echo #3
“I chose myself,” he whispered.
I kept my hand beneath his chin. “All of it.”
His eyes squeezed shut again, and I dug my fingers into his jaw until he opened them.
Nichlas looked straight at me when he finally said, “I chose myself over you.”
Something inside my chest settled.
I released him.
Nichlas sagged forward, both hands catching the ground while he sobbed.
He told me he was sorry again, quieter this time, without attaching an explanation to it.
Maybe that was the first real apology he had ever given me.
If he had managed it years ago, before I found him protected behind Hunter and before I spent all that time imagining exactly how his blood would feel on my hands, it might have meant something.
Now it was only late.
I stepped behind him and caught his hair.
Nichlas realized what was happening as I pulled his head back and exposed his throat.
Both hands came up immediately, grabbing at my forearm despite the damaged fingers, and he began pleading so fast the words blurred together.
I held him tighter against me while the knife touched the side of his neck.
The first cut opened skin and muscle but missed anything that would finish him quickly.
Blood poured over my hand.
Nichlas screamed and thrashed hard enough that I nearly lost my grip, one heel digging into the dirt while he tried to shove himself upright.
I dragged the blade back across the wound, deeper this time.
Hot blood surged over my fingers and down the front of his shirt, splattering my jeans and the leaves around his knees.
He kept fighting.
I had expected that.
His elbow drove backward into my ribs, and I tightened my arm around him until his movement shortened.
The sound coming from his throat changed as blood filled places air needed to move through.
His hands scratched at my wrist, lost strength, caught again, then slipped over the blood coating both of us.
I held him through all of it.
His body jerked against mine several times before the fight began leaving him.
The frantic grip on my arm weakened first. His shoulders followed, sinking backward while I kept his head pulled against me.
Blood ran steadily over my hand and wrist, warm enough at first that I felt the temperature change as it spread through my clothes.
Nichlas tried to breathe.
The attempt produced a wet sound and another rush of blood.
I watched his eyes.
He was still there for several seconds, terrified and aware, and I wanted him to see me for every one of them. I had seen him leave me bleeding. He could watch me stay.
When his eyes finally stopped finding mine, I lowered him carefully to the ground.
I sat beside him long enough to make sure.
No last movement came. His chest stayed still, one hand lying open in the leaves while blood continued spreading beneath his neck in a dark widening patch.
I expected something dramatic after wanting this for so long. Maybe relief would hit hard enough to make me dizzy, or all the rage I carried would suddenly disappear and leave some enormous empty space behind it.
Instead, I felt good.
Tired. Sore. Bleeding from the side of my head.
And really fucking good.
I wiped the knife once against what remained clean on Nichlas’s shirt, then looked at his face.
Killing him had never been the only part of the plan.
I had wanted proof. Maybe because some piece of me had always expected somebody to tell me he escaped again, that another protection order appeared, that a body without a face was somehow not enough.
Whatever the reason, I wanted the head.
Removing it was ugly work.
The wound I had already opened helped, but the knife still had to pass through layers that did not surrender easily.
I rolled Nichlas onto his back, braced one knee against his shoulder, and worked from the existing cut while blood soaked farther through the ground beneath him.
Muscle gave before connective tissue did.
I had to change my grip twice when the handle became too slick, wiping my palm against my jeans before going back in.
The spine was worse.
I could not slice cleanly through it with the knife I brought, so I had to work around the joint, feeling for the place the vertebrae separated instead of trying to force the blade through bone.
My shoulders started burning before I got the angle right.
When it finally gave, the sudden release nearly sent me backward.
I sat there breathing hard with Nichlas’s head separated from the rest of him.
Blood covered both forearms. It had dried tacky over the backs of my hands and soaked through the knees of my jeans where I had knelt beside him. My hair kept sticking to the cut at my temple, and somewhere during the struggle I had torn the sleeve of my shirt.
I looked down at Nichlas’s face.
He looked ordinary now.
That annoyed me a little.
I caught him by the hair and stood, leaving the body where it was for somebody else to deal with. The walk back through the woods took longer without adrenaline dragging me forward, but I knew the direction of the house and no longer needed to care about hiding my trail.
