Zane swore as the meaty part between his neck and shoulder was bitten, Pavel’s jaw clamping down hard enough to instantly break skin.
He dug his teeth into flesh and muscle, bracing himself against Zane as he fought and floundered to disengage and get free.
It all happened so fast, there wasn’t really anything he could do to stop it, and what could have been seconds or minutes later, he processed the chaos the room had broken out into. Students had shot away from them, some fleeing, and there were shouts and crying.
A louder voice came then, more demanding, a moment before Pavel was torn—quite literally—off of Zane.
Zane made another sound of pain as his flesh was ripped even more, then slammed a hand over the gaping wound, eyes blinking to take in the scene before him.
Madden, who’d been the one to remove Pavel, swung, his fist connecting hard with the other Retinue member's jaw. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”
Berga, also known as the Butcher of the Brumal mafia, was there as well, watching Zane closely with an unreadable expression. His boyfriend noticed and waved at him.
“Butcher, baby, could you please not just stand there while my friend bleeds out?” Madden heaved in frustration.
“If your goal was to minimize the damage, you should have removed Pavel Hart more delicately.” Berga stepped up to Zane, voice dropping an octave to say, “If you’d like, I could—”
“I’m perfectly capable of making his insides appear on his outside myself,” Zane cut him off, knowing exactly where the offer was going. “But thank you.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’re going to need stitches.”
Zane still had the wound covered, so there was no way for anyone to be one hundred percent sure of that fact aside from him, and yet… “Yes. I believe that’s the case.”
“What the fuck is going on in here?” Madden demanded from Pavel, keeping himself between the two of them, though he’d tossed the other member far enough he was practically in the center of the room.
The now very empty room.
Had Madden ordered everyone else to leave? As the second in command, managing situations was sort of his job, so it wouldn’t surprise Zane if he had. Though he’d never had to worry about infighting before, and certainly not from Pavel. He looked just as surprised as Zane must have last night, like the person in front of him was a stranger.
Or just very,verygood at hiding their true nature.
Berga touched Zane’s wrist, about to ease it off and check, but paused when that earned him a warning growl from Pavel. “Well. That’s interesting.”
“It is not,” Madden disagreed vehemently. “And you better stop with the death glares, P, or I’m going to have to take that as a threat against my—”
“Tell your boyfriend to back off,” Pavel said.
Zane rolled his eyes. “Oh, enough. I’m in serious pain over here, so if you could just shut the fuck up and stop acting like an alpha hothead, that’d be the most useful thing you could do for me all week.” A thought occurred to him then. He’d meant it as a passing statement but… “You aren’t, right?”
The guy could shapeshift and had glowing eyes. Hell if Zane knew what he was. There was always the chance Pavel had been hiding that aspect of his DNA from them as well.
There were planets where species like that existed, ones that still operated on an alpha, beta, omega system, but Vitality was not one of them. It would line up, though. Pavel did own asex club, and last night he’d gone on and on about wanting tobreedZane, so maybe—
“No,” Pavel stated.
Oh. “So then why the hell did you bite me?”
“You bit me first.”
“I did not!” Shit. Wait. Was the guy referring to last night when he’d bitten his tongue? The severity of these injuries were so not the same!
“Fine,” he shrugged like it didn’t matter to him what Zane believed. “Then I did it to make a point.”
Madden frowned and glanced between the two of them, seemingly piecing something together.
Something Zane did not want misunderstood.
“He’s full of shit,” Zane told him. “There’s nothing—”
