Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jaxen
Sunday night
T he second I hear her scream, I’m gone.
And not fucking metaphor gone. Not some bullshit poetic fade-to-black where a man contemplates the shape of his sins. I mean my brain detonates. I stop being a series of choices and become a single, violent fucking answer.
The window never stood a chance.
Glass erupts around me in a storm of teeth; cold air knifes my lungs as the back wall coughs splinters like ribs and I go through it, not after it—through it—and into him, yanking him off her.
I take the bastard full on, all speed and weight, the tackle carrying us both off our feet.
We hit the floor in a killing knot, my shoulder buried in his ribs, the boards bowing under the slam.
Lantern light jerks on its hook, strobing the room—shadow, flame, shadow—so fast it feels like I’ve dropped into someone else’s nightmare.
She’s there—crumpled on the floor now—throat ringed in red handprints, mouth working at thin air, hair a wet snarl against her cheek, fresh blood running hot down her thigh. Her fingers twitch like they’re trying to remember what to do besides claw.
And the bastard—my goddamn replacement, their cleanup crew—isn’t standing over her anymore; he’s under me, armor biting, night rig cinched tight, knife knocked askew by the hit.
He grunts—breath blasted, not pain—and rolls like the trained dog he is and tries to steal the momentum, but I ride it out and pin him. I give the pain nothing.
Steel flashes. A utilitarian wedge of coated blade—half-serrated by the hilt, the kind you use to open a throat and regret later.
He stabs for the quick finish—the straight shove up under the sternum—going blind on muscle memory because I knocked his view sideways.
I twist; the point skates off plate, rips fabric, kisses skin and keeps going.
Not today.
We slam into the table leg; it gives with a splintery crack, dishes leaping and shattering.
He grunts, just breath leaving, not pain, and rolls like a trained man does, taking the momentum, flipping us so my spine hits the boards and the room goes white for a heartbeat.
My ribs complain in a hot stripe where his weight lands. I give the pain nothing.
His knife flashes, a wedge of coated steel. I twist. He slices my side instead of my heart. It burns like a hot wire. Blood floods down my hip, heat and wet at once, so fucking immediate it feels cold.
I bury my elbow in his throat.
He chokes, coughs through the modulator, and tries to clear the airway.
I don’t give him the chance. I jam another hit into his jaw and cartilage buckles.
He answers with a knee that explodes against my ribs, and the world blurs around the edges.
I taste copper. He’s strong. Efficient. Not a prop in a mask; a real dog the suits hired when the PR got ugly.
He plants his boots wide on the busted table, blade floating centerline like he thinks it crowns him king of the fucking room.
“Should’ve just followed orders,” he grinds through the speaker, voice flat and tinny.
“Don’t worry, I won’t make the same mistakes you did, but I will enjoy putting you down before I play with your toy. Pretty little thing, ain’t she?”
That way he looks at her, hinting like he wants to touch her, use her, detonates in my skull.
We crash through the two chairs that weren’t already wrecked, splinters exploding underfoot.
The lantern swings wild, shadows dragging over us in jagged sweeps.
He snatches my wrist, I rip it free with a snarl, muscles burning.
My fist knots in his webbing harness, and I drive him face-first into the stone hearth.
Stone wins. Once. Twice. Three fucking times.
The visor blooms and fractures like ice on glass. He groans, dazed, but still manages to snap forward with a savage headbutt, helmet crashing into my cheekbone. White light flashes behind my eyes, vision blurring, and sound clipping like someone cut the feed.
The impact rattles the frame loose. His helmet slips, skids sideways, and finally rips off as we slam against the wall again.
It clatters to the floor, rolling once before coming to rest in the flour haze.
For the first time I see his face, raw and bloodied, skin split wide where my glass carved him open.
Across the room, Liv’s breath rattles thin and broken, and it’s the only sound that pulls me back.
He takes my moment and turns it—steel kisses my throat. His weight leans in, pressing the threat deeper, trying to make me feel the ending he thinks he owns.
“Look at that,” he taunts, voice going almost friendly through the filter. “Even wolves choke when you press a collar to their throat.”
The knife edge bites under my jaw, kissing skin, promising to saw me open if I give him so much as an inch. Heat flares through my skull, not from fear—never fear—but from rage.
I catch his wrist, muscles screaming. He drives down harder, the serrated edge carving shallow fire along my throat.
