69. Seth
Seth
“ALL THAT MATTERS IS US. AND HER. GOT IT?”
We move like twin shadows in the woods.
Rory and I don’t need words. One glance, one flick of the wrist, and we know.
I break left, swinging my axe clean through a bastard trying to flank us.
Rory lunges from the right, a flash of steel in his hand.
We trade off, over and over, fluid and lethal.
He makes noise, draws their attention. I slip behind, deliver the killing blow.
My axe guts the soldier in fatigues. Probably a ranger.
I don’t give a fuck. I might be the “nice” guy in the group. But you come for my Kinship, my brothers, my woman? I go feral. See nothing but red.
Rory’s like the napalm bomb. I’m like a thousand hand grenades.
Smoke attacks the air, but not deadly yet.
My grip tightens until the wood creaks beneath my fingers. I feel the shift—the thing inside me stretching, waking. It’s not rage. It’s purpose. As cold as my axe blade.
With blood spattering my jaw, I snarl when I swing my weapon, clean and quick, embedding it in the spinal cord of the nearest enemy. I move without mercy, because mercy is for strangers. Not for the ones who threaten what’s mine. Ours.
Every one of them wants to take Briella away. Every single one dies.
Rory’s gone. He’s all beast. No leash. No hesitation.
I glance up just in time to see him slam a cleaver into a man’s throat, slicing clean through. The head rolls with a sickening thump.
“Jesus,” I mutter, but I can’t help the grim pride. Then I spot movement coming at him from behind.
“Rory!”
I swing my axe. The blade sinks into the attacker’s skull with a wet crunch. The man crumples like paper.
Rory turns, blood-slicked and wild, and blows me a kiss. I shake my head, laughing, even now.
We’re both drenched in red.
Then Vincent whistles low. Three times. The signal to regroup.
Time to go.
Once we get past the boundary line, protected by more tripwires, Rory grips the back of my neck, fists his hand in my hair, and brings his mouth down on mine.
The kiss is more like him mauling, and I let him bite, growl, and groan.
I give him the edge he needs. He’s high on the battle, but I know how hot that blood runs.
Unleashing it on me helps ground him, leashes the beast again by just a hair, but it does what he needs.
Then, we fall in line. I know we’re headed for the underground tunnel leading to the mine.
“What’s next?” I ask Raphael.
Vincent answers instead from behind us, tight-jawed. “Protocol Z.”
My heart drops. No. No, not that. Not after everything.
Ten years. Ten years building that place. My hands raised every single cabin from its moldy, rotted skeleton, every beam. Blood, sweat, and marks from my hands restoring the cabins. But the barn, the butcher shed—all mine. I did it so we could have a future. So she could.
Her greenhouse. God, her greenhouse.
And now we’re leaving it behind.
“The animals?” I ask Vincent.
He nods. By the end of the night, he will have contacted his last resort for the animals. A farmer an hour away, who offered us a place to stay for a year in exchange for us working that farm. Raphael hunted, traveling until he found this place.
The woods burn behind us. Explosions ripple through the trees from more landmines. Flames attack the bark like demons come to feast. The smoke chokes the stars.
I slow my pace, glancing around at the cabins. The loss is sinking.
Then, Rory slaps me on the back of my head.
“Fuck! What was that for?” I bark at him.
Rory narrows his eyes on me before gripping my shirt, yanking me forward. Vincent stops, but not Raphael.
“Don’t be doing that, my wood boy,” Rory tells me.
“Won’t help ye at all. Remember the punk ass little kid who’d never care when I stole his carvings.
You just swiped more wood. From chairs. Tables.
Broken broom handles. Firewood. Kept getting better.
We’ll find a new place. New fucking palette for ye.
Build a new place. Better than ever. All that matters is us. And her. Got it?”
I nod. It doesn’t ease the loss, but the hope lets my heart beat again.
We get to the tunnel, following Raphael down.
The air is damp and tight. The further we go, the more I feel like I’m being swallowed. At the end, the mine gapes like a throat. We make our way past the dungeon with the hanging chains, then turn the corner to find Jude next to the pit.
My spine tenses. Every bone in my body hardens.
Because he’s wrapping a bandage around his shoulder. He grits his teeth, yanking it tight. Uses his mouth to knot it.
I don’t speak. I can’t.
I cross the distance to the pit in three sides, hoping against hope. But it’s not on my side.
My heart doesn’t sink. It detonates.
She’s not there.
Just the bone ladder. The one she made to climb out. The reason she was never going to let this place take her.
It was when I really fell for her. That moment. That grit. How she staggered into the cave bedroom with vengeance as she cursed us out.
And now—
“No,” I whisper.
Raphael snarls, a few paces in front of Jude, closer to the hidden exit. He crouches, sees something on the ground. His growl deepens.
I see it too. Footprints. Two sets. And the press of a cane. My cane.
They took her.
Raphael stands and rounds on Jude. The doctor is rising, doesn’t even see the blow coming.
Raphael’s fist slams into Jude’s jaw so hard, it echoes in the mine. Jude staggers, dazed, and before he can fall, Raphael’s on him, taking him down. Both hands wrap around the doctor’s throat, cutting off his air.
“You were supposed to PROTECT her!”
