Page 100 of My Unhinged Alphas
“Knox—”
“I know.”
He turns us hard into a side alley so tight I almost slam into the wall. My shoulder scrapes brick. Pain flashes and vanishes under the adrenaline.
One of the men catches up first.
Knox wheels around so fast it barely looks human. One second he’s running, the next he’s driving his fist into the guy’s throat. The man folds with a horrible sound, and Knox grabs him, throws him into the wall, then down to the ground in one smooth movement like gravity itself is on his side.
Another one is already there. He comes in from the left, and Knox meets him head-on, brutal and efficient. A punch, an elbow, a knee. The man stumbles back and Knox finishes it with the butt of the gun across the side of his head.
I’m pressed against the wall, shaking so hard I can barely feel my hands.
“Move,” Knox says.
But before I can, a third man barrels in. This one is bigger, faster. He gets closer than the others, close enough that I see the glint of something metal in his hand as he swings for Knox.
Knox twists, but not fast enough. He’s about to get hit.
My gaze drops and I see it.
His gun.
Not in his hand anymore. It must have fallen in the struggle, slid across the wet concrete almost to my feet.
I don’t think. I grab it.
It’s heavier than I expect. Cold. Wrong in my hand. My pulse is a scream inside my body.
The man is still going for Knox.
I lift the gun with both hands the way I’ve seen people do in movies, which is ridiculous because this is not a movie and I have no idea what I’m doing and my arms are shaking and I can barely breathe.
I pull the trigger.
The sound is enormous.
The recoil nearly tears the gun out of my hands.
The man jerks sideways with a shout, grabbing his shoulder as blood blooms dark against his jacket.
For one frozen second, nobody moves.
Then everything slams back into motion. The wounded man stumbles, swearing, and Knox is on him immediately, disarming him, driving him into the wall and down. Hard. Final.
My whole body is vibrating.
The gun is still in my hands. I stare at it, then at Knox, then at the man on the ground clutching his shoulder, and my breath comes in short, ragged bursts that don’t feel like enough air.
“Oh my God,” I say, but it barely comes out.
Knox turns to me. There’s blood on his knuckles. His chest is rising hard. His eyes flick to the gun in my hands, then to the man I hit, then back to me.
And for the first time since I met him, he actually looks surprised.
“You hit him,” he says.
My mouth opens. Closes. “I shot him.”
