Kayden eventually musters some kind of defense, retreating to the side, avoiding a couple of narrow blows here and there, but it isn’t enough to escape Jax’s onslaught. He falls back into a traditional Muay Thai stance, knee and arms up, forming a wall of joints and bone, but Jax isn’t having any of it. With a yell, he slams into Kayden with potent force, knocking them both to the floor.
Kayden tries to shrug him off, eventually managing to squeeze himself out of the grapple, and scrambles past Jax toward the cage door again, but Jax intercepts him, slamming a hard uppercut to Kayden’s jaw.
“Fight back, Killer!” Evans says desperately. “Come on!”
I feel the ground beneath me caving in, and I’m drowning in the agony of watching the man I love get brutally beat down like this, at the horrible sight of Jax throwing Kayden around, pummeling his bloody fists into him repeatedly, weakening Kayden even more.
Another fists knocks into Kayden.
And another.
And another.
And each time he doesn’t get up. Each time he slumps farther down.
Each time my heart cracks open wider, as sickeningly excruciating as every blow to his ribs.
Kayden is too far gone now. Too incapacitated. His eyes swell to twice their size with hit after hit and blood gushes down the sides of his face. He has lost any semblance of a defense, leaving him completely at Jax’s mercy. It’s a gnarly and gruesome sight that taunts all the oxygen out of my body as his head whiplashes against Jax’s fists and collides with the side of the cage again and again.
This isn’t a fair fight at all.
It’s an execution.
“They need to call the fight. Right now,” I say through gritted teeth. “Or Jax is going to kill him!”
My desperate gaze cuts to the referee, who has retreated to the bottom of the cage, watching the fight in awe.
Still. Refusing. To. Call.
Kayden’s eyes find mine briefly and my heart feels like it’s flatlining as gut-wrenching pain continues to slash through every fiber of my being. I can’t watch Kayden like this. I can’t.
At this rate, Kayden’s lifeless body might be strewn across the floor of that cage and the fight still won’t be called. It’s unfair. It’s unjust.
I’m not going to just stand here and let my man get hurt like this right in front of me.
And I’m certainly not going to let him pay for the mistake that led both of us here.
I’ve got to do something. Anything. I don’t know what, but all I do know is that I can’t just stand idly by and be a willing witness to a deadly beatdown. My feet are already propelling me forward as I push through the crowd, clawing my way to get to the front.
“What—?” Shock manifests in Brent’s expression as he watches me move toward the cage. “Sienna!”
I ignore him; continue pushing through.
“Get out of my way!” I yell desperately to the people in my way. “Move!”
The tide of the crowd moves to the momentum of the fight so I lean into it in hopes that the crowd will naturally propel me forward. And it does. The adrenaline swarming in my veins is the last driving force I need to launch myself to the front.
My eyes zip to the cage, blocking out every other sight.
The cage door is ajar and I climb the steps, narrowly dodging a couple of security guards on the way, and dive into the cage. I hear screams for me to get back down but I drown the voices out willingly because there’s nothing, not a fucking thing in this world that’s going to stand in the way of me stopping this fight.
I’m not going to let him die. I’m not going to let him die.
At some point, all my thoughts have shut off. My brain is no longer wired to my body. All I feel is my limbs moving toward Kayden, who’s losing consciousness on the ground.
Fear floods my entire body like a tsunami as I shield my body over his and lift an arm up before Jax can land another blow—
But I miss.
And he lands the blow anyway.
A right hook straight to my face.
The only feeling I remember is the feeling of falling. And an agonizing, soul-ripping cry, “Lucky!” as my head knocks against the concrete floor and my body falls limp to the ground.
Followed by all-consuming darkness.