Page 135 of You Were Always Mine
I whip my head up, breath tearing through my chest—and there she is. Scarlett. Stumbling into the alley, hair wild, eyes wide like she’s staring at something unholy. She’s shaking, arms crossed like she doesn’t know if she’s shielding herself from the night air or from me.
“Don’t—” she chokes, voice too thin, too wrecked. “Kai, stop, you’re killing him.”
My grip tightens around Tyler’s throat until his body spasms beneath me. Every instinct screams to finish it, to crush until there’s nothing left of him to haunt her. But her voice—fuck, her voice—keeps pulling me back, raw and desperate, reminding me who’s watching.
I look up at her through bloodshot eyes, hand still pressing down, and the world tilts: my girl standing there, shaking, whispering my name like I’m the monster she’s always feared.
“Go home,” I rasp, blood on my lips. “You shouldn’t see this.”
But I can’t make my hand let go.
Not yet.
Not while he’s still breathing.
Scar’s voice is a ghost in the back of my head—begging—but when I glance at her, she’s rooted to the spot, hands over her mouth, mascara blurred down her cheeks. Frozen. Watching me ruin him.
And I do.
My knuckles are split raw, slick with Tyler’s blood.Every time I drive them into his face, I hear the echo of her scream—the way she shook in my arms when she finally told me. Every crack of bone feels like an answer, a penance, a promise.
He wheezes, coughs red onto the ground, tries to laugh, tries to form her name—and that’s when I see her flinch like he still has power. Like even bleeding under me, he’s still inside her head.
“No,” I snarl, voice torn. My hand closes on his throat, squeezing until his laugh cuts off into a rasp. “You don’t get to say her name again. Ever.”
Behind me, Scar chokes on a sob. “Kai, please?—”
But she doesn’t move. She doesn’t run to him. She doesn’t run from me. She just stares—paralysed—as if she knows this is the point of no return.
I lean close, forehead pressed to Tyler’s broken face, and whisper through my teeth, “She’s mine. Every piece of her. And you’ll never touch her again.”
His body jerks beneath me, weakening.
Scar makes a sound—half scream, half plea—and it cuts straight through me. My grip tightens anyway.
Tyler’s last breath rattles wet and shallow against my palm. His eyes roll back, mouth spilling blood and spit, and I feel it—the way his chest stutters beneath me, searching for air that isn’t coming.
And still I don’t stop.
My grip clamps tighter, knuckles white, the veins in my arm straining. I can feel Scar’s scream behind me, the way it shakes the night, but it’s distant—muted by the roar in my skull, the pulse thundering in my ears. I keep squeezing until his kicks weaken, until his hands stop clawing at my wrist, until there’s nothing left but limp flesh under my rage.
But even then, I don’t let go.
I keep crushing—shaking him once, twice—because I need him to feel me inside his last second. Because it isn’t enough that he’s gone. I need him erased. Eradicated.
“Mine,” I growl, forehead pressed to his slack, bloody face, voice broken and hoarse. “She’s mine. She’ll always be mine.”
Scar sobs somewhere behind me, choked and hysterical, whispering my name like she doesn’t recognise me anymore.
But I can’t hear her.
All I hear is the silence where his breathing used to be.
All I feel is the throb of my pulse and the blood cooling on my hands.
And I still don’t let go.
Kai
