Page 143 of Ruthless Reign

He’d been looking at me.

Or had he been looking at Aodhán next to me?

A stab of fear sliced into my belly, and I struggled to breathe, to call out. “Aodhán! Aodhán!”

“Becca, get down,” Sloane hissed, and her tiny strong hand jerked me by the wrist, making me fall forward onto the bleachers. She covered my body with her own, pushing me down between two bench seats in the process as bodies jostled all around us.

I choked and spluttered. “Aodhán!”

“Shhh.”

“Oh Damien…” came the singsong voice of Séamas through the smoke, far away, but not far enough.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Fucking bastard.

There was the distinct sound of knuckles hitting bone through flesh as the Sons fought with my guys somewhere above us. The bang of a body thudding against a metal seat.

“Come out and face me, you fucking coward!” Séamas bellowed, his luring tone turned acidic.

I struggled under Sloane, pushing up with all my strength as she fought against me to hold me down. “Don’t,” she whisper shouted in my ear. “He’s after you. We can’t let him?—”

Her weight left me all at once and I sat upright, spinning around, reaching out for her through the muffled sounds of fighting and coughing and curses.

“Sloane!”

I heard the sound of her struggle and moved in that direction, tripping over a soft shape on the ground. Instinctively, I reached down to feel, fear gripping my heart in a vise.

“Sloane?”

But the body wasn’t hers. Wasn’t even alive.

Fuck.

I couldn’t hear her anymore. And even as the smoke slowly—so fucking slowly—started to dissipate, I still couldn’t find her anywhere on the bleachers.

I lifted my gun, ready to fire as my watery eyes began to refocus, finding the shapes of men. Hardin and Kaleb.

Where was…

Aodhán rose through the dissipating smoke, stepping off the dead Son it looked like he’d just finished strangling on the floor.

There were no Sons up here.

Then, where…

Kaleb grabbed my arm, tugging me back behind the upturned desks. “Where’s Ma?”

“I don’t know, she was just here and then?—”

“I have your woman, St. Vincent.”

My stomach dropped.

We turned to squint down through the dispersing smoke, to the heart of the gymnasium floor.

Where Séamas had Sloane on her knees, the barrel of his gun pressed to the back of her head. A gag in her mouth. Vicious rage in her eyes as she thrashed against the hold the Sons on either side of her had on her to keep her held down.

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