“I don’t need a Crow to tell me how this works.”
“Nah, you need your fuckin’ head read if you think you’re gonna put this nutter down.” Locke jerked his thumb at me.
Then he stepped back. “Fight.”
My pulse thudded a single beat, loud and deep, clattering against my eardrums. Doherty twitched.
I flew, feinting with my fists, forcing him to dodge before I got low, swinging my leg, and smashed his face with my boot.
The impact was brutal forme, rattling my bones from my ankle to my fucking jaw. For him, it was an instant KO, and I danced away with a loud whoop.
The crowd reaction was mixed. Nash and Rubi had my back, loud as fuck, but there were plenty of Rebel King brothers here tonight who didn’t want to see me win.
Doherty Number Two ducked under the ropes. The yard noise grew louder and he smacked his fist to his palm. His eight-kilo kettlebell-sized paw. And witnessing what I’d done to his older brother, he was ready for me, jerking out of my reach with surprising balance, given that his top half weighed six times as much as the rest of him.
Careful. Rocco’s voice echoed in the blank space behind my eyes.Whatever you see, look again.
Fucking-A, even dead, he was annoying, but I missed him too. What we’d hadbefore. Those long summer days, sparring in the fields around Folk’s family farm. Simpler days, before Rocco’s mum had moved to the shittest part of Devon for a fresh start that had, in the end, killed her and Rocco both.
Fucking Crows. I’d been one—for more than a decade. God, I wished I’d burned them to the ground the first dreary night I’d set foot on their compound.
In the time it took me to drown in regret, the second Doherty brother had found his juice. He lunged for me, his pupils as overgrown as the rest of him, and caught me with a glancing blow, a scuff of a hit that sent just the right jolt of pain zipping through my blood.
My adrenaline amplified.
I moved fast, a kick connecting with a wide, rock-hard gut. Another catching the side of Doherty’s neck. But this dude was big. I wasn’t going to put him down with a couple of lucky hits. I had to deck him where it hurt.
My boot found his round face. His fist my fucking kidney, knocking the breath from my lungs while he spat blood.
I wheeled into my corner, taking water, absorbing Saint’s encouraging silence, his rare touch as he dropped his palms on my shoulders.Keep going.
Keyed up as I was, something in me settled. I sprang from my corner at lightning speed and nailed my opponent in the ribs, following up with an elbow to the side of his head, and a fist to his solar plexus—a triple combination Folk had drilled into me when I was sixteen years old and he was already a fucking marine.
Like him, it had never failed me, and it was lights out for Doherty Number Two. The warm-up was over.
Locke called a time-out.
I staggered to my corner, the hit to my side making itself known now I had time to think about it.
Like I’d summoned him from God, Folk appeared and pressed a cold sponge to my heated skin. “You dizzy?”
“Nope.”
“Breathing good?”
“Yup. Thought you went home?”
“Ivy ditched me for a sleepover. Then I got a call to say one of my oldest mates was triple-billing a fight all by himself, so here I am.”
Folk scrutinised my torso, then moved on to check my vision while I made a show of looking around him. “This old mate of yours. He hotter than me?”
He laughed, gripped my face, and pressed a fraternal smooch to my forehead. “Definitely cleverer. Now put this to bed so we can all go home.”
“Sergeant.” I tipped him a dry salute and pushed off the ropes, energised by his unshakeable faith in me.
The third Doherty brother waited, and this one wasn’t a stranger. Pretty sure I’d called him a cunt before, across a battlefield of King and Crow. Back then, he’d have been on the winning side, and I wasn’t sad about it. But he’d picked the wrong team tonight. If the Kings had taught me anything, it was that family meant more than blood.
We collided. Hard. Flesh and bone. A crash of violence that happened too fast for me to feel much about it.
