Page 138 of Ruthless Reign

His bullet went wide.

Mine didn’t.

I’d meant to hit him in the head, but the bullet tore through the side of his neck instead. His hands reached up to grip the spray of blood—to try to stop it. It poured from him in a morbid cascade.

My stomach turned again, and I looked away. I didn’t have to look at it.

I didn’t have to look at it.

I heard him gurgle and I gagged.

Hardin fired behind me and the gurgling stopped.

“Well, that was dramatic,” Kaleb said, starting to move again.

I followed him, studiously not looking to the right. Or anywhere but straight ahead.

“Ope, watch your step, Vixen.”

I felt a tug on my elbow and let him guide me around a steadily spreading pool of blood on the floor. “Shit’s slicker than an oil spill.”

Ahead of us, the pat pat pat of machine gun fire reverberated in the halls, warning us away and drawing us in all at once. They needed our help.

“Let’s move.”

We raced through the halls, clearing the open classrooms as we went, finding only corpses. Sinners. Sons. Only one Saint I recognized. Most of them seemed to have moved to the gym, which was where we were headed. Now that we knew the halls were free of anyone who might try to block the exits or come in behind us.

A miasmal sense of dread thickened the air with every step we drew nearer to the gym.

Aodhán threw his arm back, motioning for me to stay tight to the wall as we approached the open doors. It was absolute carnage inside.

It smelled of acrid sulfur and iron. Spent bullets and blood.

Every fired shot made my stomach tense and my skin prickle. Men shouted and cursed. Cried out and growled.

It was a fucking bloodbath.

There were too many faces I recognized on the ground. Way too many.

Unintentionally, I began to count them—separate them. Trying to figure out how many of ours were lifeless on the ground compared to how many of them.

And in all the cold, still faces, I searched for Dad. For Ma.

For Séamas himself.

But I saw none of them.

“Get to the tires,” Hardin bellowed, and we moved as a single unit into the pandemonium, pushing toward the now half collapsed wall of tires to a hail of bullets.

A too-close gunshot echoed like a thunderclap, and I spun toward the sound, weapon raised.

The first shot had missed its mark but the Son standing fifteen yards away using a tipped over vending machine for cover was about to fire again. His sights trained on Becca.

“Vixen!”

I unleashed a hail of covering fire, but the Son managed to get his second round off before he went down and Hardid moved in perfect time, putting himself in the path of the bullet as he shoved Becca behind the tires.

Her knees hit the ground and Hardin went down on top of her.

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