againsthim, I, too, was devoured. I, too, was burned. I barely felt the agony of thatburning, though. I did what was now natural to me. I absorbed it.

My body sucked it away fromhis, and I not only felt that awful magic, but I felt his looming death. Therewas the smallest spark of life inside him, but it flickered and wasextinguished, and I knew it was too late to save him.

His human body could notrecover from such a blow.

Not this time.

I was still burning when wedropped to the floor and I wrapped my arms around him and lifted my face to theinvisible moon and howled with denial, pain, and rage.

But the moon could not savehim, either.

I lost him then, my friend, myfierce protector, my beloved human.

He died in my arms, and therewas not a fucking thing I could do but hold him as I watched him go.

ChapterThirty-Three

Sam yelled my name, and when Ilooked up, almost unseeingly, he was throwing Bastien at me, and the vampire’sbody collided with Joe’s and forced him away from me.

Before I could scramble back tohim like a mindless, brokenhearted madwoman, Sam wrapped his arms around me andrefused to release me. “You’re still burning,” he said. “You will melt his humanflesh to the bone.”

What does it matter,Iwanted to ask. I could not speak.

Bastien lifted Joe from thecave floor. He looked at me, then, calm and dark. “I can save him,” he said.“If you wish it.”