Page 3 of Seduced

Then he turned around, quick as lightning, and plunged his fist into the man’s eye.

The assassin was a good head taller than Alexei, but Alexei was lighter on his feet and much better trained. Still, they fought hand to hand for what felt like a good hour but was probably no more than half.

Alexei wouldn’t admit it, but by now, he was bleeding from at least seven places, albeit superficially, was close to getting winded, and could no longer feel his fingers because of the cold. The night was filled with their grunts, curses flying liberally from both their mouths.

A roar split the night, and the weight of the assassin was lifted off Alexei suddenly, just as the man’s hands were beginning to clench Alexei’s throat a tad too uncomfortably.

Alexei bent over, nearly becoming sick, and sucked in air, promptly choking on it.

The sounds of the assassin being beaten to within an inch of his life nearby were the only reason he still struggled to breathe, because every breath hurt like a thousand sharp knives, and otherwise he would have given up long ago. But the assassin was about to get murdered, and Alexei had to be alive to see it.

“Where the hell were you?” Alexei gasped.

“Sorry, m’lord,” a muffled voice replied from the night. “Lost you in the darkness. Won’t happen again.” Isaac Wilder, Alexei’s personal guard and friend, sounded dangerously out of breath.

Damn. The assassin wouldn’t go down still, not even in Wilder’s strong hands. Alexei would have to dirty his hands, wouldn’t he?

“Well, it still remains to be seen,” Alexei said, as another dark form appeared out of the mist, “whether we shall survive this.”

Another assassin. This did not look good.Dammit.

Alexei climbed to his feet, gritting his teeth against the faintness that threatened.

“My lord, I—aargh!”

“Wilder?”

Alexei ran towards his guard’s scream, not caring how much it hurt to breathe or how his chest burned. And then, in an instant, he saw what was happening. The assassin had somehow overpowered Wilder, which no one had been able to do in his twenty years, and now had him in a chokehold.Wilder’s eyes were bulging in the darkness, and his legs were writhing on the frozen ground.

As legs did right before someone was strangled to death.

Alexei knew all about death; in fact, he knew little else.

And he knew, with that kind of absolute certainty that rendered him at once deadly calm and collected, that Wilder, his guard and friend, was about to die. The second assassin who had materialized out of the shadows was now gaining on them both, to finish the job that the first assassin had started.

And so, Alexei did what he had done from the first months of his life: he did what he had to do to survive.

With a fast, agile movement, he bent down on one knee and removed a blade from his left boot. Then, without hesitating for a single breath, he walked over to where Wilder was being strangled and plunged his blade on the assassin’s back, at the exact spot where his heart was beating.

The man was huge and Alexei had to use force to plunge the knife all the way up to the hilt, but still, for a moment, it was as if the assassin barely felt it.

Wilder spluttered and went still, his throat in the man’s hands. The assassin was still on top of him, the blade fully plunged in what Alexei hoped was his heart, and time was standing still.

Alexei was frozen there, bent over the two unmoving men, when a hand closed around his throat. Dammit. Naturally, there was nothing for him to do but make a herculean effort to retrieve the knife from the killer’s back and plunge it blindly into the second assassin’s body, behind him. He hadn’t even had time to turn around properly, and see where, or who, he was stabbing.

The hands tightened more firmly around his throat—the knife had probably not found its mark.

They do not call me Lord Hades for nothing, after all,was his last thought before his airway closed up and everything started going black.I couldn’t even save Wilder. How absolutely pathetic, even for me.

But at least, finally, the moment I have waited for is here.

And, just like that, it came: Death.

two

Alexei

Death was not the peaceful valley of nothingness that he had imagined.

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