Page 70 of Blades of Obsession

Chapter 26

BLADE

“Son of a bitch.” I wipe the blood from my cheek, feeling the sting where Rhys scratched me. I wasthis closeto reaching one of the entrances to the cheer locker room, anxious to explain everything after Amelia’s text. But then I saw Catalina running into the woods, with Rhys following behind her like the predator he is.

As much as I wanted to hurry and get to Amelia, I couldn’t leave Catalina without help.

I caught up to Rhys once, but he caught me off guard with a tree branch to my face, and a fucking thorn dug into my cheek. So now, I’m stalking through the woods, pushing through the underbrush, trying to stay quiet.

Finally, I see them.

He has her pinned to a tree, his grip tight on her arm as he hisses something in her ear. I close the distance between us before making my presence known, not giving him the chance to run off.

“Rhys!” I shout. “What the hell are you doing?”

His face is flushed, beads of sweat forming on his brow as he turns to me. “She’s going to get me sent to jail if she tells anyone! I have to get rid of her.”

“You deserve to be in jail!What the fuck were you thinking, man?!”

Rhys sighs, his face twisting with frustration. “I saw you that day with her, your arm over her shoulder, and I just… saw red. I took it out on her because I couldn’t take it out on…”

My blood runs hot, fists clenching at my sides. He did this because he… was jealous? “I’m not in love with you, nor will Ieverbe in love with you! Get that through your fucking head!”

I lunge forward, kicking him hard in the side, and he loses his grip on Catalina. “You’re kicked out from the group, effective immediately.” I throw a punch, landing it squarely on his jaw. He crashes to the ground, allowing me to hover over him and continue raining punches. “You’re getting the hell away from me, andespeciallyAmelia, and never coming back.”

After a final kick to the gut, I turn to Catalina, who’s watching with wide eyes and a hint of relief on her face. I nod towards the direction we came from, urging her to escape this fucking nightmare she’s been through.

She doesn’t hesitate, scrambling away from us. As I turn back to Rhys, my heart is still racing, pounding wildly like it’s in competition with my erratic breathing.

Why did I let it get this far?

Why did I let a predator in my vicinity for so long? And worse, in Amelia’s vicinity.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I should have gotten rid of him at the first sign of trouble, when he practically forced himselfon me—watching me sleep, touching my junk after I said no.

Those memories flood back, reigniting my anger. I kick him in the back of the head, hard enough to knock him out cold. He doesn’t get to walk away from this with just a few punches. That’s not enough.

Still panting from the adrenaline, I grab my phone and dial one of the guys from the house, Nate.

“Hey, what’s up?” he answers.

“Hey, uh, you have a big van, right?”

“Yeah… why?”

“I need you to come pick up Rhys from the woods behind the cheerleading locker room. Hurry up because he’ll be waking up in twenty minutes or so. Take him to the dungeon.”

“Be there in eight.”

It takes me five minutes to drag Rhys’s dead weight through the woods, straining as I hoist him over my shoulder and dump him by my car. Another three minutes to find rope in the trunk and tie his arms and legs. By the time I finish, I see the headlights of Nate’s clunky old white van cutting through the trees.

Nate hops out, looking confused. “What the hell happened?”

“He’s a sick pig. Just help me.” Together, we heave his unconscious body into the back of Nate’s van. “When you get there, tell the dungeon master three weeks. The code to drop somebody off is 21123.”

The dungeon is a place nobody wants to go, even the toughest of members break. The only food they offer is water and the dead bodies of other prisoners, if not, you starve. Screams play on repeat, the temperatures swing between extremes, the walls and floors are pure metal, and the unusual methods of torture…

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