Chapter Seven #3
The realization crashes down on me like thunder.
That was the deal. That’s why Bryce promised him guardianship, why the papers suddenly shifted and the leash snapped.
Trent was supposed to kill Ronan in exchange for Kimber.
And he failed. He fucking failed. Which is part of the reason Bryce pulled back.
Behind me, Ronan stiffens at the sound of her name, his entire presence shifting like a storm breaking wide open.
His attention locks on Trent again, eyes burning brighter than the fire they left behind at their house.
“Kimber?” His voice is a growl, lethal in its simplicity.
“What the fuck does she have to do with this piece of shit?”
My hand doesn’t waver as I keep the blade under Trent’s chin. I don’t look away when I answer, letting each word sink into the air like another cut. “She was the prize, Ro. The reward for killing you. Bryce promised her to him.”
The moment the truth leaves my mouth, I feel Ronan shift beside me. The thin leash he’s been holding onto snaps, and what replaces it is something darker, deadlier. My twin flame of chaos pushed right to the edge. And for Trent Malloy, things just went from bad to terminal.
“Baby,” Ronan says, calm as a saint but sharp as a loaded gun.
The way his voice smooths over the air, unhurried, collected, is terrifying in itself.
The calm that comes before a storm, the kind that makes every hair on the back of your neck stand on end because you know something catastrophic is about to follow.
His dark eyes glitter as he tips his head toward me.
“Didn’t you say something about an octopus hotdog when I first got here? Let’s see how that goes.”
A smile stretches across my lips, slow and deliberate, curling with madness that feels like home.
My blade gleams in the dim light as I shift closer to Trent, my gaze locked on the one part of him he can’t hide behind bravado, the part that’ll strip every ounce of manhood from him once I’m done.
I lower my hand, my knife trailing the air like a whisper, until I’m hovering dangerously close to his lap.
But before I can touch him, Ronan’s hand shoots out, his grip iron around my wrist. The sound that rumbles from his chest isn’t just a growl—it’s a warning, low and primal, vibrating through the room with enough force to make my bones hum.
His lip curls, teeth flashing like a wolf about to bite. “You’re not touching his junk.”
I freeze, not from fear but from the sheer power of his claim.
His possessiveness burns through me hotter than fire, setting my blood racing even as his grip tightens.
With one smooth motion, Ronan moves past me, adjusting Trent’s posture with brutal efficiency.
He yanks the bastard forward in the chair, jerking his legs apart, then fists his waistband and jerks the fabric down just enough to expose him—vulnerable, pathetic, laid bare under our gaze.
The sight alone sends a shiver of satisfaction through me, because now Trent’s mask is cracking. His eyes widen, his breath hitching, and at last—finally—he shows the fear he should have shown me from the beginning. Fear that tastes sweet on my tongue, the kind that makes my blade itch to sing.
“That’s better,” I murmur, satisfaction curling through my voice as the fear finally bleeds into Trent’s eyes.
It’s there now, sharp and trembling, the kind that makes his chest rise too fast and his jaw tremble against his will.
That’s the look I wanted—the look of a predator turned prey; a man who’s finally realized he’s nothing more than meat on the hook.
The next hour blurs into a symphony of pain and confession.
Ronan and I work in sync, circling him like wolves, tearing down every wall he tries to hide behind.
Every cut, every stab, every twist of the knife is measured—not just for the agony it brings, but for the truths it forces loose.
Our fathers’ names spill from his mouth in broken gasps, details about shipments, accounts, dirty business deals that tie them deeper into their empire of rot.
He sputters, pleads, breaks down—but we don’t relent.
Not until his resistance collapses, not until his voice is stripped raw and there’s nothing left for him to give.
And when his body shakes too hard to hold itself upright, when his skin is painted in blood and sweat and the octopus of ruin I carved between his legs leaves him whimpering like a child—that’s when the last mask falls.
He sings like a canary—desperate, pathetic—spilling every last secret he thinks might save him. But nothing can.
By the time Trent’s chest rises for the last time and his breath leaves in a hollow rattle, I step back, my chest heaving, the blade in my hand slick and trembling from the aftermath. The silence that follows is deafening, punctuated only by the faint drip of blood pooling on the floor.
Ronan turns to me. Slowly, deliberately, his gaze finds mine, and the world narrows to just the two of us.
His eyes burn with an intensity that scorches straight through me, raw and unflinching, so powerful it roots me to the spot.
There’s no mockery in him now, no feral grin, no teasing edge—just truth. Stripped down and bare.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, his voice thick, rough with more emotion than I’ve ever heard from him.
The words hit me harder than any blade ever could, lodging deep in my chest, breaking something open that I thought had turned to stone long ago.
He takes a step closer, his gaze still locked to mine, and the next words come out lower, steadier, carrying the weight of a vow. “I love you.”
It’s not a question. Not a plea. It’s a declaration, solid and irrevocable, spoken like a brand that sears itself into my soul.
“I love you too,” I whisper, the words ripping free from somewhere deeper than my lungs, a place I’d buried so long I almost forgot it was there.
Before the echo of screams dies in the room, Ronan’s hand fists in my hair, tugging my head back just enough to crash his mouth against mine.
The kiss isn’t gentle. It isn’t sweet. It’s desperate, consuming, like he’s been starving for me for years and finally has permission to feast. His lips bruise mine, teeth grazing, tongue demanding—and I give back what little I have left to offer.
We’re clawing at each other, both frantic, both undone by everything that’s led to this moment.
His grip is everywhere—my back, my hips, my face—like he’s terrified I’ll vanish again if he doesn’t hold me tightly enough.
