Eden spat in his face. He reeled back, enraged, wiping his nose and cheek. He clenched a fist at his side but didn’t lift it to hit her. Instead, he motioned to the man with the crowbar. “Give her mouth something else to do.”
The man unzipped his pants like it had been a command. He took a step towards her and then hesitated. “She’s going to bite me.”
“Break her jaw. You’ve got a fucking crowbar in your hand, dumbass.”
I saw Eden stiffen, freezing for the first time. I was already adjusting the angle of the scope, calculating. Someone outside the warehouse shouted something, faint and far off. The guard.
The man I couldn’t see spoke again. “Hey, I wanna get in on this too.”
He walked towards Eden, also working to unzip his pants as the man with the crowbar grabbed her by the hair. She let loose a feral snarl, still fighting them. Now the three men stood in the center of the room in clear sight, a triangle around her.
Chapter forty-one
Eden
“Bleeding Out”
I’dtastedbloodsomany times in the last few hours that I’d forgotten what the inside of my mouth was supposed to feel like. Swollen gums, busted lips, the unmistakable tang of iron sliding down the back of my throat. Everything still spun in slow circles, but the world had slowly been righting itself again. My arms were numb where the zip ties cut in, and my legs… I couldn’t tell anymore. Pins and needles. The men kept circling, picking at me like vultures, like they had time to kill.
The small man had been talking about Halo and how he was going to kill him slowly, how he’d make me watch. He wanted fear in my eyes. He wanted me broken before he even touched me, but I wasn’t giving him that. He could take the blood, the bruises, the tears, if they came. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of fear. He would have to rip that out of me.
The big man I’d stabbed back at the motel, started circling me with the grin of a man who enjoyed fear. The scrape of the crowbar on the concrete was louder than it should’ve been. He was playing it up for effect; he wanted me to feel every inch of his approach like a countdown.
When the smaller guy taunted me again, I couldn’t help but force another blood spray of spit into his ugly fucking face.
What he said next made my stomach drop.
The man with the injured leg stepped forward, already unzipping his pants, and I felt the first real fear surge through my spine like lightning. I pulled against the zip ties until they cut deep, still nothing. The second man stepped up beside him, doing the same.
“She’s going to bite me,” one of them muttered.
“Break her jaw,” Rook said. “You’ve got a fucking crowbar, dumbass.”
I went still. Not with surrender, but withfury. They wouldn’t touch me, I wouldn’t let them. I would bite, scream, fight, I would bite my own tongue off before I gave them that. I would rather drown in my own blood than beg. My heart pounded against my ribs like it was trying to get out.
The other big guy headed towards me, already undoing his own pants. “Hey, I wanna get in on this too.”
They stood around me like a pack of wolves. I screamed at them. No words, just a primitive warcry that I felt come up from my stomach. The man with the crowbar grabbed the back of my head, and I shut my teeth together, sneering at him as he brought the crowbar up to pry my jaw apart.
And then I heard a pop similar to the sound of a bat hitting a baseball. The man holding my hair jerked backwards, dropping like a sack of bricks. His hand didn’t immediately release me, and as he fell, he jerked my chair backwards, and I fell to the floor with him. I looked over to see his right eye completely gone, replaced by a gaping geyser of blood.
I blinked, dazed. It didn’t register at first. I thought I was hallucinating.
The other two men were suddenly alert, but not fast enough. The other big guy jerked, a hole opening above his left eye: bloodmisting from the exit wound. He blinked rapidly, mouth opening like he was trying to speak. He collapsed like someone had cut his strings.
Rook spun and started to run out of the building, yelling for the guy who had opened the gate for us earlier, but a bullet exploded through his lower jaw. He fell to the ground, clutching his throat, screaming wet and gurgled, hands clutching what was left of his mouth.
I let out a sob, because I heard the fast but controlled footsteps on metal above us. I couldn’t lift my head to see him, but I didn’t need to. Ifelthim like I always did. That tension in the air that changed. And when his boots hit the concrete, the sound cracked something open in my chest. He moved fast, not frantic, just focused. A different kind of rage simmered in his eyes now, not the fury that had killed them. This wasfear:an unbearable fear for me.
He was cutting the zip ties, one at a time, careful but quick. My wrists fell loose, and I moved them to my chest, gasping at the rush of blood to my fingers and toes.
“Eden…” My name was sharp in his mouth, like it hurt him to say it. His hands were shaking as I fell against him, allowing myself to be dead weight for just a moment. He wound his fingers into my hair, his breathing ragged in my ear. “I’ve got you, baby. You’re safe now.”
My fingers twitched against his chest when he gathered me up in his arms. Halo was shaking. His arms were steady, but his chest trembled against mine.
I realized, slowly, that he was crying.
“I’m okay,” I lied.