I feel it—hot, wet, skin splitting, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of flinching.
I shove back with everything I’ve got, shoulder braced like a battering ram, teeth bared under the blood.
The blade slides sideways, missing my jugular by a goddamn whisper.
My chest is burning, breath sawn out of me, throat already raw. I reach down, fingers scrabbling blind, and the floor delivers—a jagged shard of window glass, glittering under spilled flour. Perfect.
I snatch it up and drag it across his face from jaw hinge to brow. Hard. No mercy. Glass chews through skin like it was made for it, splitting him wide. Blood erupts, hot and slick, spraying across my vest in a steaming wash. He howls, raw, and feral, more animal than man.
He reels back, blinded, and I don’t hesitate.
I throw him with everything I have. We slam into the cabinets.
Wood splits, plates shatter, flour explodes into the air in a choking white fog that hangs thick, glowing in the lantern’s swing.
We’re both ghosts now, shadows breathing hard in the storm of it.
“Not so pretty now,” I snarl, voice shredded and vicious, spitting blood with the words.
He lashes wild, a blind swipe that still finds flesh. Steel punches into my shoulder, bites, and tears skin open. Sharp pain floods, but pain’s fuel, and I fucking ride it.
I slam back into him, forearm crushing up under his chin, shoving the helmet back until it cuts into his throat. My other hand pistons up into the soft spot under his ribs. He folds with a grunt, air leaving him in a wheeze.
I pivot, ripping my pistol free, and hammer the butt into his temple. Once. Twice. His head whips, blood spraying, but I don’t stop.
“You don’t touch her,” I snarl, smashing the pistol into his ruined cheek. Another strike, harder. “You don’t look at her.” I slam him down again, my voice breaking into a roar. “And you don’t fucking breathe near her!”
Something in his eye socket gives on the next impact.
He drops but hooks my knee as he goes. Pain flowers electric down my leg and I buckle.
He springs, soldier-quick, the knife reversed in his grip for an icepick drive.
He stabs for my clavicle, close-quarters kill shot—exactly how I’d fucking do it. How men like us are trained to.
But I catch his wrist with both hands, scream with the tendons in my forearms, and wrench.
His elbow pops. He barks a curse, real voice, unfiltered, just for a second.
I rip the knife free. He goes for his sidearm.
We tumble through the pantry shelves in the same breath, cans geysering out, a waterfall of lentils and peaches and a bag of sugar scattering into the flour fog like a goddamn whiteout.
We hit the floor hard and tangled. He’s on top again—strength, military training and anger all braided together. Hands find my throat. He squeezes. The edges of the world go dark like a closing lens. His face is inches from mine, a mangled goddamn mess of blood and gnarled skin.
“Not much of a hunter now, are you? Now you’ll die like the rest of the meat sac. Pointless fucking filler on a reel,” he pants. “But me? It’s my name they’ll list in the end credits.”
I drive a knee into him and grab for anything sharp.
My hand finds a slab of split beam that the last blow tore free from the cabinet underside.
I ram it into the side of his neck just below the ear, not deep enough to kill, deep enough to make every nerve scream treason.
His grip loosens for half a second. Half a second is all I need.
I buck him off. We smash into the sink. The drainpipe breaks with a wet shriek; water vomits onto the floor.
He coughs and tries to rise. I slam him back down, hip to hip, getting leverage, and ride him to the boards.
The pistol is there in his holster. He goes for it.
I get there first. His hand closes on mine; we wrestle with the grip like it’s a live animal.
He headbutts me again. My teeth click. I taste blood. I bite his cheek through the torn visor. He roars. His grip loosens.
Mine doesn’t.
I rip the gun free and jam the muzzle into his shattered eye cup, so close I can smell burned polymer and the copper stink of his blood. The lantern light skims the slide; the floor is a lake of shadows and water and flour mud, our footprints smashed into the mess like fossils.
“You shouldn’t fuck with another predator’s prey,” I tell him, voice low enough to rattle the cabinet doors.
He gets one dart of fear in his remaining eye. That’s all.
I pull the trigger.
The shot cracks through the cabin like thunder, rattling my skull until the world goes flat. His head bursts open, blood spraying hot across my face. The pantry door takes the rest—brains, bone, blood smeared wide. His body jerks once, twice, then goes slack.
Done.