Page 50 of Wicked Queen

I nod, but I’m not so sure. All the training we did in the gym suddenly seems far away, and the excitement I’d felt at participating in a real fight seems foolish. I’m very aware that whoever I fight tonight is going to try to win whatever it takes, and these aren’t professional bouts. These are underground fights, without a whole fucking lot of rules.

I’m going to have to be just as focused and just as intent on winning, and right now all I want is to be back at the house, or maybe out at the cliff with Jaxon. Anywhere else to savor what I have left still instead of taking yet more blows.

But we’re here, and I’m determined not to fuck it up.

The girl that they pit me against is bigger than me—taller by a few inches with plenty of muscle weight on me. It’s sure as hell not like a fight where they actually pay attention to weight classes, not that I’d ever thought it would be.

But I quickly find out, one round in, that I have an advantage. I’m not as fast as I could be, it’s something we’ve been trying to work on in practice, but I’m faster than her. She hits like a fucking freight train, but I can dodge a lot of her hits, catching her in the belly and back even if I have a harder time getting to her face. And I can keep away from the ropes, which I quickly pinpoint is her strategy. She wants to back me into a corner so she can whale on me, because she doesn’t have the dexterity to really catch me and deliver the hard hits she needs to knock me out if we’re away from the ropes.

That’s not to say she doesn’t get some hits in. She definitely does, and by the time we’re five rounds in, I’m bleeding from my nose and lip, and there’s several places that are definitely going to be bruised. I want to look for Jaxon, but I know better than to get distracted. I need to win this fight, and I won’t be able to do that if I’m trying to find him in the crowd. We came into the warehouse separately on purpose anyway, so no one who might recognize either of us would pinpoint that we’re together.

Even without looking for Jaxon, I’m not sure I’m going to win. I’m getting tired faster than I should, and I know if I lose too much steam, I’ll lose what little advantage I have. And Iwantto win, not just because I want Jaxon to be proud of me and because I want to feel proud of myself, to prove that it was the right choice to let me do this—but also just because I don’t want to know what it would feel like to have this fucking beast of a woman knock me out.

It comes close. Very close. More than once, I think it’s the moment that she’s got me, and I’m going to be out. But then, by some miracle, I manage to get under her guard, and deliver a shot to her ribs that leaves her reeling. I come up, darting into her space before she can strike, and give her a sharp uppercut, straight to the chin. Hard and swift, just like Jaxon taught me.

She drops like dead weight to the floor of the ring.

It takes a minute for it to sink in that I’m the winner. I feel a little dizzy, probably from the hits I took to the jaw, and I desperately want to sit down. Instead, I force myself to hang at the edge of the ring, watching the remaining fights. I want to find Jaxon, but I follow the plan, and wait. We came up with it for a reason, and more than anything now, we need to stick to our plans, and follow it through to the end.

It’s the only chance we have.

I don’t see him until I make my way out of the warehouse at the agreed upon time, feeling sore in every muscle and bone and desperately wanting a hot bath. Jaxon meets me down the street, waiting with his bike, and I see the concern on his face when he gets a good look at mine.

“How much of it did you see?” I ask, letting him take a tissue and dab at my nose and lip. They’ve stopped bleeding, but my mouth is going to be sore for a bit.

“Enough.” Jaxon tosses the tissue away, and I can see the pride in his face when he looks down at me. “You did a hell of a job, Athena. I was pissed when I saw who you were up against. I’m not going to lie, I thought she was going to destroy you in a couple rounds.”

“Thanks,” I say dryly, reaching for my helmet.

“You know exactly what I mean. She outweighed you by half of one of you. But you made the best of it and figured out how to use it to your advantage. And you fucking beat her. I’m fucking proud as hell of you.”

I pause, looking over at him, and I can see how utterly sincere he is. “Thank you,” I say softly. “I’ve got one more before Halloween, right?”

“Yeah.” Jaxon runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know how much it’s going to help. I didn’t find out a lot. If the Sons do have something up their sleeve, orders from higher up or otherwise, they’re not talking about it. Wisely,” he adds. “I do think that points to all of this being orchestrated by our fathers, though, and not just a revenge vendetta that the Sons are on because of your dad. That would be a personal, club thing. But if our fathers are running this, if it’s part of a bigger scheme to make sure that we don’t succeed in fucking up what they’ve built, they’d be wise to keep it close to the vest. Talking wouldn’t earn them any favors.”

I nod. “Yeah, that makes sense. And it’s what we thought. I know it’s notgoodnews, but at least it fits.”

“Yeah.” Jaxon swings onto the bike, his face grim. “This town is just as fucked up as I ever thought it was.”

I cling to him on the ride back, feeling every jolt and bump in the road in my sore body. Still, I don’t want the ride to end. I feel the best when Jaxon and I are on his bike together, when it feels like we’re suspended somewhere between reality and possibility, when it’s possible to keep the world at arm’s length.

“Sometimes I just want to keep going forever,” I say quietly when we reach the manor house, unbuckling my helmet. “Just as far and as fast as we possibly could.”

Jaxon goes very still in front of me, and I immediately regret saying it aloud. I know that above all, he wants that. He was willing to walk away from everything once—family, familiar things, his friends, his inheritance—to have freedom with the woman he loved. And I know he’d do it again. I love all three of them, but above anything else, Jaxon loves me. And he’d walk away from Dean and Cayde and everything else in an instant to have a life with me that didn’t involve Blackmoor or anything to do with it.

“We could,” Jaxon says quietly, his helmet in his hands. “Right now. I’ll start the bike back up and we’ll go. Just as far as we can. We could leave together.”

“We’d be letting them win,” I say quietly. “And who’s to say they wouldn’t catch us on the way out, or before we got too far? Who’s to say the same thing that happened to Natalie wouldn’t happen to me, or to us?”

Jaxon’s jaw tightens, and I see the look in his eyes, his shoulders tense. “I don’t care who wins,” he says angrily, his voice low and dark. “As long as I have you. They can have this fucking town. I don’t give a shit about it.” He looks back at me, his expression resigned. “I know you want your revenge, though. You need it.”

I look at him, surprised. “Don’t you want it too?Needit? Revenge for Natalie? For everything they took away from you?”

Jaxon shrugs, hanging his helmet off of one handlebar. “I gave up on revenge a long time ago,” he says quietly. “I figured it wasn’t possible. If I’m being honest, it kind of still feels like it isn’t.” He hesitates, taking a breath. “It kind of feels like we’re going to die down there. And if it was just me, I wouldn’t really fucking care. But it’s not.” He reaches for me, helping me down from the bike. “It’s you. And I’d rather drive away tonight than take that chance.”

I reach up to touch his face gently. “I’ll be fine,” I promise him. “We’re all in this together. We’re not going to die. I won’t let that happen.”

Jaxon smiles wanly. “You’re the bravest, fiercest girl I’ve ever known, Athena. More than anyone. But you’re just one person. Together, we’re just a few. And we’re going up against something that’s lasted for hundreds of years. We can’t have been the first to think like this.”

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