Page 79 of Don't Bite the Botanist
Tressa stumbled when she pulled up short, her eyes wide with shock, and worry spread across her face. Ethan could only imagine what was running through her head, faced with a vision of her mate so obviously terrified of her.
Before he could shout at Tressa to kick his own ass, Renata shifted back into herself and blurred forward. “Your will is weak, Loloma,” she snarled, then launched a push kick into Tressa’s chest.
There was an unmistakable crack of bone, and Tressa was launched a dozen yards away, sand swirling up in the vacuum created by her sudden departure.
Something broke within Ethan as he watched his mate tumble down the beach. Something deep and primal howled its fury, and his analytical brain that was still stuck in processing mode gave way to neanderthal anger once more.
Ethan tore from the surf and flashed forward, heedless of danger, his vision awash in red. Snatching up a driftwood log as he ran, Ethan gripped the heavy wood in both hands as he bellowed his defiance and ripped loose a home run swing with every ounce of strength he could muster. When the log whiffed through the air as Renata simply bobbed beneath the blow, the inertia of the swing pulled Ethan off balance, and he toppled to the ground.
Instead of landing in the sand, though, an iron grip seized him by the belt at the small of his back. Pain exploded in his head as he was violently flung through the air to crash into Saiden who’d been stealthily approaching from behind Renata.
They hit the ground hard, and Saiden cried out in agony when his shoulder twisted at an odd angle, the jagged end of a fractured clavicletearing through the fabric of his shirt. Blood spurted out, spreading swiftly across his chest.
“She’s too fast,” he said, reaching up to press his hand to the gushing wound. “Even with my Gift, I can barely keep up.”
Ethan yanked his own shirt off, balled it up, and handed it to the wounded vamp.
Saiden let out a pained grunt as he popped the bone back inside and held the wad of fabric to the wound. His eyes darted from the downed Tressa over to Derrick, who was locked in his own dance with Renata. A dance he clearly wasn’t leading.
He shifted to look at Ethan. “I don’t think we can beat her.”
Chapter forty-one
Tressa
Tressa burned.
Fire ripped through her side where exploring fingers found a massive bruise blooming around the rough edges of a broken rib just peeking through her skin.
First, seeing a facsimile of her mate cringing in fear had been a red-hot brand to her soul, then seeing the real Ethan flung like a rag doll, his head and limbs snapping just as loosely, set bile churning in her throat and rage roiling in her mind.
She struggled through a few shallow inhales until she could finally breathe despite the excruciating pain threatening to double her over. The bleeding under her skin repaired itself within a moment or two, but the muscle and bones beneath would take several minutes or more, an eternity in a fight like this.
Not that she had any plans to surrender. Broken ribs were an absolute bitch to deal with, but at least she could still function, even if each panting breath felt like shards of glass grinding into her side, and each step forward felt like a tiny gremlin was slamming a pickaxe among said glass.
Tressa sealed away her physical agony, locking it deep in the vault of her mind that housed all the pains of a different variety. Her mate needed her, and she would not fail him.
Your will is weak, Loloma.
Renata was right, partially anyway. Loloma had been weak. She survived long enough to escape from Fiji, escape the sickness that had taken her mother, all so she could hunt down and end the pathetic existence of her father.
Not that she ever called him father. He was just the white man who’d shown up two and a half decades earlier, forced himself on her mother, then took off with the rest of the English sailors back to his ‘civilized’ life. When her mother finally revealed his name on her deathbed, Tressa made a promise that he would not be allowed to live for what he’d done.
She’d endured untold suffering to cross the ocean and hunt him down in that dingy brothel, only to discover she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t take a life in cold blood. She’d left him untouched and ran away. She’d been too weak, and she’d failed her mother.
But then Loloma died in a dark alley, and Tressa was born.
And the first thing she had done after waking up as a vampire was return to the brothel to murder her father, feasting on his blood until there was not a drop left in his body.
When she had seen what she’d done, had seen the women cowering in the corners and weeping softly as they waited for her to drain them as well, she’d vowed that she would never take a life again. Would never become the monster that lurked under her skin, craving retribution for all the evils of the world by any means necessary.
Until now.
I’m going to rip that bitch’s head off and toss it to those fish she cares so much about,Tressa thought as she rose to her feet. She would notrun away. She would not bury her darkness under a smile and a joke any longer. She would use it.
Seeing Ethan moving again as he climbed off Saiden lifted a weight from her shoulders, and fresh vitality surged through her.
She rushed forward to help Derrick right as he got knocked to the ground by Renata. “Glad you could join me,” he grumbled, sliding a short knife from his boot and springing to his feet. “Thought you were going to take a nap or something.”
