My arm relaxed involuntarily, and I heard Sutton’s gasp for air. I didn’t release him, though. I wasn’t ready.
“Let him go.”
I turned to look back at the chief, whose face was now purple, his eyes bloodshot and tired as he pressed both his palms to his neck and waited.
“I told her you’d kill us both,” he eventually admitted in a croaky whisper. “But she’s scared, Drew. She wants to be able to fight for herself. This isn’t about you.”
My top lip curled as I stared at him in disgust. “Don’t do that. Don’t you fucking talk to me like you know her better than I do.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Don’t you stand there and tell me what is right and what is wrong for her like you’re the one who lays down beside her at night. Like you’re the one who was willing to be chained up and cut open, even if it took ten days to bleed out, just so she could live. Don’t you fucking patronize me, Sutton.”
“I didn’t—”
“Drew,” Jedd muttered on my left, his hand on my shoulder, while Slater’s hand landed on my right. Three of the Hounds were now trying to pull me away.
Shrugging them all off me, I released Sutton and watched as he fell to the floor like he didn’t even have legs anymore.
“Go to the training room,” Harry suggested quietly so only the five of us could hear him. “Work on the bag. Get your anger out. Clear that goddamn head of yours.”
“It’s clear,” I said calmly. “It’s real crystal fucking clear right now. Don’t worry. I’m out.” And with that, I marched out of The Hut, jumped down the steps and stormed across the gravel pathway before I hit the yard.
Pushing into the room where the bag was, I stripped from the waist up, kicking off my sneakers, too, until all I was left standing in was my jeans. I didn’t even bother to put gloves on before I found myself throwing out some nasty combinations that would kill some fucker if they were standing in front of me.
Flashes of Hernandez’s face under my bleeding knuckles flickered in my mind.
Memories of the Emp I pulled to pieces in the forest floated in front of me.
The men I’d killed in the warehouse.
The torture I’d inflicted on Cortez in his final moments.
Every slice of his skin I cut off. Every scream of pain, the sound deafening as I pushed my fingers into his eyes and made him feel agony he’d never felt before. The bones I broke with a smile on my face. The blood I pulled from him and smeared over his tattooed patch of skin. The revenge I’d taken.
The state I’d left him in, begging and pleading for his lifeas we made threats to do the very same to his family, just so he went that little bit crazier in Hell.
Every man and woman I’d ever hurt were on that punching bag as I tore into it, smashing left and right, left and right, left and right, my legs kicking it until the swing was too much, sending me ducking down, to the side, back and forth over and over again. Sweat poured down my back, and the old ache I used to feel when hurting something or somebody like this returned to me like a long-lost friend.
I’d missed it.
I’d missed the violence.
Everything was black and red, dirt and blood, death and rage as I punched and swung until I had no breaths left in me. I wasn’t even on the same planet anymore.
I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to return.
Chapter Six
AYDA
“Go home.”
From anyone else, I would have been sure the growl was an insult, but from Rusty it was affection. He was a hardass. For those of us who loved him, though, we knew what his levels of pissiness meant—and this agitated, exasperated growl was saying:Don’t make me admit I care. Just get out of here and sort your life out so we can all move on.
“I’m fine.”
“And I’m a fucking unicorn. You’ve been staring at that fucking corner for an hour like he’s just gonna appear there. Go. Home.”
