Hank mirrored my shrug and gave me a coy, creepy grin. “You’re a tough girl, yeah? Wonder how much a tough girl can bleed before she dies. ”
The bruise on my sternum flared at his words, reminding me how much extra pain hurt in my new condition.
I got up onto the sidewalk so my height nearly equaled Hank’s and adjusted the angle of the gun accordingly. One of the first rules of weapon handling is to not point a gun unless you’re planning to fire it. If Hank took one step closer, I was prepared to go the extra mile and give him a street tracheotomy.
“Hank, you don’t want to do something stupid. ” Of course he did. The guy was a fucking dumbass. His entire life hinged around doing moronic shit. “If you think Callum will—”
“Fuck Callum,” he snapped. “Do you think I care what that asshole thinks?”
The grip of my gun felt cold against my palm. “You should. ”
“Why?” He stepped closer, and my certainty over shooting him wavered. I wish I hadn’t already reloaded the gun after firing, so I could give him a meaningful warning sound. Instead I jabbed the weapon into the air to remind him of its presence, like trying to say, I brought a gun to this werewolf fight.
“He’s already going to be pissed about you abandoning the pack. ” It didn’t matter that Hank was a useless pack member and had been outwardly racist towards one of his pack mates. Callum didn’t have to like the guy to want respect from him. There was no greater act of disrespect than abandoning your king. “But how do you think he’ll respond if he knows you went out of your way to hurt a member of his family?”
Keep talking. One of the boys will get free in time…just keep talking.
“You think he cares about you?” Hank scoffed. “You’re deluded. You know he called on your king, knowing it was your wedding? He did that on purpose. ”
I’d spent many a night wondering about that. I’d tried long and hard to understand why Callum would call that meeting, and more so why Lucas had gone. At the time I thought I’d been betrayed by them both, but now I wasn’t sure. Callum had made it clear he didn’t approve of my marrying Lucas from the get-go. I thought we’d passed all his tests when I agreed to the wolf binding ceremony, but clearly Callum hadn’t accepted Lucas’s commitment to me.
And he’d been right to question it.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, though I didn’t think I managed to sound convincing.
“Guess we’ll find out how much he cares. ”
Instinct told me to duck, and I went with my gut. I dropped to the ground and covered my head, protecting most of myself when Hank collided with me. Problem was it gave him the right angle to knock me down flat with him on top of me. If I’d been on top, I might have been able to roll away and make a run for it, or at least get an easy shot off.
With Hank on top I was pinned between his legs, my g
un trapped under his knee while he whaled on me. I’d been in fights before, and I’d taken hits before, but nothing quite like this. The first punch landed on my left cheek, grinding my skull across the pavement and making my whole head ring like a church bell.
Just when I thought I might come back from the pain, he drove a punch to my right cheek. My eyes shut instinctively, blinking away tears. I felt certain if he hit me again something would burst, my eye would pop or my nose. But when he did hit me again everything remained intact. There was fresh new agony, spreading like ants under my skin, making unseen parts of me burn and tingle, but I didn’t die. I kept taking it.
I gasped, and the mere act of taking a breath made my lips crack. Blood was pooling over my face, a hot liquid presence trying to sneak into my eyes and blind me.
Fight back.
I twisted, struggling under the weight of him. Yes, he was a werewolf, but he was also a small man. And sure, my superstrength was gone, but I’d been trained in hand-to-hand combat by a human. Keaty would have seen this and been appalled.
If strength fails, rely on skill. Now it was his voice in my head, calm and even.
Skill. I didn’t feel too skillful right then, but I tried to shut out the pain. Every inch of my face felt broken. What would Keaty do? It took a moment of struggling to block out the ringing in my ears, but once I had, I knew the answer.
I kneed Hank hard in the back. Ideally I would have gone for the groin, but since he was straddling my chest I didn’t have the appropriate angle to hit him. He pitched forward, stopping his assault to brace himself on both hands. I opened my eyes once he stopped hitting me and watched him come closer. When he was in the right position, I jerked upwards and slammed my face into his.
I was already in pain, so the new explosion of searing white-hot agony barely registered. He’d smashed my damn face up badly enough, one more bruise wasn’t going to matter much.
Hank grabbed his own head and fell off me, giving me a chance to scramble to my feet. That was the first rule of street fighting—stay off the ground. If you couldn’t stay off the ground, you had to find a way to get back up as fast as possible. Once I was at a good angle, I did kick Hank in the junk. It wasn’t the best move from a fighting standpoint, but I was mad. I kicked him once, twice, and by the third time he’d curled himself into a ball and was making a pathetic noise.
So I kicked him again.
“Let’s see how much you can bleed before you die,” I wheezed, my voice hardly over a whisper but still projecting the anger I felt. My throat screamed in protest as I spoke.
I kicked him twice more before remembering there was a gun in my hand. When I rolled him onto his back, I made sure he was looking at me so he could see the weapon.
“You fucked with the wrong goddamn princess today. ”