Page 185 of The Bonding Games: Part 2

His eyes blow wide, but again, they zip back to Ezla. That rightful level of fear, his knowledge that she’s in control, is the only reason I don’t ruin Tate and Ezla’s fun by crushing his windpipe right this second. “I-I-I—”

“Let’s begin,” Ezla cuts him off. “We shall start with the tongue. I have been itching to remove it my entire life.” My eyes shift to her, and my blood heats for an entirely new reason as she rises up to flick her own tongue over my earlobe. Tracking her every move while keeping a firm hold on Peter, I watch as she eyes him with predatory intent. “You simply never shut up. Every single Bonding Game, every time I came to see you when I did not want to . . .” A pause as she tilts her head. “You know he would have killed you if he had known. Joseph could be so oblivious despite his previous intelligence and cunning, and I would not tell him of such incidents. I do not need others to deal with such diseases. I would not have informed him even if he were the type of father a happy family holds.”

Everyone here hangs on to her every word. She’s made brief comments about the Showmaster, but my brothers and I haven’t heard this amount of information regarding this situation before.

“And yet he actually liked you. Other than me, you were probably the only one. And me killing you would only bring his wrath down on me. I did not . . .” Ezla trails off, but in my mind, I hear, I did not want the pain I knew Joseph would bring down on me in punishment. Other times, on the other hand, when I thought ending it all would be better, I considered that maybe this was the method that would finally be the solution. My throat feels tight and thick inside in an instant. And yet a bigger part of me would always tell me it wouldn’t be enough, that Joseph would only learn the proper techniques and carve out time to replace Peter’s role as my massage therapist, and I would rather anyone on this planet touch me than him.

“Exactly!” the Showmaster almost shrieks in response to Ezla’s spoken-aloud words. “You must honour his memory! He would not want—”

“Why does everyone around here seem to lose their minds when they know their death is approaching?”

Ezla’s words are followed by a curved dagger sinking into Peter’s side.

When he screams, Tate snatches up his jaw, holding his mouth wide open for Ezla to grab his tongue. Despite my complete agreement to this, I don’t think anyone can blame me when I grimace as she slices the organ right off, because that sight is absolutely disgusting.

I still consider myself a reasonable man, someone who fights for what’s right, who’s sensible, kind, and caring. But I also think everyone has a darker side, and I’ll never be afraid to dole out punishments for anyone in my Bonded group. They’re my family, and I’ll go to the very extremes for them. And I can admit that my sense of right and wrong is definitely a bit skewed since meeting Ezla, but I can’t bring myself to care much about that. I’m still me, just the version of myself who’s madly in love with the most ruthless woman on the planet. One who’d do anything for her, whose feelings won’t change one bit unless it’s to grow, just like my brothers’.

Grip tightening on Peter’s collar when Ezla steps back for a moment, as if she’d sensed my intent, I draw my fist back before slamming it into his face, letting the momentum throw him into the back of the couch. Then, chest rising and falling too fast with my anger, I step back to allow my madly grinning brother and cruelly smirking Bonded to go to town.

***

Tiger and Alby gape at the display while me and Cooper stand here with our arms crossed stoically. Cooper’s still not too fond of violence, but like me, things are very different when it comes to Ezla, and I know he’s feeling satisfaction despite the unavoidable queasiness he’s also got to be experiencing. I mean, I think the only people in this room—or better yet, on earth—who can be completely unaffected by the mess of organs all over the place are Ezla and Tate.

At some point, Tiger’s lifted his hand to cover Alby’s eyes, but my quietest brother seems as fascinated as my loudest and is peeking out from behind it to watch Ezla work. They’re both slack-jawed, eyes triple their usual size as she tosses a severed arm up in the air before spinning at the speed of light and bringing her curved Avri dagger down on the wrist to slice the hand cleanly off. She’s grinning nonstop, and maybe this should scare me, but I’m just as transfixed as them. She just looks so goddamn happy. I can’t even bring myself to care about the mess we’ll have to clean up once she and Tate are finished—it’s been weeks because we needed Peter to keep being the Showmaster for long enough that his disappearance wouldn’t be too suspicious as well as to reassure the globe with someone familiar and loveable, but this time, we’ll have to do the clean-up and convincing ourselves:

Peter was openly adored by near enough everyone in Techtis, and another huge death so soon after the first would shake things about too much in the city for our liking. Even if views from the rest of Techta may differ considering a quiet dislike of The Bonding Games and most things to do with it wasn’t too rare outside of the city, most of whom we need to keep appeased without causing complete madness with Ezla’s rise to power as we make so many big changes are the Techtis Council workers. So the story will be that he’d like to explore with the new freedom Ezla is granting; those from inside Techta are allowed to leave whenever, and while most are choosing to stay considering this region is the most advanced on the planet in almost every aspect, some have already left, wanting to start a new life completely detached from this place despite the promises we’ve made and the clear changes already.