I can’t stop touching him either, running my hands over his chest, his shoulders, the ridges of muscle straining beneath his shirt, needing to prove to myself he’s real. That we’re real.
The desk bites into the backs of my thighs as he lifts me, setting me down like I weigh nothing, his body crowding mine, caging me in.
The world narrows to the heat of his skin and the press of his mouth, the dark fire in his eyes when he pulls back just enough to look at me.
Behind him, Trent’s body slumps lifeless in the chair, the sharp tang of blood in the air only stripping the moment bare, heightening the charge running through me.
Death is in the room, but so is life—ours, tangled and burning, reckless and undeniable.
“Mine,” Ronan growls against my lips, and the word feels less like a claim and more like a vow.
A vow I echo with every kiss, every gasp, every desperate pull to keep him close.
“Need to be inside you, Berk.” His voice is guttural, frayed at the edges, and before I can take in the words, he’s already moving.
My pants are tangled around one ankle, forgotten, and then he’s there—thick, relentless—slamming into me with a force that knocks the breath from my lungs.
Pleasure detonates inside me so fast it’s blinding. My back arches against the desk, stars exploding behind my closed eyes as the orgasm rips through me instantly, wild and unrestrained. His name tears from my throat, half sob, half prayer, clinging to him like he’s the only anchor I’ll ever need.
“Fuck, baby,” Ronan groans, his voice cracked with need.
He stays buried deep, unmoving, like he’s savoring the first drag of oxygen after drowning.
His forehead presses to mine, his lips brushing across my nose in that soft, reverent way that undoes me more than his thrusts ever could.
“So sensitive,” he whispers, his breath hot against my skin. “You ready for me?”
There’s no time for an answer, no space for thought.
He leans back, gathering my legs in his powerful grip, pinning them tight as he draws out slow—agonizing—before slamming back into me with brutal precision.
The sound that leaves me is a strangled cry, my body clenching tight around him, already quivering on the razor’s edge of release again.
“Yes… yes,” I chant, the word breaking with every thrust, a desperate mantra that drowns out everything else—the world outside, the danger, even the corpse sprawled feet away.
None of it exists. There’s only us, colliding like fire meeting gasoline, years of loss and rage and need igniting into something uncontrollable.
We aren’t careful. We aren’t tender. This is raw, violent passion, a storm of fury and love crashing together, burning everything in its path until nothing is left but ash and the wreckage of all the years we lost. And in that chaos, in his unrelenting claim, I finally feel whole again.
His thrusts grow harder, more frantic, each one slamming into me with a rhythm that feels less like sex and more like survival.
My nails dig into his back, dragging down hard enough to leave marks, desperate to tether myself to him as wave after wave crashes over me.
My body clenches around him, pulsing tight, dragging him deeper into me, and the pressure builds so fast I can’t breathe.
“Ronan—” His name is a broken cry as I shatter beneath him, the orgasm ripping through me like wildfire, burning me from the inside out.
My vision goes white, stars bursting behind my eyes, and still, he doesn’t stop.
He drives through my release, taking every last ounce of it, forcing me higher, wringing every tremor from me until I’m gasping, shaking, undone.
He buries his face against my neck, teeth grazing my skin, his breaths ragged and uneven.
“Berk—fuck—I’m—” The words dissolve into a growl as his body goes taut, the tension in him coiled so tight it vibrates through me.
His hips snap once, twice, and then he breaks with me, his release crashing into mine, violent and consuming.
The sound that leaves him is raw, guttural, a man undone in every sense of the word. His body jerks against mine, every muscle straining as he empties into me, and for a moment the world narrows to nothing but the two of us, locked together in the fire of it.
We collapse into each other, bodies trembling, slick with sweat and blood, breathless like we’ve just clawed our way back from the edge of oblivion.
My chest heaves against his, our hearts pounding in the same frantic rhythm, a drumbeat that feels more like a war cry than an ending.
The surrounding air is thick, humming with the aftershocks of what we just unleashed—like the storm hasn’t passed so much as settled into our bones.
Ronan lowers his forehead to mine, and for a moment the world softens.
His lips brush mine, not demanding, not desperate, but reverent, a kiss that feels like worship, like a vow carved straight into my soul.
There’s a quiet awe in his touch, in the way he holds me as though he can’t believe I’m real, that I’m here with him. And maybe I can’t believe it either.
But what I do believe is this—whatever battles are still waiting, whatever enemies rise out of the dark, whatever hell we’re about to march into—we’re not doing it alone.
Not anymore. We’re stepping into it together.
Blood on our hands, fire in our veins, and a love too savage, too relentless, too unbreakable to ever be torn apart again.
He’s still inside me, his breath warm against my temple, the heat of him anchoring me to this blood-soaked reality when everything else feels like a dream.
His chest rises and falls against mine, steady but fierce, like his heartbeat is syncing with mine.
His hand slides into my hair again, possessive, tender in its own brutal way, and his mouth brushes against my ear.
“You’re coming with me to our safe house,” he says—not a question, not a plea, but a command edged with certainty.
His safe house. Their world. His claim. The words ripple through me, heavy and inevitable, but instead of fear or defiance, laughter bubbles up, light and startling, slipping past my lips in a giggle I can’t contain.
Ronan pulls back just enough to look at me, his dark eyes narrowing, head tilting like a predator caught off guard.
“What’s so funny, Pix?” The pet name in his gravel-rough voice only makes the laughter slip out again, softer this time, threaded with something dangerously close to joy.
I shake my head, letting the secret dance in my smile as I meet his gaze. “You’ll see.”