Page 101 of Laurels and Liquor

I whimper and tremble, clambering backward, away from him as he stalks forward, slow and methodical. The whispers are back, the ghostly laughter ringing around me. This can’t be real, can’t be happening. My back hits a scaffolding cross brace, and I’m trapped as he gets within arm’s reach of me. I try to breathe through my panic, but my nose only smells tobacco and clay, the scent of my nightmares.

“I had a lot of time to think in the hospital, petal. I’d decided you were too much fucking trouble, and that if you wanted to be someone else’s problem, then so be it,” Darren goes on.

I can only look up into his face, and I realize with a cold bolt of shock that it’s not the same one I remember. An ugly scar mars his sharp jawline, giving him a distinctly lopsided look. His nose is crooked, and as he sneers at me, I see that he’s missing part of a tooth. There’s almost nothing left of the strikingly handsome alpha who swept me off my feet all those years ago. Only his eyes, muddy pools of hatred, are unchanged.

But before I can inspect him any further, he cocks his leg back and kicks me hard in my exposed stomach, the blow knocking the wind out of me and making me double over in agony. Hallucinations can’t hurt you, right? So why do I feel like I’m going to be sick from the pain?

“All you had to do was sign one little form, a protection for both of us. We could have put this behind us, but no,” Darren snarls, kicking me again.

I cry out, trying to roll out of his reach, but I’ve effectively cornered myself. My vision swims with tears, and I can’t even speak as I try to regain my breath. I hold up a hand, a feeble attempt to shield myself, but he only smacks it aside before kicking me again and again, and I swear I hear something crack. Then suddenly, Darren has a fist in my hair, dragging me away from the edge of the clearing and back toward the chair. I kick and squirm, clawing at his wrist until blood flows onto my fingers. He growls and throws me onto the ground, but I’ve regained a bit of my senses. This time when he goes to kick me, he’s aiming for my face. But I manage to grab him by the ankle just in time, and something feral breaks loose in my mind. I lean in and bite, hard enough for blood to fill my mouth. He screams and tumbles backward, hitting the ground with a solid thump. I spit out the foul-tasting liquid, moving to a low, defensive crouch. I still don’t know the way out, so that eliminates the flight part of my fight-or-flight response.

Darren recovers faster than I would have thought, rolling and pouncing onto me in one smooth motion. He knocks me onto my back, straddling my chest as he tries to strike down at my face. But I get my arms up, blocking like Caleb and Rhett taught me. My bare feet struggle for purchase on the plastic under us, preventing me from getting enough leverage to throw him off.

“Just lie down and take it, you omega bitch!” Darren shouts, but there’s no bark to his words.

I shout a wordless refusal, trying to throw punches of my own now, but it leaves me exposed for a moment. Darren seizes the opportunity, catching me on the side of the head and stunning me. My head spins, and I turn my face, feeling the vomit trying to rise in the back of my throat. In the shadows of the mezzanine, I swear I see movement, but I can’t trust my own senses anymore. I have to focus on what’s real, and right now that’s Darren, grabbing me by the hair and yanking my head back hard. There’s a flash of silver in the light, a knife. I get my arms up as he tries to bring the blade down, and the bite of pain brings a strange clarity. I finally manage to get my foot under me, and I tip my hips, getting Darren off balance enough for me to wriggle a few inches, but he recovers too fast. This time, I’m on my stomach, with no way to protect myself.

“There’s no knight in shining armor to save you this time, my petal. You’re alone, worthless, friendless, packless. Just what an omega like you deserves,” Darren spits, hand fisting in my shirt.

Bucking and fighting, I try to escape with everything I have left in me, but I can’t stop him as he slices through the cloth like hot butter. The only thing my squirming accomplishes is making his hand slip, the knife slicing into the skin along my spine. The cuts sting as I throw my arms back, trying to hit him, anything to prevent him from finishing what he’d started months ago.

The first cut of his knife into the flesh on the back of my shoulder makes me scream, pain like I’ve never experienced before, blocking out all other sensations. I arch and try to twist, but he pushes me down with an elbow to the back of my neck. He’s laughing, taking his sweet time to torture me one last time. Black dots swim in my vision, and I sob, but I’m losing energy fast. I can’t fight him, not anymore.

But as a second wave of nausea comes over me, there’s a roar, and then suddenly, Darren’s weight is gone from my back. I cough, my shoulder throbbing as I roll onto my side, trying to figure out what happened. My sob this time is one of pure relief as I see my friend and protector, Caleb Novak, wrestling the knife out of Darren’s grip and throwing it away into the darkness. They trade blows back and forth, Darren eventually knocking Caleb off of him, and then the two are on their feet, scrambling over something else now. I sit up, holding the front of my shirt in place as the back gapes open, and I realize with a start that the object they’re fighting over is Caleb’s gun.

I gasp, distracting Caleb for a moment, but it’s too late. Darren punches Caleb hard in the side of the head, sending the larger man staggering backward, but it also sends the gun flying through the air. I watch it until it clatters to a stop just feet from me, and Darren takes a step in my direction, so I act without thinking. I pick up the gun and point it up into Darren’s face.

No one moves for a long moment, all of us breathing hard as the world stops. Darren’s eyes are brown pits of fury, but he doesn’t move any closer now that I’ve got a weapon trained on him. Caleb is just behind Darren, but he doesn’t move either. I don’t dare move my attention away from Darren, even as I struggle to my feet, slipping slightly on the blood now splattering the floor.

“So, what now, petal?” Darren snarks, far too confident for someone in point-blank range of a gun.

“Did you know what Seth planned? Where did he get those bond breakers?” I ask shakily.

Darren snorts. “Like I give a shit. You got what you fucking deserved, as far as I’m concerned.”

I grip the gun tighter, thumbing the safety for a moment as I consider what to do. “Did you come alone?” I ask, directing my question toward Caleb.

“Rhett’s with me,voyin,” he responds simply.

Darren snarls and turns back to lunge at him, but I step forward, raising my other hand to stabilize my grip. But the shift in Darren’s stance reveals another flash of silver, the knife coated with blood. My blood. Darren looks back at me, a mocking smirk pulling at his uneven lips.

“You’re a coward, my petal. Always have been,” he tosses at me, completely unafraid.

“Stop calling me that!” I screech, pulling the hammer back on the gun.

“What are you going to do? Shoot me?” Darren nearly shouts, letting out a bark of a laugh even as he turns toward Caleb again.

Something about the taunt and his dismissal snaps what little control I have left, sending my fear scattering like fog under the sunlight. Protective rage fills my chest and I step forward again, taking careful aim before bracing myself and pulling the trigger. The crack of the shot feels distant as I watch Darren fall to his knees, clutching at the gushing wound between his legs. He howls and looks up at me, honest to God, tears streaming down his face. And for the first time, there’s true fear in his eyes as he finally recognizes me as a threat. I want to pity him, to see him as a human being in pain, but all I can see is the face of a man who beat me for years, just because he could. I can’t hear his cries for mercy, only the abuse he’s thrown at me echoing back through time. And that knife, still clutched in his hand. The one he was going to use on me, on Caleb, maybe even on the rest of my pack.

No. It ends here.

Another crack, louder than thunder. A splatter. Smoke. Silence.

Chapter fifty-four

Alexandra

Lucasisamessin the passenger seat beside me as we race through the winding, rainy streets of Everton. Only moments ago, I’d felt my tangential connection to Rhett go dark, but I haven’t allowed myself to think or dwell on what that could mean. Mateo is a statue in the backseat of my car, and hasn’t said a word since we ran out of the pack house. Only years of practice with compartmentalizing my emotions has kept me from breaking down.

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