39 #4
“Stop it!” Tiger bawls, tears streaming down his reddened face uncontrollably as he holds on to her hand.
Alby clings to her other, and her back is to Scotty’s chest as blood starts to flow more heavily from her orifices.
Not only her ears and nostrils anymore, crimson streams from her eyes and mouth, and I think I might throw up from the sheer terror that unsteadies my legs, a fine tremor running through the limbs.
She’s bleeding from the inside out. “Stop hurting her!”
“Give her to me,” Joseph bargains, and I tighten my grasp on his hair even though every fibre of my being wants to go to Ezla.
Tate seems conflicted, too, instincts screaming at us to go to our Bonded.
And yet, if we do, if we let Joseph go, there’s no telling what more damage he could cause.
We can’t risk it. “Give her to me, and I will stop hurting her.”
“You expect us to believe that?” I spit, yanking his face closer to mine as I duck my head. “You’re fucking sick. You get off on hurting her.”
At Ezla’s next tortured cry, a spear slams through my heart, dead centre, and Tate loses the battle, racing to her side to join the rest of our brothers, an anguished roar of his own mixing in with hers to create a devastating chorus as my hearing becomes fuzzy, narrowing down only to Joseph’s next words.
“But I will not kill her. Give her to me, and I will keep her alive.”
Breathing harshly, I study his face, eyes looking between those lifeless brown ones.
Joseph stares right back, unflinching.
He’s not lying—I can tell that. He doesn’t really want Ezla dead—he just wants to own her, to keep her, to have the love she’s given us. The love she would never, could never, give him.
Something like victory shifts into his expression. “Let her go, and she will live a long, long life. She will have everything she could ever desire with me. I am the ultimate power—Ezla will wish for nothing.”
Do not.
Every inch of me stills at those two faded words in my mind. They’re so weak, so distant . . . but they’re there.
Do not. Give. In, Vengeance commands. Kill. Him.
A beat of thick, heavy silence.
My fingers shake, clenching tighter in those fragile strands.
I will not . . . go back to him. Never again.
Another deafening, soundless moment.
I will . . . live, Cooper. You . . . can kill him . . . faster than he can . . . kill me.
A trembling breath leaves me.
I would . . . rather die . . . than become his . . . machine . . . again . . .
Her words sound further and further away.
The face before me grows smugger and smugger.
KILL HIM!
The abrupt overwhelm of Ezla’s presence has me snapping back to reality.
I blink.
Then I open my mouth to murmur in a low tone, just for Joseph, “Do you honestly think there is a single world out there in which I’d willingly hand the love of my life over to you?”
Joseph seems to stall.
“She’s mine. Ours. She’s happy. She loves us.
” And I think his fate might finally be sinking into that thick skull of his as his skin gradually leaches of all colour.
“I just wanted my eyes to be the last thing you see before that ability’s taken from you forever.
” My voice drops further, and my grip on my armoury stick by my hip tightens.
“Just like my own abuser’s last sight was that of my Bonded before she wiped his stain from this world for good.
” And I don’t really want to thank this waste of space for anything, but I know it will really drive the nail into the coffin when I say, “Though I guess I should thank you for bringing such a stunning woman into this world for my brothers and I.”
Just as I thought, fury like I’ve never seen before drenches Joseph’s entire being, and fucking hell, that’s a sight for sore eyes.
His mouth opens, and I know his wrath truly knows no bounds, that, if there is another life after this, he’ll be raging there for eternity, tormented by the simple fact that he didn’t get the last word in, didn’t get to spit out the nonsense that Ezla is his just one final time, before my fist slams upwards.
Blood splats onto my face as my green-glowing blade spears clean through his head, the hilt of my Avri sword pressed against the underside of his jaw, half of the blade standing on top of his skull, curving towards me.
Inhaling and exhaling raggedly, I watch fixatedly as the light leaves those hideous mud-coloured eyes.
He doesn’t make a sound, and he’s unable to see anything but me in his last moments, my body blocking everything else out.
And then he’s just . . . gone.
Nothing there.
All I can hear is myself struggling to catch my breath, my mind struggling to process the fact that the man that’s caused everyone in this room so much pain, the man who’s caused hundreds, thousands, of people so much pain, in fact, is simply . . . no longer here.
And with that realisation comes the one that this cinema is eerily silent.
There’s no more pained sounds. No more sobs, no more pleading, no more anguished screams.
Absolutely nothing.
In my chest, my heart becomes utterly motionless.
Demanifesting my blade, I finally blink out of the odd trance I’d been in.
Blinking once, I release Joseph from my grip, where he hits the taalk floor with a dull thud.
My armoury stick somehow finds its way back to my shoulder blade.
Very, very slowly, I turn around to face my Bonded.
Ezla lies without an ounce of life in her in Scotty’s arms.