Page 215 of My Unhinged Alphas
“Vale!” I shout.
Vale has just gotten her hands free when the man lunges for her.
Chapter 37
Lena
The tiesaround my wrists give all at once. Blood rushes back into my hands in a painful throb.
And then I look behind Vale, and time stops.
My kidnapper beelines toward Vale so fast that for one frozen second, I don’t understand what I’m seeing.
Vale has only just cut my hands free. He’s still bent toward me, one hand on the ropes, his body turned partly away from the fight, when the man breaks from Knox and Havoc and lunges straight for us.
Everything happens at once after that.
Havoc yells to catch our attention. Vale turns at the last second, catching the man's wrist before he can grab Lena, and the two of them slam into the side of her chair hard enough to knock it crooked.
"Vale!"
In the struggle, the man's hand closes around the knife on the floor near my feet.
Vale is trying to hold him off with one bad wrist and a body that has already taken too much. Knox and Havoc are coming at them from behind, but the man is between them and us, fightingwith the kind of desperation that makes him stronger for a few seconds than he has any right to be.
My ankles are still tied. My hands are not.
I lean down, fingers closing around the handle of the knife.
Vale sees me and his face changes immediately. “Lena, no.”
But the man is still on him.
I don’t want Vale hurt. Not again. Not because of me.
So I raise the knife and call out, “Hey!”
It works. The man turns toward my voice.
I only hold the knife out because I need him to look at me, need him to stop pressing Vale back, need to give the others one second to reach him.
But he’s already moving. He twists toward me too fast, still carried by the force of the fight, and before I understand what’s happening, he drives himself onto the blade in my hand.
The impact jars through both my arms.
His face changes, rage breaking into surprise, then pain. For one terrible moment we’re staring directly at each other, close enough that I can see the exact second he realizes what has happened.
Then Knox yanks him backward.
The knife tears free of my grip with him. I gasp and fall back against the chair, my bound ankles useless beneath me, while Vale catches my shoulder and steadies me before I hit the floor.
The man staggers once, one hand going to his side.
Blood spreads between his fingers.
I stare at him, unable to move, unable to make sense of the fact that he’s bleeding because of something I did when I had not meant to do anything except make him look away.
“I didn’t…” My voice comes out thin. “I wasn’t trying to…”
