Chapter 11 #2
I lower my bag to the ground, reaching inside for the envelope I grabbed earlier.
After I left Sage locked to my bed—and I’m sure he got out—I stopped by the post office. One last time. Maria wasn't there, but the mail was, and my box had something inside.
I haven't opened it yet.
Haven't been brave enough.
Because if it’s a letter saying my townhouse is up for grabs, too…
Then everything really is over.
My fingers tremble as I reach for the envelope—
And a voice cuts through the silence.
"The point of this meeting was to give me the whereabouts of Eastman."
I freeze.
The voice is male. Deep. Carrying the kind of authority that comes from being born into power and never having to fight for it.
"It wasn't about you trying to jump me."
I slip behind a tree, pressing my body against the rough bark, making myself small and invisible the way I learned to do years ago.
Survive first. Investigate after.
Through the branches, I can see them.
A man in a long black trench coat stands in a small clearing just inside the forest border.
His back is mostly to me, but I can see enough—tall, broad-shouldered, built like someone who was trained to be a weapon from childhood.
Dark hair, possibly red, styled in a way that suggests money and taste.
Black gloves cover his hands.
He's holding them up in a gesture of surrender that looks completely at odds with the coiled tension in his body.
And surrounding him—six men.
Armed.
Various weapons: machetes, baseball bats with nails driven through them, a length of chain that's probably been used for worse things than I want to imagine. They're positioned in a loose circle, cutting off his escape routes, clearly preparing for violence.
They're going to kill him.
Or try to.
"You think your mafia ties can save you here?" one of the attackers sneers. His scent carries on the wind—sour, aggressive, the smell of someone who's been marinating in violence so long it's become part of his biology.
The man in the trench coat shrugs.
The movement is casual.
Unconcerned.
Like he's not surrounded by six armed men who are clearly planning to murder him.
"Maybe," he says. "But if you lay a finger on me, you're all dead."
They laugh.
Cruel, mocking laughter that echoes through the trees.
"That doesn't matter because you'd be dead before you can get anyone to enact your revenge."
The man sighs.
Sighs.
Like this whole situation is mildly inconvenient rather than life-threatening.
Then he does something completely insane.
He sits down.
On a large rock, crossing his arms, one leg over the other, like he's settling in for a pleasant afternoon in the park rather than his own execution.
"My family lineage has destroyed any empire or being who tried to harm me," he says, voice flat with boredom. "So you're no different."
"He's delusional," one of the attackers snorts. "But gonna find out."
"Fine." The man's eyes close. "I'm giving you ten seconds."
And he starts counting down.
"Ten."
The attackers exchange confused glances.
"Nine."
They're not sure what's happening.
"Eight."
But they're not backing down either.
"Seven."
I scan the surroundings, looking for whatever trap this man clearly has set up. Snipers in the trees? Hidden explosives? A secret army waiting in the shadows?
"Six."
Nothing.
There's nothing.
"Five."
He's just sitting there with his eyes closed, counting down from ten like his life doesn't depend on what happens next.
"Four."
He's absolutely mad, I realize. Completely, utterly, gloriously insane.
The thought makes something in my chest spark with recognition.
Takes one to know one, doesn't it?
I pull my blades from the sheaths at my back.
The metal sings as it comes free—silent to anyone who isn't listening for it, deadly to anyone who isn't prepared for it.
I don't know this man.
Don't owe him anything.
But six against one isn't fair, and something about the way he's sitting there—so certain that he's going to survive, so confident in forces that clearly aren't coming—
It reminds me of myself.
Before hope died.
Before the golden ticket burned.
Before I realized that certainty is just another kind of delusion.
I move.
The first attacker goes down before he realizes I'm there—blade across his Achilles tendons, dropping him to the ground in a screaming heap.
The second tries to turn, to face the new threat, but I'm already behind him—tombé, coupé, relevé—ballet steps transformed into murder, my dagger finding the soft tissue between his ribs.
The third one—a mountain of a man, twice my size—swings his chain at me.
I duck.
Drop into a split.
Drive my blade upward into his inner thigh.
Femoral artery.
He'll bleed out in under two minutes.
One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.
The counting helps.
Keeps me focused.
Keeps the chaos controlled while my body does what it was trained to do.
Four is next—machete swinging wildly, fear making him sloppy. I sidestep, pirouette, catch him across the throat with my left blade while my right buries itself in his kidney.
Five comes at me from behind.
I hear him before I see him—the displaced air, the crunch of leaves, the particular sound of someone trying to be quiet and failing.
I spin.
Fouetté en tournant.
My blade catches the light as it arcs toward him.
He's dead before he hits the ground.
Six—the last one, the one who called the man in the trench coat delusional—freezes.
I see the exact moment he decides to run.
And I see the exact moment my blade catches him in the spine.
