Page 176 of Seizing Control: Part One

Eager to lay down a challenge to my ex-best friend, my footsteps falter when I discover that he’s not alone. Layla informed me that he’d skipped out on the meeting with the Trinity to drown his sorrows at the clubhouse, leaving Lily to face things by herself. His cowardice is becoming a liability. A source of worry. I’m in two minds as I weigh up whether to add him to my list.

It would certainly solve a few of my problems.

That idea is compounded when I watch metukà shelì move to slap him. He seizes hold of Lily’s wrist, twisting her arm until she grits her teeth to deal with the pain he’s causing. I growl. The sound catches his attention, and he cocks his head to one side, his ice-blue gaze connecting with mine for a moment, then he hits me with a wolfish grin. As I step out into Lily’s eyeline, ready to end this ruse before he can hurt her any further, Slash widens his stance to block her view.

He stares down at her with a mixture of hatred and hunger.

It’s a feeling I’m intimately acquainted with now that I know she loves him too.

I want her.

I don’t want him to have her.

Yet, I know he’s an unavoidable necessity while I clean up the underworld.

Filled with jealousy and rage, I feel tension turn my spine rigid instantly.

My bounces once.

Like a good Adjudicator-to-be, my response is immediate.

I inhale for four beats.

Hold for two.

Blow out a steadying breath for six.

Repeating this cycle three more times, I try to work out what the hell I’ve stumbled across.

Are Slash and Lily still together?

“If we do this.” His tone is unrecognisable yet familiar at the same time. It’s not something I’ve ever heard from him—it’s closer to the disassociation that happens whenever I lose control. My footsteps grind to a stop. I return to the cloistering shadows, caught on the precipice of putting a bullet in his head, potential Adjudicatorship be damned.

If Slash so much as breathes wrong in Lily’s vicinity, it’s over for him.

As if he can read my mind, the cowardly prick cocks his head to the left again. He deliberately makes surreptitious eye contact with me as he tells Lily, “You have to be honest... let me know if you need me to stop.”

Metukà shelì nods.

Her agreement ramps up my confusion.

Stop what?

“What safe word did you use with fuckin’ Venom?”

Heart sinking, I hate that I understand what they’re discussing.

The sole boon in the situation is my sweet thing’s immediate refusal to infringe upon our private life with this nosy motherfucker. “I don’t want to?—”

“Carnage.” Slash cuts her off in a spiteful tone.

My trigger hand shakes as I battle the urge to stop him from going ahead with this plan.

Slash is going to break my woman.

With her permission.

And my safe word.

---