The lights appeared through the trees before I reached the yard.
Malakai was outside before I made it halfway across the grass.
He stopped near the terrace, taking in the blood covering me before his gaze dropped to what hung from my hand. The smile that spread across his face was slow enough that I knew he had been imagining this since he picked Nichlas up from the clinic.
“You took his head,” he said as he came down the steps, his attention moving over me with undisguised approval. “I knew the property was a good idea, but that is significantly better than what I pictured.”
I adjusted my grip in Nichlas’s hair because my hand was starting to cramp. “You gave me several hundred acres and a wounded man. I wanted a souvenir.”
Ronan came out behind Malakai with the tracker phone still in one hand.
His gaze went first to my face, catching on the blood along my temple, then down my arms before settling briefly on Nichlas.
He crossed the remaining distance and touched two fingers near the cut at my hairline without smearing whatever was left there.
“He got you.” There was no alarm in his voice, only assessment, and when I told him Nichlas found a rock during the fight, Ronan angled my face enough to check the wound before deciding it was shallow.
“You’ll need that cleaned before we leave.
The tracker stopped moving several minutes ago, so I assumed you were finishing things. ”
Malakai had moved behind me to inspect the rest of the damage and seemed far more interested in the blood than the scratches. He told Ronan that he had been right about what Echo looked like after a hunt, then reached for the head until I shifted it out of his range.
“You can look without touching,” I told him. “I did all the work.”
Hunter came through the back doors in time to hear that and stopped at the edge of the terrace.
He had apparently arrived while I was gone because I had not left him at the house earlier.
His eyes traveled from Malakai, to Ronan’s fingers near my temple, down the front of my blood-soaked clothes, and finally to Nichlas’s head.
The exhaustion that crossed his face made Malakai laugh.
Hunter ignored him and pointed toward the stone beside the terrace.
“Whatever you were planning to do with that, it does not involve my dining table. Put it somewhere that can be disinfected, and then somebody tell me where the rest of him is before I discover you left a headless corpse on property my name is attached to.”
I set Nichlas on the stone ledge and flexed my aching hand. “The body is in the woods. I know approximately where.”
“That is almost useful.” Hunter pulled out his phone when it began ringing, and his expression changed the moment he looked at the screen. “Of course.”
Desmond’s name was visible before he stepped away to answer.
While Hunter took the call, Ronan brought me to the outdoor sink and cleaned the cut near my temple before handing me a cloth for the blood on my arms. The water turned red almost immediately, streaking over my wrists and down the basin while Malakai leaned against the counter nearby.
“Did he make it interesting?” he asked, watching me rinse blood from my fingers.
“He lasted longer than I expected. Used the creek well, doubled back twice, and cracked me in the head with a rock before I caught him.” I wiped the cloth over my forearm while Malakai’s grin widened. “Then the leg gave out.”
Ronan glanced at him while checking the cut near my temple again. “You can get the rest after she stops bleeding on Hunter’s property.”
Hunter was still farther down the terrace with the phone to his ear. “No, I didn’t forget. You said this weekend. You never gave me a time.” He listened for a few seconds, jaw tightening. “Where?”
Malakai straightened beside the counter.
Hunter turned slightly away from us. “Tonight?” Another pause. “You could’ve mentioned that before now.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck while Desmond kept talking. “Yes, Ronan and Malakai are with me.”
His eyes shifted toward me.
“No, she’s here too.” Hunter went quiet again, then his expression hardened. “I’m not discussing her over the phone. If you want to meet Echo, you can do it when we get there.”
I stopped wiping my arm and looked at Ronan. He had already stopped what he was doing.
Hunter listened for another moment. “Fine. We’ll be there.” He ended the call and walked back toward us, shoving the phone into his pocket.
Malakai looked from Hunter to me. “We’re still going?”
“My father decided the party is tonight.” Hunter’s gaze moved over the blood in my hair, the ruined shirt, and Nichlas’s head sitting on the stone ledge. “He expects all four of us there.”
Ronan checked the time. “How long?”
“Thirty minutes before he starts caring that we’re late.”