He drops.
Silence.
The forest goes perfectly, absolutely still.
I'm breathing hard—short, sharp gasps that make my chest heave—and my hands are trembling with post-combat adrenaline. Blood drips from my blades, pooling on the forest floor, mixing with the early evening dew.
Six bodies.
Six kills.
All in the time it took for a madman to count down from ten.
Not bad for a Tuesday.
The giggle escapes before I can stop it—high and manic and completely inappropriate—and I clap my blood-stained hand over my mouth.
Stop. Focus. You're not alone.
The man in the trench coat still has his eyes closed.
Still sitting there with his arms crossed and his legs folded, like nothing happened at all.
"I knew Blaze would handle it," he says, voice carrying that same bored authority. "But it's a shame such tactics didn't get me the obvious answer I need."
His eyes open.
And the tip of my blade is already pressed against his chin.
Our gazes lock.
His eyes are dark gold—shot through with flecks of amber that catch the fading light like captured flames. They're beautiful eyes. Devastating eyes. The eyes of someone who's seen terrible things and decided to become terrible himself.
There's a scar along his jaw.
Faint, barely visible, the kind you get from close combat.
And his scent—
Oh.
Spiced leather.
Smoke.
Dark rum.
It crashes into me like a wave, so different from Sage's vanilla sweetness but equally compelling. This is a dangerous scent. A predatory scent. The kind that makes prey animals freeze and smart animals run.
I don't do either.
I just press the blade a little harder against his chin.
"Let me guess," I say, and my voice comes out low, controlled, completely at odds with the chaos screaming through my blood.
Movement behind me.
I don't turn—don't take my eyes off the man in front of me—but my other blade is already extended backward, the tip hovering exactly where I know his heart will be.
Of course, the backup the trench coat man was counting on finally showed up.
Thirty-seven seconds late, I calculate automatically. Odd number. Odd numbers are bad.
"I should assume this is Blaze," I continue, tracking the presence behind me through sound and scent and the particular displacement of air that tells me he's tall, lean, and holding weapons of his own.
"Though I have no clue who you are—" I press harder on the trench coat man's chin, drawing a bead of blood, "—when you're clearly more mentally insane than me to think he was going to save you. "
Neither of them moves.
Smart.
The man behind me—Blaze, apparently—smells like a completely different kind of danger.
Ember smoke.
Citrus peel.
Cinnamon.
Heat and fire and something volatile, the scent of someone who plays with flames and enjoys watching things burn. It's intoxicating in a way that makes my survival instincts scream warnings my body is too stupid to heed.
"Thirty-seven seconds late," I add, because my brain won't stop counting, won't stop cataloguing, won't stop needing the numbers to make sense. "Which is an odd number. Odd numbers are bad, and I guess that could mean you're bad too."
Silence.
The tension stretches—elastic, dangerous, ready to snap in any direction.
I can feel both of them calculating. Planning. Trying to figure out what to do with the crazy Omega who just killed six of their enemies and is now holding them at blade-point.
I should feel threatened.
Should feel the reasonable fear that comes from being surrounded by Alphas whose intentions I don't know, whose allegiances I can't read, whose capacity for violence is clearly on par with my own.
But I don't feel threatened.
I feel... entertained.
For the first time since I read that letter in Professor Harrington's classroom, something other than despair is flickering in my chest.
Something like... amusement?
They're insane, I realize. Both of them. Completely, beautifully, gloriously insane.
Just like me.
I lower my weapons.
Not because they've earned my trust—they haven't—but because something tells me they're not going to hurt me. Not right now, anyway.
"If you're looking for Eastman," I say, sliding my blades back into their sheaths, "she'll probably be dead by morning."
Both men go rigid.
I can feel the shift in their attention—the sudden, sharp focus that tells me I've said something that matters.
"Why is that?" the trench coat man asks.
His voice is controlled, but there's something underneath. Something that sounds almost like... concern?
Interesting.
I smirk.
Twirl on my heel—cha?né turn, perfectly executed even in combat boots—and start walking away.
The first droplets of rain begin to fall, cold against my heated skin, washing the blood from my hands in slow, lazy streams.
"Because I'm going to be the one who kills her first."
I don't look back.
Don't wait for their response.
Just walk away into the gathering darkness, knowing I've just saved two strange men who were clearly searching for me for reasons I don't understand.
Eastman.
They're hunting the Eastman heir.
They're hunting me.
The realization should terrify me.
Should send me running, or fighting, or doing something other than calmly strolling away from two clearly dangerous Alphas who are probably already planning my execution.
But something in my gut tells me I have more important things to worry about than confronting Alphas that both smell good and yet are so delusionally crazy, it dares to turn me on.
A shame to find a set of men that could complement someone as crazed as me…I guess I’m my own worst enemy…