Jude chokes, his fingers clawing at Raphael’s hands.
It takes all three of us—me, Vincent, and Rory—to tear Raphael off. He’s snarling like a damn monster.
Jude gets to his knees, coughing hard. “They would’ve taken her anyway,” he rasps, burning a glare on Raphael, but he doesn’t retaliate. “She…she sacrificed herself. Said they’d never stop. Said she’d rather go than see us die for her.”
My throat burns. My chest clenches like a vice.
That sounds like her. Damn it, that is her.
She knew. And she still…
Ahh, shit. Rory charges toward the exit. Both Vincent and I go after him, but I get him first. No hesitation. I lay the bastard out. But the socio lands a hard kick to my sternum.
“Fuck, Rory!” I snarl and grab hold of his ankle, biting hard, playing dirty.
He goes crashing to the ground, and Vincent is on him. All he needs to do is practically sit on Rory while my partner thrashes and kicks.
“Get the fuck off me, ye useless meathead,” he spits fire. His eyes burn. There’s blood in his beard, rage in his teeth.
I grip his hair, yank his face to the side so I can look him in the eye.
“Rory, so help me, God, you are going to get a grip, or I’ll rub poison ivy oil all over your massive prick for a whole month.
Don’t run off half-cocked. She threw herself into the mouth of the beast so we could live one more day. ”
His kicking stops. His thrashing slows. He’s still fuming through his nose.
Voices behind us echo in the cavern. Vincent glances up, concern for his partner showing. Raphael’s still on the edge of going full-blown psycho hunter/killer on Jude.
“Go,” I tell Vincent. “I got this.”
The moment Vincent gets up, Rory bucks, but I’m on him too fast, except I roll him over this time. On his side. Faces inches apart. I stare him dead in the eye.
“We’re coming for her,” I mutter, raw but firm.
He bares his teeth. “I’ll go right now and put every one of those bastards in the ground,” he growls. “No, they don’t deserve the ground. They can rot where they fall. Let the buzzards eat their eyeballs.”
I nod. “She is going to need all of us. Not just a red-headed and hot-blooded socio swinging his dick around with no plan. Rein it in. Let the beast snap and bark, but hold him back, Ror.” I use the nickname I haven’t since the foster home.
It gets him to stop. I hold his stare. Don’t flinch.
After a few heartbeats of agonizing tension, my partner clenches his jaw, swallows hard, and nods.
“Fine, wood boy. But when we finally get her out of there, I get to fuck her first. And spank her sorry, self-sacrificing ass until it’s burning red as my hair.
I’m leaving marks on her for a goddamn month. ”
He kisses me again, eats my mouth, then grabs my cock through my pants.
My face pales as he digs his fingers under, going for the balls.
I take it. I take the pain every time. Because I was his from the second I showed up on his doorstep, bleeding and broken.
And when he said, “Who the fuck did this to you?”—he was mine.
“After I spank her silly, we’re taking her together,” Rory says.
I don’t contradict him. I don’t tell him how it’s Raphael’s call. But everything is breaking, shattering, falling apart.
And I can’t fucking fix it.
We approach the others. Rory’s still tense, and I know fucking me would help him more. But there’s no time for that.
“She told me to stop, Raphael,” Jude explains. “She said she would jump; she’d fall if I made a move toward him. He would’ve called the others before I reached him. And I knew, Raph. She would have done it.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I gave you one order. One goddamn command. You failed me, Jude. For the first time in your life, you failed.”
The look he gives Jude chills me to the bone. I’ve never seen him like this. Nothing but cold detachment, icy hatred for his partner.
“It’s on you now,” Raphael continues. “If anything happens to her, it’s on you.
And for every mark, for every hurt, for every tear she cries between now and when we find her, get her back, Kinship punishment will be tenfold.
You will get on your goddamn knees before me.
You will give me every inch of your body to whip. Is that understood?”
I’m holding my breath. We all are.
I watch the fight leave Jude in slow, reluctant waves—his eyes sharpen on Raphael, jaw like steel, but his shoulders sag under the weight of it all. His chest rises once, twice, like he’s swallowing his own fire, before he finally nods.
“I’ll submit to whatever punishment you see fit, Raphael.”
“If she dies, you die.”
Holy fucking shit. For God’s sake. He means it. We all know it.
Jude uses every inch of his height on Raphael but still lowers his chin in respect. “If she dies, I will eat a bullet myself.”
We all will.
Vincent steps in. “Come on. We need to get out of here. Make sure her sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.”
Jude reaches into his pocket, shaky, and hands Raphael the keys.
“The Prophet’s car. It’ll get us out.”
Raphael swipes them from his palm. Nods once before turning to each of us in turn, jaw tight.
“Let’s move.”
We leave the mine.
We leave everything.
I take one last look at the place I bled for.
The pit she climbed out of like a beautiful, mad bone witch.
The dungeon where she survived the Initiation.
The greenhouse where she hummed and smiled at me.
The main cabin where we played games. I played.
She won. Where we played Truth or Dare, and how she swooned when I gave her the cane.
I built it all.
And now? We’re hunting her. And there’s no better hunter than Raphael.
We’re coming, Briella Darling.
We’re coming with hell in our hands.