Meghan wept. “Stop!”
Her proud August wore the other man’s saliva.
Brone struck August again and released him so quickly that August sprawled flat.
The low, anguished groans burrowing in his chest came rattled.
Sobbing, Meghan writhed and thrashed against their manacles.
She was invisible. No one heard her. No one saw her. They returned to a plane where gentility had been stripped away and man returned to his most basic, primal form. Grunting, shouting, violent beasts of rage.
And August would let them kill him.
And I will die…
Sweating, his chest billowing out and in, Brone stalked a short two-step path before August’s inert form. Like he didn’t know what to do with the force of hate and rage eating at him.
This time, he brought his boot back and caught August in the face. August’s cheek flew back with a sickening crack.
A kaleidoscope of grief and pain exploded in Meghan’s chest and imbued her with otherworldly strength.
“Nooooo!”
Meghan jammed the back of her heel into Campbell’s groin. She took her cousin down next.
Both men crumpled, and she flew to August.
Sinking beside him, sobbing, she hovered her hands over him. His face was unrecognizable beneath the mask of blood he wore.
“Oh, August,” she said, her voice breaking as she wept.
“Ffff.”
Fine.That garbled, mangled version of the word he would give for her reassurance.
Her tears fell over his face, the crystal drops blending with his blood, leaving their mixture pink.
“Fine, are you?” Brone growled. “I’ll correct that. Step aside, Meghan.”
“Do not,” she snarled.
Her hair hung around her face. Irreverent hate—like that of the fratricidal Cain-to-Abel battle she had never understood—flowed through her.
Crazed, she jabbed her fingers at him. At Campbell. At Arran. Again and again.
“He has to die, Meghan,” Brone said with a calm that froze her to the core. “If not today, then when he is able to hold a gun.”
Ice wound through her veins.
He would duel.
No, they would duel. August and Brone. Or one of her kin.
Meghan’s mind set into a rapid descent.
And August would not fight, because he was not fighting now…because he knew he had done wrong.
The trio stepped toward her.
