Page 3 of Rebellion of a Kingdom

The sad truth is, I’ve prepared for this, trained for it. I know exactly how to stem his bleeding and what drugs he’d need to stop his pain, yet I can’t force myself to move and do any of it. Z always taught me to expect the unexpected, that way you can never be surprised. I got cocky, overconfident, and now I’m paying the highest fucking price imaginable.

My heart hammers against my rib cage as my body attempts to shut down in terror. I struggle to just keep breathing, every inhale feeling like glass shards are shredding their way down into my lungs. I watch my fingers as they tremble against the escaping blood seeping from my brother's body. I can’t lose him; I need to save him.

If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. He changed everything, my family, my blood, my life, all of it would be nothing if it weren’t for him. He became my anchor when I thought I lost everything.

I think back to the night we met when I climbed into a car with him and drove away from everything I had ever known. It was just me and him, two strangers with no past, yet he didn’t let me slip away. It’s just us two again now and I need to save him like he saved me.

The Rebels are going to walk in here any minute and find us... Will a minute be too long? Will the Devils of this town change my life forever again, in just one night?

Zack jolts beneath me and I bring my gaze to his. His eyes are a worse sight than all of his blood. There isn’t just pain there, but devastation, panic, pure and utter despair. I would give anything to take it away.

“It’s okay Z, just hang on for me okay?” I plead with him.

He tries to reply, but he is struggling to even breathe. When Arthur and Zack walked me through basic first aid and some advanced stuff, I thought it was ridiculous. Now, as my brother's blood soaks into the carpet, I’ve never been more grateful in my life. His shortness of breath and where the bullet has hit his chest makes me think it’s a collapsed lung, not always life threatening, but with the amount of blood he’s losing it isn’t good.

The stab wound in his leg is another thing entirely. It doesn’t seem to have hit any major arteries, or he’d already be dead, but this is so fucking bad. I try to concentrate, think about what I need to do to save his life, but I can’t keep my mind from my daughter.

Cassie.

Her name is a whisper in my mind playing on repeat. Piercing my heart over and over, every second. I thought I knew what fear was, thought I had felt it that awful night. I thought waking up drugged, beaten, raped, and tied down would be the worst thing that would ever happen to me. I was wrong. This is worse. They have her. I’d go through every single moment of trauma again just to have her back.

My shining light, the very reason for my existence has been taken and I wasn’t here to protect her. I’m drowning, suffocating, spiraling into the depths of a void I won’t ever recover from. I let them find her, let them take her, and now I am nothing. With her, I am strong, powerful, have everything I will ever need. Without her? I’m an abyss of emptiness that can only be filled with the blood of my enemies.

They have my baby girl. My daughter is with her biological father for the first time in her life and I’ve never felt the terror that I feel now. Is she alive? Have they touched her? Will I ever see her again? Will I survive long enough to avenge her?

The bile clogs my throat as every disgusting crime the Donovan’s have ever committed flashes across my mind. Is she going to pay for the crimes I have committed against them?

Please don’t hurt her, not my baby.

I struggle to control my own body as I choke down the vomit. The impending panic attack attempts to overpower me entirely. My heart threatens to burst inside my chest and my hands begin to tingle with numbness as I try my hardest to keep firm pressure on Zack’s wounds.

I want to shut down. I need to. I want to forget. To not exist in a world where my daughter isn’t by my side. But I can’t. That won’t bring my daughter back. No. The only thing that will do that is blood, death, and murder.

Oh, there is going to be so much fucking murder. They think they hurt me before. That I wanted vengeance before? That was nothing. A fucking blip on the radar compared to what I feel now. I wanted their blood for what they did to me, but that wasn’t enough for them. It’s never fucking enough. Now they have taken my only reason for survival and I will make it rain fucking crimson to get her back.

I lock eyes with Zack again. Not once since the day I met him have I ever seen pure terror in his stare. Not even the night we met, and considering I was naked and bleeding it would have been expected. But no, not even then. Now though, now he looks like the world has fucking ended. If we don’t get Cassie back, it just might. I’ll make it.

I try to center my panic and focus my thoughts on the only thing that is in my control right now, and that’s Zack’s life. He’s pleading at me with his eyes, but I am too focused on trying to stem the blood flow and not spiral into a fucking frenzy. But even amongst all the chaos I don’t miss the cocking sound of a gun. It echoes in the deafening silence.

Fuck.

Fuck!!! My panic left my back open to vulnerabilities. I forgot the most important rule of my training; check the threat has been neutralized. My gun lies discarded and useless next to Zack's body, just out of my reach. My knives are still embedded in my dress, but they won’t help me now. I freeze and Zack closes his eyes in defeat, he doesn’t want to watch what is going to happen next. He knows. This is it, the time for my death, our death. I am going to die right here next to him, failing to save him. Failing to save my daughter.

We won’t get to see Cassie again or any of our family, I won’t get that future I had started to picture with Marcus and the Rebels will have to deal with the loss of one more person in their life. I try to take a deep breath, but I'm suffocating, and as the cry catches in my throat, I finally register the tears spilling down my face.

How the fuck did we get here? We were so careful, and it was all for nothing. Every possible future I had imagined for me and Cassie is about to die right here with me. I think about everything I am going to miss; her first day of school, graduation, her wedding day, when she has kids of her own. All of it causing me more pain than I’m about to feel in my death. I say a silent prayer that Ash will get our baby girl back, he has to. I close my eyes so I can see the image of Cassie in my head, I want her face to be the last thing I see.

Cassie, I’m so sorry, baby girl. Mommy loves you.

That is the last thought I have before the presence behind me speaks. “The Donovan’s send their regards.”

The bang of the gun roars into the night. My entire body flinching, awaiting the impact, but it doesn’t come. Instead, a body drops next to me with a hard thud.

“Regards.” Asher's pained tone hits my ear and I whip my head around, letting out a gasp of breath. I see whoever the shooter was is face down in his own blood with a hole in the back of his head. The cry I was so desperately trying to hold in bursts out of me. Shakes wrack my entire body so hard that they force Zack's body to tremble along with me. I never thought about the true danger that I put myself in. I’ve been close to death multiple times, but never without the ability to fight back.

I never wanted to be the weak little girl that was taken and abused again. I promised that for both mine and Cassie’s sake, I would fight until the end. Yet when faced with my end, all I wanted was to close my eyes and accept my fate. Not because I didn’t want to fight, but because it was pointless.

Asher staggers towards me and falls to his knees, gripping my face in his hands. “You okay, baby girl?”

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