39 #3
“I’m fine.” Except Ezla’s claim is bit out, almost a sob, something like a suppressed shout.
“No you’re bloody well not,” I throw back, still attempting to scoop her into my arms while Scotty’s knees crack against the taalk by her head. Her palms are pressed to that glossy surface when a drop of red splats onto it directly between them.
“Havoc!” Tate’s panicked cry rings out in time with Alby’s, “She’s bleeding!” as the two of them along with Tiger surround her as well.
Cupping her face in his gloved hands, armoury sticks slotted back on his shoulder blades, Scotty finally manages to angle her head up, and her attempts to pull away are worryingly weak as she blinks up at him like she’s finding it hard to focus her vision.
Alarmed, his widened eyes track the blood steadily leaking from her nose.
And then that laugh. An insane, grating fucking laugh.
The sound of his voice heats my veins, my blood, my bone marrow to boiling. The sight of the crimson fluid streaming from not just Ezla’s nostrils, but her ears, too, a second later has my chest crushing itself into an ugly mess, one that leaves nothing but my hate and need for retribution behind.
Nostrils flaring, my body is thrumming with the strength of those feelings inside me as I rise to my feet and slowly turn around to face the man, the good-for-nothing monster, I hate more than anything.
Never did I think it was possible to hold this much hate for anyone, and yet for this waste of space, it’s only grown and grown until I’m unable to comprehend how Ezla could have survived just the simple sight of him for eighteen years.
He’s still laughing like a lunatic as he cups his blood-soaked junk, lying on his back between the second-to-last and back rows of cinema seats as I yank my armoury stick from my back and storm towards him.
My chest is heaving, my heart pumping vengeful, scathing-hot energy through my veins. This ends today. Right here. Right now.
With a buzzing hum, I manifest my curved Avri sword once more, my harsh, seething breaths puffing out into the tension-filled air.
Low curses sound out behind me as well as the unmistakable cadence of heavy footsteps, and I’m sure Ezla would be chewing me out in the most vicious ways if she could even form a single coherent thought right now, but she bloody can’t.
My Bonded, my motherfucking everything, is reduced to nothing but a vessel of anguish right now because of the man writhing like a centipede on the floor before me.
He struggles to get to his feet, so fucking weak from a single blow, but my boot slams into his stomach with a solid thump that sends him crashing back down with a shout.
The hideous, echoing bellow is followed by a pathetic yell as Tate seizes his ankle and yanks him out from between the two rows of seats.
Spittle flies as he tosses a load of delusion our way: “You are no good for her! I created her! She is what she is because of me! She needs me—”
His nose is unsurprisingly healed from the last time we were here, but I have him looking like a mirror image of his past self with another kick that connects with his face in a crack and crunch of bone.
“She needs absolutely nothing from you,” I spit as I look down at him, on him, in pure disgust. “The only thing concerning you that could bring any kind of satisfaction to her is your suffering and death.”
From Ezla, I’m aware he has an armoury stick and is skilled, but I’ve never seen in-person evidence until now as I’m forced to yank myself backwards when he leaps up to his feet in an unexpected move and lashes out at me with a blackish-crimson Avri dagger.
I flinch in the same moment as another gut-wrenching scream rips apart the larynx of the woman I love, and I vaguely hear muffled sobs, panicked words, and Scotty’s stream of reassurances that he tries to keep as gentle as possible through his own horror and anguish as he attempts to soothe her, to bring any kind of relief.
“You.” Joseph pauses to spit a mouthful of blood out onto the glinting floor at his left. “Are not worthy of my daughter. You only even got her because of me! I weakened her, just as I am doing now—”
I strike without warning, and Tate follows my lead with a roar.
And Joseph’s been holding out on us, because he’s just as Ezla said: skilled.
Highly skilled. He uses good techniques, manages to handle the both of us for a while, putting up a damn good fight.
He spins and slashes to pair with his repetitive ranting as he insists that we’re “nothing”, that we’re only “destroying Ezla”, that we’ve “taken everything from him”.
But he’s also weakened, and no matter how trained he is, we’re better.
Just one of us is better these days. We were trained by the most skilled being on the bloody planet.
Joseph trained Ezla, and yet she turned out countless times more impressive than he could ever be.
Her body and her mind trained themselves along the way, and he doesn’t have the practice, the intelligence and the tactics, she’s taught herself over time.
The ones she passed on to us.
After trading blows back and forth, Tate manages to shove a solid one into him with his boot in the back of his knee as Joseph slows a fraction, and he drops down with a bellow that shakes the walls.
And all I can think as I look down at him is that he looks so bloody pathetic.
How has this thing at my feet got to where he has?
How on earth did he become the ruler of a region?
But I know he’s manipulative. I think it might be hard to understand when I’ve always seen the truth in him, and even more so recently when he seems so out of his head, but I can see the cunning in him.
Maybe I can see how he’s managed to work himself up to the top and keep himself there for decades.
Even if to me, he’s commonly been nothing more than a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Reaching down, I grab his dishevelled salt-and-pepper hair in a bruising grip—
“I will kill her!”
I turn to stone.
“I will kill her!” Joseph repeats, blood and spit spraying from his mouth.
“She was made to be mine! That is her purpose! If she is not mine, she has no purpose! If I cannot have her, rest assured, not a single other being will! You have taken everything from me! Now I will take everything from you!”
My head whips around as my insides are shredded apart with Ezla’s next heart-shattering cry, the scream so hoarse and agonising, it sounds as if her vocal cords are being rent apart.
Body contorting, writhing in Scotty’s arms, my Bonded sobs and screams, the pain so great, she can’t keep it in. And yet she still partly does, because through all of this, she’s tried her hardest, using all her remaining strength, to keep it from finding us in the bond.
But the agony now slips through a crack that forms, more than a slither this time, physically impossible to keep holding off as well as she has been.
It’s enough to have me mildly dizzy for a moment, pained sounds suppressed in both mine and my brothers’ throats, because we don’t fucking deserve to cry out when this is so little in comparison to what our Bonded is facing right now.
If we’re receiving just a fraction of the agony in her, I can’t comprehend the amount she must be carrying all alone.