Gabe’s fingers tighten—
TWANG.
A bolt sinks into the ground a hair’s width from Daryl’s boot. Another man jerks as a second bolt pins his coat sleeve to a tree trunk.
Gabe never even blinks. “That enough demonstration, or do you want a heart next?”
Briar gasps behind me, awe trembling in her breath. Good. She needs to see she’s protected by more than just me.
Daryl snarls. “Take her!”
My pulse spikes. My body shifts in front of her.
And the clearing explodes into motion.
The first man lunges.
I shove Briar behind me so hard she stumbles, but my body is already moving—knife up, blade catching the sun as I slash across the bastard’s forearm. He screams, drops his weapon.
Before he can recover, a soft twang whispers through the air.
A bolt drives clean through his shoulder.
He collapses.
Gabe lowers his crossbow, already nocking the next shot, voice level as if we’re out hunting deer. “That’s one.”
Silas tackles another man, pinning him with a forearm to the neck while Elias wrenches the rifle from his grip and cracks it across his jaw. The sound is sickening. Elias doesn’t blink.
Boone meets the biggest intruder head-on, swinging his axe hard enough to knock the breath out of every man watching. Steel meets steel, sparks flaring as Boone forces the man backward step by step.
Briar whimpers behind me.
I grab her wrist, pull her tight to my back, shielding her from the worst of it.
“Eyes on me,” I order, voice low, raw. “Don’t look anywhere else.”
But she sees Daryl.
She sees him edging left, angling toward us.
She makes a small noise—fear, hatred, memory—everything she survived thrumming under her skin.
Daryl smirks when he hears it. “That’s right, girl. Come here. You know who you belong to. You know who kept you alive. You know who trained that pretty mouth to—”
I’m on him before he finishes.
My knife slams into the dirt beside his head as I tackle him down, fists cracking against his jaw, his nose, anything I can reach. The world narrows to the man who hurt her. The man who broke her voice. The man who thought she was something to own.
“You don’t speak her name,” I growl, punching until my knuckles sting. “You don’t breathe near her.”
He sputters, spitting blood. “She’s my property—pussy’s real tight just the way I like ‘em. Never loosened up. No matter how many times I took it.”
I hit him again. Harder.
Behind me, Briar gasps.
I whip around to see another of Daryl’s men creeping toward us, knife raised, eyes locked on her. Rage detonates in my chest.
