Eleven
Their Eternity
Liv
Iran through the thick brush in the woods of the park.
Huge gulps of air entered my lungs and flew out of me.
The thoughts in my mind reeled with escape plans, and my legs pumped hard below me, but I wasn’t exhausted.
I wouldn’t be for quite some time, and I could keep fleeing.
Sin and Saint had sculpted every muscle in my body and made me into someone powerful, a force assembled to go up against any enemy and never be vulnerable again.
My hands were out in front of me, clearing my way, but the sun went down. I found the view in front of me harder to see. I had to rely on the shadows of the coming night to provide a path to travel and make it toward the daylight.
Twigs snagged at my hair and entangled themselves in the strands, but they snapped as I kept on moving. A tree root caught my shoe, and I tumbled to the ground.
“Shit…” I heaved breathlessly but got back up.
A sound of a made-up clock ticked in my head. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The time winding down kept me moving, and I knew the men who hunted me wouldn’t be far behind.
The thought of them catching me was too much to bear, and failure wasn’t an option this time.
I had to make it. I knew I could outrun them because I was stronger, but the idea of hungry eyes on my backside made a shiver creep up my spine.
The picture of massive hands clenched into fists as my stalkers ran after me made me ache for them, but I wouldn’t give up.
Sin and Saint would see what I was capable of.
I tried counting in my head to figure out the time I had lost, but I didn’t know how much of a head start my prey had given me.
The adrenaline was exactly what I had wished for.
The panicked sensation was precisely what I had wanted.
My predators had granted me the opportunity of an actual attack, but I was running.
I fled as fast as I could and had a faint notion of why.
Instinct.
My body instinctively went into flight mode, but I needed to fight.
Stop running from your past. Don’t hide. I wasn’t a coward anymore.
The old me was dead. Buried. I couldn’t dig her up and examine the bones of my former self. She was the ghost I had always wanted to be, which I had to bury to become the real me.
I halted. I didn’t crouch behind a tree, where I’d cower and wait for my attackers to find me.
I’d hit the men who wanted me head-on like the goddamn heroine of my story.
This was a tale with a happy ending I knew I fucking deserved, and I’d face any battle standing in the way without my back turned.
I was strong. Powerful. Tough and steadfast. Weakness was no longer my trajectory.
I was the threat. The chaos during a storm and a lightning bolt bound to strike with terrible pain. Absolute destruction.
There I stood with immense confidence in my strength in the middle of the motherfucking woods, and I awaited my prey. I was the savage beast who wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. Not in this lifetime, in death, or in the afterlife.
Trees surrounded me, and I listened to the howls of the windy evening for any sound that was out of the ordinary. A snap of a twig. The squish of the sole of a boot in the mud. The growls of my extremely starved prey, but no such noise came.
Until I spotted a dark figure coming at me from the side in my peripheral vision. He attempted a surprise attack, and I dodged by rolling to the right, catching sight of dirty blond hair. It was Saint. He tripped over a tree root and crashed to the ground.
I crouched on the ground like a tiger lying in wait. Ears perked for any danger, ready to pounce next. Eyes darting from side to side. Breath hitched and nostrils flared.
A fist flew toward my nose. I blocked the powerful blow with my hand while jerking my face out of harm’s way. That was a close one. Almost a direct hit, sure to knock me off balance.
I twisted the fist in my hand until the joints of the extended arm cracked. A smirk spread across my face. I appreciated the sound of pain.
“Fuck!” Sin whisper-shouted in agony.
I sent Sin down in a tailspin onto the decaying leaves littering the ground and straddled him.
“Found you,” I breathed heavily with my hands on either side of his head, making the brittle leaves crunch. “The tables have turned. I get to fuck you.”
“Nah.” Sin surprised me by wrapping his legs around my middle and rolling me onto my backside with my hands above my head. “Got you.”
I gasped. Sin chuckled triumphantly as he tucked my wrists into one of his hands while I tried to fight against him. He ran his other hand down into the depths of my cleavage, where he got lost in a trance.
Suddenly, Sin appeared shocked as Saint yanked him off me by his shoulders. I scurried backward, and the palms of my hands dug into the soil of the earth with each movement away from them.
Saint leaped at me. He missed me by an inch because Sin gripped him as angry as the sea, ready to wash him away, leaving him thrashing in the undertow with a heavy anchor chained to his ankles. The shackle was from a furious Sin, making Saint land flat on his stomach.
Saint grunted into the dusty dirt. “Fuck off, man!”
My plan had worked. I was winning, but I wasn’t out of the damn woods yet. Instead, I hit a roadblock. A fucking tree trunk.
Sin positioned himself like a wolf eyeing up its prey. Nostrils flaring, eyes blazing, and a groan rumbling up his throat. Slowly, a smirk took over his face, and he prepared to eat me fucking whole.
Panicked, I quickly glanced right and left. A long, bulky stick caught my attention. The sharp end was enough to help me defend myself in this fight, but the branch was too far away. I had no time.
Sin moved fast. I had to take action and get the odds back in my favor.
I couldn’t help the instinctual fear taking over me in the moment of fighting or taking flight, and my eyes widened in defense. I held as steady as I could until the last second. A warm breath of excitement in the chase grazed me as I rolled to the right and out of Sin’s way.
Sin collided into a tree with a grunt.
Saint came for me, but I grabbed the stick and took a steady stance. “Stop.”
The pointed edge was inches away from my fiancé’s sky-blue eye.
“Christ.” Saint raised his hands and backed up.
Saint stumbled and fell to the ground right beside his best friend. He knew the chase was over. I had won.
“I got you.” I pressed the stick into Saint’s chest, then stabbed the pointed edge into Sin’s thigh. “Both of you.”
“Fine. Fuck,” Sin grumbled as he turned over with a wicked glint in his eye and unzipped his pants. “Conquering suits you. Come claim your prize.”