Page 60 of Beloved Sacrifice

“Excuse me,” she said in a silky smooth voice. Both Wes and Marek looked a bit alarmed. Good. “I know it’s bad manners for the token damsel in distress slash pawn to speak, but I’m afraid my patience has run out.”

She turned around to face the man on the stairs. “Slit my throat or get out of my way.”

He was an attractive man, and the set of his shoulders and jaw lent him an air of command that, in another place and time, she might have had trouble ignoring. Gold eyes met hers. He moved the sword away from her neck, then slipped it into a sheath at his waist. Who the fuck carried a sword?

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to have threatened you. It was necessary in order for me to control and assess the situation.”

“It appears you won’t be slitting my throat, so get out of my way.” Rose put her foot between his on the step, her knee between his legs. It wouldn’t take much for her to lift her knee into his balls, which would drop him straight down.

Knight stared down at her, apparently unconcerned by her planned ball crushing. Maybe he thought she wouldn’t do it?

“Move, Mr. Knight.” She said it quietly, in that same smooth, almost beguiling voice.

A line formed between his eyebrows. “Ma’am, I need you to take a step back. Once I’ve finished assessing the situation, I will release you if that’s the appro—”

Rose kneed him in the balls.

He shifted his hips at the last minute, so the inside of his thigh took the brunt of the blow, but her knee still slid up, jamming into his genitals.

Behind her, Wes and Marek both sucked in air through their teeth.

As Knight bent forward, Rose shoved his waist, pushing him to the side. He would have tumbled off the steps if one hand hadn’t come up, bracing against the stairwell opening above them. She didn’t wait for him to recover, but stepped over the stair he was on, sliding past his body and racing up the stairs.

Knight turned and caught one of the trailing tatters that had at one point been the lower half of her pants. She teetered on the edge of a step, but managed to grab one of the stairs above with both hands, kicking at his hand with one foot. His other hand started to close around her ankle, and Rose yanked her knee forward. Her pants ripped and cool air washed over her thigh.

“Don’t touch her,” Wes snarled.

The grip on her pants released and she raced up the last few stairs. Rose slammed the door closed and turned the key in the lock before yanking the key out. It wouldn’t take them long to get through, not with Knight’s sword, never mind the gun she’d briefly possessed.

She raced for the front door. Marek’s car was there. She skidded on the gravel, pain in her feet making her toes curl and calf muscles throb.

Rose tore at the door handle and jumped into the driver’s seat, which turned out to be the front passenger seat. She cursed and scrambled over the armrest to the driver’s seat. The key, with the large plastic tag indicative of a rental car, was in the ignition.

Rose jammed her banged-up foot on the clutch, threw it into reverse, and turned the key.

Gravel spat up from under her tires as she forced the car in a tight circle, the gears grinding as she sloppily changed from reverse to first. She got it pointed down that long gravel drive. The view from the top of the hill was glorious—the moon and stars startlingly bright. She hadn’t stopped to savor it before, but now, with one foot on the brake, the other on the clutch, she looked out over those low rolling hills, painted silver by the moon.

Places like this were as foreign to her as the dark side of the moon. This was a place where families lived for generations, or where people from London came to retire. It wasn’t a place without secrets—everywhere and everyone had secrets—but it was a place where those secrets weren’t demons, eating away at a person’s insides, killing them a little more with each day, with each breath they took.

She’d told Marek and Wes that she could run and be happy for a while. Eventually someone—the Andersons, Juliette and Devon, or Marek—would find her. But if she ran now, she’d have a bit of freedom. Maybe only weeks, but maybe a year or more.

She could go…where?

Do what?

Rose felt empty inside, as if she were an egg that had its inside blown out, leaving only the terribly vulnerable, thin shell.

Since that night when she was a teenage, her life had been about protecting Tabby, subversively thwarting the Andersons and the other purists, and her fucked-up relationship with Caden.

Tabby was safe. Caden was dead. Wes was poised to take down the purists.

She wasn’t free, she was purposeless.

Looking out over the rolling green countryside, Rose realized she had no idea where she’d go if she did run, and running would be hard bordering on impossible. She didn’t even have shoes, let alone ID or money.

She could do it. Over the years, she and Caden had learned quite a few less than reputable skills, and she wasn’t a half bad cat burglar.

She could do it.

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