Page 13 of Seduced

The boy who had been spying on him at the club was not screaming in fear. No, he was screaming at the children to stop torturing the cat.

“Stop it! Leave him be!”

Alexei, lost inside his own mind, was back at his home country, about to be killed by his own father. He was the one about to be drowned. And the boy was all that stood between him and utter hell.

“Get your hands off him!” the boy’s shrill voice screamed again.

His words were followed by a torrent of crude laughter. Then a few curses, and the boy started making gurgling noises, as though someone was choking him.

Oh, hell, Alexei thought and strode swiftly over, signaling to Wilder to follow.

“What have we here?” he asked in a bored voice.

Six pairs of eyes turned to meet his.

Four of them belonged to four children, none older than twelve or thirteen years of age, and in their middle, shorter than them all, not to mention upside down, the young man from the club. Under the streetlamp’s yellow light, his clothes looked scruffy and ill-fitting and his boots too big. The boy’sface looked both fierce and frightened at the same time. And he was fighting his little heart out.

The remaining pair of eyes belonged to Cerberus—the cat. He was held over the water, and was shaking. Alexei took a step forward, prepared to murder everyone in sight.

A stream of obscenities spewed from the youth’s lips.

Alexei was taken rather aback, not having expected the violence of the boy’s emotion, but he didn’t blame him for it. What he was seeing before his eyes was a scene of such unbelievable cruelty, that he had to shake himself out of his shocked state again and again.

The boy was being lowered to the water, head first.

Alexei swore.

“Stop!” he commanded. “Let them both down at once.”

The children froze momentarily.

“What?” the individual who was holding the animal said, turning to Alexei.

The cat squirmed to get out of his hands, and the boy from the club made a muffled sound, which was quenched quickly by a palm pressed to his mouth. A curse followed.

“He bit me!” one of the men said.

Laughter bubbled inside Alexei’s throat.Of course he did.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Alexei asked the children with deadly calm.

“We’re going ter throw the boy in with the cat. He’ll make a bigger splash!”

In an instant, before Alexei had time to react, they swung the boy up by his ankles and put the cat in his arms, before lowering him again over the railing to the water.

“No!” the boy’s voice was weak with desperation. “Help! Help me, fer God’s sake!”

Alexei pinched the bridge of his nose.

No words could stop them now, they were too far gone. He’d need to take action.

“Wilder,” he said briskly, but his guard was already bending over the dark, churning waters of the river, reaching for the boy.

The gang members pushed the boy towards the water. Wilder grabbed his boots just in time, but the children fought to push him down and away from Wilder’s grasp. Wilder, still coughing and struggling to breathe from being strangled a few minutes ago, fought the boys.

They were surprisingly strong as they all worked together, like a pack of tiny but vicious wolves, and it was hard for him to fight them and hold on to the boy at the same time. Wilder had the young man by his boots, but he was being pelted by punches and if he abruptly let go, both the boy and the cat would plunge headfirst into the freezing river.

Alexei shrugged out of his coat and quickly rolled his sleeves, praying under his breath that he wouldn’t have to take a nightly dip in the murky waters.

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