Free Formidable: Shifters Forever Worlds (Ever After Dark Book 1) by Elle Thorne Page B

had to protect themselves, my brother, your sister…”
    “You mean he’s not—he didn’t make it?”
    “That’s right. My team had to take him out.”
    Isabel was hard-pressed to give a damn. Bruno had been a tyrannical bastard. He’d made her sister’s life hell. “Don’t take this wrong, but the world’s better off without him.”
    “Federico mentioned your sister wasn’t heartbroken.”
    “Why would she be? You have no idea what she went through.” But Isabel knew Ana’s hardships. She’d seen the bruises and contusions. It had been a matter of time; she’d been thinking of ways to get Bruno out of her sister’s life. She’d heard Ana’s cries, late at tonight, after Bruno had—
    Isabel pushed the memories of her sister’s life away. It was over now. And she didn’t have to kill Bruno. Because that was her next plan.
    “Will you return to Rome with us?”
    Gio’s question caught her off-guard. “You’re going back?”
    “It’s better for me to be close to the center of my operations.”
    “What brought you here?”
    He glanced back at the house, then centered his intense gaze on her. “It’s a safe place. A place that very few know about.”
    “Very few others than a witch that almost killed you?”
    “I doubt Esmerelda would have wanted me killed. That trap wasn’t set for a Tiero. She’d be foolish to start a war of that magnitude between shifters and witches.”
    “So then what were you hoping to escape from? Or whom?”
    “The white tigress you saw.”
    “Is she a ghost? What does she want?”
    “The children.”
    Isabel gasped. “She wants to…” She was confused.
    “She wants her children.” He stated it matter-of-factly, as if it was normal. As if it was an everyday thing. “It’s as simple as that. And they deserve their lives. That’s all there is to it.”
    Isabel’s hackles rose. Her tigress snarled. At the very same moment, Gio spun around.

19
    “ W hat is it ?” she whispered, knowing something was making alarms go off in her mind, and in her tigress, but she had no clue what.
    Gio’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, his jawline tightened. “Someone’s approaching.”
    More like something, Isabel thought, because this was no human setting off alarms like this.
    From the depths of the forest appeared a being. A man, pale of skin, tall and lean in a sinewy way. Clad in a dark suit with an open collar and a jacket, the man appeared to have stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine.
    He looked like he’d been to a formal affair. His clothing was impeccable, not a hair out of place. She’d almost call him attractive, except there was something inherently evil that oozed from his seemingly nonexistent pores.
    She glanced at Gio whose full concentration was centered on the one coming closer. “Who—what is he?”
    “He’s a—”
    “Giovanni.” The man’s voice was hollow, ethereal, and if she had to use another word to describe it, she’d have called it otherworldly.
    “Kristoph.” Gio was practically bristling, his voice displaying his tiger and a coldness that Isabel had never heard before. “What are you doing here?”
    Vampire! Isabel’s tigress screamed the word in Isabel’s subconscious.
    The word reverberated in Isabel’s mind. She’d been made well aware of the danger that vampires could pose to shifters.
    “We have unfinished business.” Kristoph’s smile didn’t meet his eyes. Eyes that were coffee bean brown, but tinged with a dark crimson ring.
    “You and I have no business.” His words were a growl.
    The tone in Gio’s voice made Isabel tear her gaze away from Kristoph. Gio had begun to morph. Beneath his human skin, she could see his tiger stripes making a presence.
    “You can’t take on a vampire,” Isabel told Gio, hoping to get him to stop his shift so they could escape the vampire.
    “Listen to her; she speaks wisdom,” Kristoph said in a mocking tone.
    “Shift and go to the house, Isabel,” Gio