Page 7 of Savage Princess

He pulls back then, his hand closing around my arm as he gets to his feet and pulls me with him. His other hand goes to my waist, steadying me so I don’t have to put too much weight on my bad ankle, but he keeps his distance, nothing touching me but his hands. “You need to go to bed, Elena,” he says, and I can hear the strain in those words, how difficult it is for him to turn me down.

But he stillisturning me down. The knowledge throbs painfully through me, and I sink my teeth into my lower lip as my eyes burn with humiliated tears. I feel intensely ashamed for having thrown myself at him like that, and I shake loose of his grip as I walk towards the door.

“Fine,” I whisper as he opens the door. “I’ll go to bed.”

“Elena–”

I grit my teeth, trying my best to hold back the tears as I step through the door, groping for the knob to close it behind me before he can say another word, or I burst into sobs.

I sink into bed, disappearing under the covers as I close my eyes tight and try to wish away everything that just happened. I feel like an idiot for thinking that it was going to work, that just going into his room and waking him up would be enough to get him to go back on everything he’s been saying for the last several days.

It had almost gotten me seriously hurt.

I close my eyes, trying to force myself to sleep, and at some point, it works. Not even my own racing thoughts can overcome days of exhaustion, and I fall into a sleep full of tumultuous, senseless dreams, until I’m jolted awake by the sound of the door opening—not the one between our rooms, but the door leading into my room.

My eyes fly open, and I look towards it, my mouth opening to ask Levin why he’s coming through that door instead of the one connecting our rooms. And then I see two–no,threesilhouettes near the doorway, and my sleep-fogged brain realizes that it’s not him.

Someone else has found us.

I scream. It’s all I can think of to do. I don’t know if it will make things worse or better, but the reaction is instantaneous. I sit bolt upright, shrieking at the top of my lungs, a sound that might or might not be Levin’s name, and I hear the sound of him crashing out of bed in the other room as the men in the doorway start to come into my room.

“Shut up, bitch!” one shouts just as the door between the rooms crashes open, and Levin bolts in, still buck naked, this time with a gun in one hand. He aims it as the men rush forward, and I duck just in time as one of them fires, the bullet going wild above my head as I let out another startled scream.

One of them comes straight for me, clearly intent on dragging me out of the bed. I lash out as soon as he’s within reach, clawing at him with curved fingers, scratching for his face, and catching his neck and upper chest. He lets out a grunt of pain, his hands closing around my arms as he starts to drag me towards him.

I hear the crunch of a fist against bone next to me, twisting my head to see Levin’s fist connecting with the face of one of the men grappling with him. Two of them are fighting him, and I twist back towards the one trying to haul me out of the bed, scratching and biting for all that I’m worth.

He drags me up against him as he gets me out of the bed, picking me up by my arms as if I don’t weigh anything. I wrench around, sinking my teeth into his ear and biting down until I taste blood.

The man shouts, flinging me backward, and pain lances through me as my back hits the bedpost. The man is coming for me again, until a gunshot fills the room. I flinch back to see Levin with one man in a headlock and his gun outstretched in the other, as a bullet goes through the other two men at once and drops them both.

He drops the gun and wrenches around, focusing on the man he’s holding. I hear another sick crunch of bone, and I realize with a wave of nausea that he’s broken the man’s neck as the body slithers out of Levin’s grasp and down to the floor.

“Oh god,” I whisper, looking up at Levin in stunned silence. “I–”

“Come on.” He grabs his gun, striding past me to the closet. I look at him dumbly, not understanding what he’s doing, until he grabs a robe out of it, throwing it on. “We have to leave, Elena.Now. I don’t know if more are coming.”

“Our clothes–”

“Now!”

His voice cuts through the air, a sharp command, sharper than anything I’ve ever heard directed at me before. It jolts me out of the half-shocked stupor I’m in, and I get to my feet, wincing at the pressure on my ankle as Levin reaches for me. Getting thrown against the bed had wrenched it a little again, but it’s nothing I can’t deal with—especially if Levin is right, and more are coming for us.

“Can you walk?” he asks, his voice thick with worry. “Can yourun?”

I nod. “I’ll go as fast as we need to,” I whisper, and Levin’s face settles into hard, determined lines.

“Then we need to fucking go.”

He pulls me through the door into his room, towards the window. “We’re taking the fire escape,” he says brusquely. “I’m not chancing the possibility that there’s more downstairs. This is quicker.”

I swallow hard, nodding. “Do you think the guy downstairs—do you think he told them what room we’re in?”

Levin’s jaw flexes. “It’s possible,” he says curtly. “And if so, he won’t live long.”

A cold wave washes over me at the certainty in Levin’s voice, the knowledge that what just happened might have signed that boy’s death warrant. At the same time, a small voice in my head, one that I know has only recently come to life, whispersif he ratted us out, then he deserves it.

I don’t know where the thought comes from. The Elena who had existed before all of this would have been horrified by it. But the events that have unfolded one at a time since Diego’s men attacked my home that fateful last night are changing me, and I’ve never realized it as acutely as I do at this moment.

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