Page 51 of The Bonding Games: Part 2

It makes me realise just how much that mask has dropped over the weeks, how drastically things had changed around the time of the Ball for this sight to be so debilitating. Her absence is a gaping hole within me, and I just want my Vengeance back.

And her iris . . . that beautiful coffee brown . . .

What happened to your eye, Vengeance?

I want to ask her, but I know that would be worse than zero help here, so I stay silent, letting Scotty continue to do the talking.

His fingers curl in a beckoning motion, and he steps closer to the bed. “Come on, Love. I just want to check your eye. I need to make sure you’re okay.”

Head cocking again, she considers him.

Then she begins to prowl towards him.

A soft huff of breath leaves Scotty, his shoulders loosening marginally. “Good girl,” he murmurs softly, moving even closer.

Thinning my eyes, I study Ezla carefully—her advance on all fours, each calculated movement of her body, the intensity of those blackish-crimson eyes on him . . . The closer she gets to him, the more unsettled I become, insides shifting, all of me on edge.

“Scotty . . .” I warn, tone low.

And the moment his gaze leaves her, just for a second, to communicate with me—she pounces.

Shouts ring out sharply as Ezla jumps on him, and they crash to the floor. I dive over to them in a heartbeat, abandoning any notions of boxing her in with Tate.

“Don’t hurt her, Cooper!” Scotty yells out as we both attempt to get Ezla off him. Then he curses as a particularly brutal blow from her slams his head back, where it smacks into the unforgiving taalk.

“I’m not going to fucking hurt her! I’m trying to stop her from hurting you!” I fire back, managing to grasp Ezla’s shoulders before the wind’s knocked out of me as I’m tossed to the ground.

“Up we get, Havoc.” Tate tries his luck next, attempting to grab her underarms, Tiger rushing into the fray with him, while Alby’s frozen in place, drenched in undiluted horror as he takes in the scene. But her foot drags a choking noise from him before he can dodge the kick aimed for his chest, and Tiger’s sprawled out on the floor with a pained cry just as I’ve managed to get back to my feet.

Rolling, Scotty somehow manages to pin Ezla beneath him, but it’s not for long, and we’re not doing too well when we’re trying so hard to restrain rather than harm her. He’s wincing from the bruising blow her knee delivered to his stomach when she springs up and lunges Tate’s way, the whack! whack! whack! of rapid hits connecting sounding out as he goes on the defence, blocking her merciless punches as fast as possible. I’ve raced forwards, and she swivels around at breakneck speed to stop me from grabbing her, zipping out of mine and Tate’s reach before our fingers can even graze her.

“Ez! Ezzy, stop!” Tiger cries, shooting after me with Alby, who’s back in motion but so overwhelmed he appears as if he might pass out any second now. I don’t register why their panic increases tenfold in the next second until I realise where Ezla’s heading: to the chair in the corner where we’ve neatly piled her belongings.

Including her unguarded armoury sticks.

Fuck. She gets even one of them and we’re dead.

“VENGEANCE!” I roar, but the savage strength of it doesn’t completely overwhelm the utter terror in there too. I’m less scared about any devastating damage being done to me than I am of having to truly fight back if she gets her hands on a weapon. It’s hard enough as it is to make myself fight her during training.

There’s so much noise, the ruckus so loud, that I almost miss Alby’s whimpered, “E-Ezla.” But I couldn’t possibly when his slimmer frame shoves past all of us and he makes it to her first, arms banding around her crushingly.

The force sends them both crashing down before Ezla can reach the chair, and Alby grits his teeth, tears streaming down his face as his lip splits under her answering lethal swing. But still, his hold doesn’t relent, and she lets out her first sound to tell me and my brothers that our Bonded is actually in there, that she can at least feel something, even if it’s just rage—her snarl isn’t exactly inviting, but she might as well have just collared me and tugged on the leash with the way my entire being demands to be closer to hers.

“Someone grab her armoury sticks!” Scotty’s voice rises over the commotion, and Tiger attempts to leap after the two of them, but with lightning-fast reflexes, Ezla whips her arm out and catches his ankle, and he crashes to the ground with a yelp.

“What about the chains like in Game 1?!” Alby calls out desperately, shielding his face from more blows that come his way with Vengeance’s attention returning to him before she’s forced to deal with me too when I crowd her with Tate and Scotty. Whipping up, we’re then dancing around each other, and there’s too much going on, not a moment I can spare to even make an attempt with Alby’s suggestion.

I manage to catch Ezla’s leg on a roundhouse kick that would have otherwise knocked my lights out, but that doesn’t stop her other one from leaving the floor as she uses Tate’s thick arms that had been reaching for her as support to flip her body at an angle before using her grip on the beast of a man and the momentum to drag him right down to the ground. Scotty only just manages to avoid her leg swinging out and tripping him up when she lands a split second later without pausing her movements.

“Vengeance,” I try again in the brief pause that follows as Tate gets back up, attempting to right my breathing as she finally stops for a moment when she takes note of the fact that we’ve managed to create a circle around her. Tiger’s hands are clenched around her armoury sticks that he managed to get with her so occupied with the rest of us while he recovered. “Vengeance, I don’t want to fight you. None of us want to fight you . . . But we will if you don’t stop.” Or at least, we’ll act like we’re going to, because just the thought of actively trying to harm her makes me sick to my stomach. Then an idea hits me, and I say without sparing too much time to think it through, “You trained us, Ezla. We know how to beat you now.”

Every inch of her turns to stone.

Scotty gives me a warning look, but he lets me do this, understanding hitting him fast when fury roars to life, just for a blip in time, in the bond. HC’s in there somewhere. She’s simply been smothered by a single command: kill. A command that allows her to feel nothing but that, focus on nothing but that.

But not if I piss her off enough.

“No one can beat me.”