And so people will undoubtably be sad about the man whose face they never saw but whose voice has been an integral part of The Bonding Games since its beginning, but they won’t be thrown into complete disorder. With the bold and energetic personality his voice displayed, I think his travelling would be completely believable, even with the abruptness of his departure. Even better, no one would expect to see his face, wouldn’t even know if they did, since only we and members of The Council ever knew it.

“Fuck, baby, look at you go. So damn hot,” Tate rumbles, and he’s matching Ezla with his wild expression and the crimson splattered all over him from head to toe. Tossing the . . . Was that a foot or Peter’s other hand . . . ? It’s too disfigured to be certain, but whatever that is, it goes flying over his shoulder as he starts his prowl towards our Bonded. “So fucking mine . . . ours. This is one of the best moments I’ve ever lived. I dreamed of slaughtering people with you.” My brows tick up a fraction. “Then fucking you in the mess we made together.” Licking his lips as he stops before her, his ravenous grey eyes rake over every inch of her. “Would you like that, Havoc, baby?”

Ezla hums, and my body reacts without hesitation, dismissing the coppery tang of blood coating the room, the gore all around, as I harden to steel beneath the crotch of my Avri suit. Her attention’s not even on me, and yet she might as well have just lit a match and shoved it directly into my veins. “I would,” she purrs. “I am going to ride you.”

His hungry sound rumbling through the room, Tate throws himself at her.

She meets him halfway, and I can hear their laboured breaths, each groan and moan from them as they tear at each other’s suits. I’ve never seen two people act more frantically, more animalistically, with so little control, and it’s not long at all before they’re both completely bare and Ezla’s shoving him down onto the blood-drenched couch.

“Oh, wow,” Tiger comments, finally regaining his voice only for a moment after his rare but understandable speechlessness when she sinks right down onto Tate and his palms press to her back to crush their bodies together, no space between them.

“Fuck, that’s it. Ride my dick, Havoc. Own me.” His hands leave red smudges all over Ezla’s milky-smooth skin, and I mentally add that to the list of things to do later: clean up my Bonded and pamper her until she’s sleeping like a baby in our shared bed.

A breathy moan leaving her, Ezla doesn’t hold back, and I watch in something like fascination as she and Tate come together like wild animals. She’s bouncing on top of him, and he’s pumping his hips up into her with absolutely no restraint, eyes rolling back in his head, his deep sounds of pleasure filling up the room.

Ezla’s nails dig into his skin, and I can’t make the marks out clearly through all the smeared blood already covering them from their red hands, but by Tate’s delirious groaned curse, I’m pretty sure she’s broken skin. And that’s confirmed when his own fingers dig into her back and he growls out, “Fuck yes, Havoc. Make me bleed for you. I want your marks all over me.”

“Should—should we start to clean up?” Alby’s whispered words sound strangled.

My chin dips silently. I’m too captivated by the sight of Ezla to do much more than that at the moment.

Clearing his throat, Cooper mutters a distracted, “Right,” before tearing his eyes away from the sight and heading off to look for cleaning supplies.

“But I want to watch!” Tiger whisper-hisses.

“You can watch while you work,” I say, grip clenching around the device in my hand. It’s what the Neutral guards use to turn bodies to ash, and it wouldn’t have been hard to get it any way we played it with Ezla now the ruler of everything in Techta, but again, with us trying to keep suspicions about Peter’s disappearance to a minimum, Ezla requested one to bring to the Avri labs to see if they could also do with an update, which was a pretty solid excuse with everything going on, and so here we are. And it doesn’t feel too great to hold one of these eliminators when it’s turned so many innocent people’s bodies to nothing, but it offers the cleanest results here, and Peter definitely wasn’t innocent.

Tiger pouts. “Fine.”

Alby’s already moving, following the direction Cooper went in, but his exit is extremely slow, and he keeps stealing hasty glances over his shoulder as Tate grunts over and over again, his climax evidently approaching in time with our Bonded’s. Trying to focus, I glance around the room, and while I head towards the first piece of Peter’s body that I find, Ezla’s cry and Tate’s shout of pleasure and following chants of “mine, mine, mine, mine” and “ours, ours, ours, ours” tell me they’ve both reached that peak.