Amora
Shock rootsme to the floor, my heart lurching in surprise as the shadow marks on Kian’s body wave like a flag of warning.
What the hell?
Rue’s potion should have put him so far under that even a nuclear explosion wouldn’t wake him. His shadows, that goddamn magic inside him, warned him of impending danger like they’re fucking sentient.
Before I can slam the knife between his ribs, Kian’s hand shoots up, quick as a striking snake, and his fingers latch onto my right wrist. He twists, and my hand seizes from the pressure on my joints. I let out a pained grunt and lose my hold on the knife. With his other hand, he slams his forearm into my left wrist as my blade goes skittering across the floor.
Motherfucker.
I snarl at him, throwing a punch at his jaw. My knuckles slam into his unshaven cheek, and I feel the impact all the way up my arm. He growls, obviously undeterred by the blow even though I know I split his skin with my knuckles, then lunges for me. His palm slams into my neck, and he shoves me three feet across the floor and into the wall. My head bounces off the wooden slats. A thousand tiny pinpricks of light explode in my vision.
Kian’s fingers tighten around my throat—not quite enough to choke me, but a warning nonetheless. His tone when he speaks is so deadly that it should kill me by sound alone.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
My gaze darts over the floor in the dark room, looking for my knife.
Kian pulls me away from the wall and then shoves me into it again. “Don’t even think about it.”
As the initial surprise wears off, I notice for the first time that he’s naked. He has me pinned to the wall by one hand, his arm outstretched so that we have a couple feet of space between us. We were only apart a few days, and I still forgot how big he is. He towers over me, muscle and brawn and violence personified.
The door slams open, and Malix and Frost rush into the room, gazes locking on us in the darkness.
“What the…” Malix’s voice trails off and his jaw hangs open as his eyes dart between Kian and me.
Beside him, Frost is as unreadable as ever, his icy blue eyes glittering. At least they’re in sweatpants and hoodies like normal people during a snowstorm, so I’m not distracted by all three of them naked in the same room.
“She tried to stab me,” Kian says by way of explanation.
“Been there, done that,” Malix says, his tone amused but anger twisting the expression on his face. He fixes me with a hard look. “You shouldn’t have come here. This place ain’t safe for kitties.”
I glare at him. “Call me kitty one more time, and I’ll rip you limb from limb.”
Kian snarls, and his fingers squeeze my throat, cutting off my breath. “You’re not doing shit. Malix is right. You shouldn’t be here.”
“You knew,” I bite out through gritted teeth, barely able to say the words with the way Kian’s choking me. He eases up enough that I can suck in a breath, and I catch Malix’s violet gaze. “You should’ve expected me to come. I told you I’d never give up trying to stop you. I told all of you,” I add, looking back at Kian’s hard face. “Did you not believe me?”
Kian bares his teeth and leans in, closing the space between us menacingly. “Don’t be an idiot. You’ll never stop us.”
“Yes, I—”
He slams me harder into the wall. I take the hit on my back and all the air expels from my lungs. My vision tunnels, narrowing down on his twisted, furious expression.
“No,” he growls. “You won’t. You know why? Because you’re no match for us. We’re stronger, faster, and more powerful in every way. You are not our equal. You’ve never been our equal.”
Those last words hit my heart like a fucking dagger. Because something tells me he’s not just talking about my incessant quest to kill them. It sounds more like he’s talking about the mate bond.
That I wasn’t good enough to be his. To be theirs.
The thought feels like a punch to my gut. A spiral of pain and rage rises up in the void inside my chest left by the absence of the mate bond.
Baring my teeth, I bring my wet boot up between his legs with all the force of that fury.
He wasn’t lying about being fast. He manages to twist to avoid the worst of the hit, but I’m no goddamn slouch in a fight. I still get a decent amount of contact with his balls, and he lets out a grunt and doubles over a bit, his grip on my throat loosening.
I duck out of his grasp and drop to the floor, rolling back to my feet before he can even process what’s happened. I lunge for my fallen knife as Frost and Malix leap into action, both of them attempting to intercept me before I reach my blade.
The tips of my fingers land on the shiny handle, but Malix’s foot lashes out, kicking the knife away from me before I can get a better grasp on it. It flies across the floor and vanishes under the bed. Frost grabs my jacket and hauls me off the floor, but I whirl around in his grasp, slipping my arms out of the coat and wriggling free. I punch him hard in the stomach and then drop back to the floor and fumble under the bed, managing to blindly grab the knife’s blade before Malix pulls me back into the middle of the floor.
I lash out with the hilt, the blade piercing my fingers. The heavy wooden handle slams into Malix’s temple and he falls back with a curse, his hand going to his face.
I flip the knife in the air and catch it the right way this time, then slice at Frost. He tosses my coat over me like a blanket, and then his bulk slams into me, taking me down on my back with the knife pinned between us.
“Motherfucker!” I shriek, kicking wildly. It’s pitch black, and I can feel him on top of me, but my legs are useless. My boots just slam into the floorboards.
“Amora,” Frost says, his voice muffled. “Calm down.”
His tone is so even, so unconcerned, that it just makes me angrier. I feel wild, almost unhinged. Desperate to end them. To end this. And I can’t even tell anymore if I’m so desperate because of the hurt they’ve caused me, the way they’ve tossed me aside like useless trash, or if it’s still because of my mission to stop them from unleashing hell on earth.
Either way, I want them dead.