Page 33 of Prince of Wrath

Unlike that night, Ben didn’t reek of alcohol. He was stone-cold sober. The fumes of his eerily calm rage whirled behind his blue irises, and I knew he wasn’t going to let me live to see tomorrow.

“Seere,” I croaked through his crushing hold.

“Is that his name? The demon you sold your soul to just to watch me lose everything? You should have killed me, Sloane. You should have known that letting me live would come back to bite you in the ass.” His low voice was barely registering over the pounding of blood in my ears.

“Seere,” I tried again.

I didn’t have the trinket that he’d given me. But he’d just been inside of me. That had to have some sort of effect. It had to have heightened that unbreakable bond he always threatened me with.

“He may have destroyed the demon I was working with, but the deal was already done. I won, Sloane. I fought like Hell to get out of the shithole you put me in. The months of rehab. Losing everything I owned to medical bills. My contract lapsing due to injury and poor behavior. No team would touch me as a player. But I still had plenty of buddies willing to sign with me as their agent.”

My vision was fading as he rambled. I screamed Seere’s name in my head, but there was no sign of him.

“And sure, I had a little help from the demon I found on my own to work with—your old buddy Rick let that slip out during a night of partying. Now I have the upper hand. But you won’t be around to see that.”

His other hand came up and squeezed over his already vise-like fist.

“Please,” I whispered. “Ben, please.”

He took a step into me, his arms losing some of their force as they bent so his mouth came close to mine. He took a ragged breath, and I used that moment to strike. My knee connected hard with his groin, and he bent over in pain. I smashed the high heel of my shoe into his knee, then his ribs.

I’d paid close attention to his injury reports.

I kicked off my shoes and sprinted for the stairs. If I could make it to my closet. To the ring . . .

“Bitch!” He roared, and his lumbering body came running after me.

I slammed my bedroom door then shoved the dressing chair in front of the knob. It wouldn’t hold, but I didn’t wait to see it fail. I darted to my closet, shut the door, and frantically jammed Seere’s ring onto my finger.

“Seere, damn it!”

There was a harsh noise in my bedroom. A loud boom of the door being torn from its hinges.

“Fuck.” I sucked in a harsh sob and sank to the floor under the rack of hanging clothes.

I felt like a child cowering from an angry parent. He’d caught me in my agreement with Seere. He knew my dirty little secret, and he was going to punish me for not lying down and dying when he wanted me to.

Every muscle in my body wound tight as I waited for what would come next.

Why was the closet door still closed? There wasn’t a lock on it, and it was as thin as plywood compared to the one I imagined was now destroyed.

There was a shout, a crash, and another loud bang.

Thrashing.

A deadened pounding of one solid mass hitting another came through the space under the door. It sounded like clashing bulls pummeling each other. The door rattled wildly with the impact of something heavy then stopped suddenly. Building up the courage—or panicked urge to run for the hills—I crawled forward. My shaking hand reached for the doorknob and turned it. Through the crack in the door, I could see the small corner of Hell my floor had become.

The wet smack of knuckles on flesh and the sound of cartilage cracking roiled my stomach, but the panic in my chest cut off the projection of vomit threatening my esophagus. The glass-like crunch of teeth and jawbone gave way to a sobbing Ben.

I scrambled to my feet and lunged, screaming Seere’s name as I tried and failed to heave him off. Ben was unrecognizable. His nose was bent at a sickening angle. His lips poured blood down his chin and onto his shirt.

If he survived the beating he was getting, he’d be eating from a tube for weeks.

I hooked my arm around Seere’s. “Seere, please. Anything. I’ll give you anything if you please just stop. You’re killing him!”

The command halted Seere’s fist mid-swing. His eyes snapped to mine, and his rage melted away to something between relief and shock.

Ben’s body fell to the floor in a heap as Seere released his hold to cup my face in his bloodied hands. The tacky liquid coated my cheek then trailed down to my bruised and aching neck.