Page 53 of Bound By Love
CHAPTERFORTY-THREE
Saxon caughtElyse before she hit the ground. Terror pulsed through every part of him; his heart shattered as blood spilled from her mouth, and she coughed out a clump.
Her beautiful, arctic blue eyes met his as her chocolate brown braid spilled over his hands. He couldn’t tell if it was a death blow, but it was close, she was suffering, and if he didn’t get her away from these things, she would die.
“No,” he said. “I’m not going to let this happen.”
He didn’t know how he could stop it as Savages surrounded them. As he tried to remove the stake from her back, they clawed at his arms and yanked at her, trying to rip them apart.
Saxon snapped and snarled while swinging his fists to hold them back. The color flooding his skin and the rush of power accompanying it coursed through his system, but there were far too many of them.
He wouldn’t let them take his mate from him. If they were going to die, then they would do so together.
Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out the remaining gun from his shoulder holster and fired at those closest to him. It drove some of them back as they sought to evade the wooden bullets, but the gun emptied too soon, and the Savages lunged back at them.
When one of them tried to pull her away, his muscles swelled with power as he carefully set Elyse on the ground. He leapt to his feet and planted himself over her as he took on anyone who would dare harm her.
He plunged his fist through the chest of one and tore out its heart as he grabbed the throat of another. He smashed the second Savage’s head into the one whose heart he’d crushed, shattering his skull.
More Savages pounced on him, and though the full extent of his demon ancestry flowed through him, there were too many for him to hold back. He felt like more monster than man as he somehow managed to hold his ground against them with nothing more than his bare hands.
He couldn’t see beyond the Savages tearing and beating at him. They were all he knew as they battered and stabbed him with blades and stakes until he had more holes than a net.
They hadn’t gotten his heart yet, and he didn’t feel any weakness from blood loss as his need to save Elyse propelled him onward. He couldn’t feel anything other than his increasing impulse to murder.
But the more they piled on him, the harder it became to fight as their weight dragged him downward. One of them managed to grab Elyse and pull her from between his feet.
Saxon lunged toward the Savage. He was slower with the ones clinging to his neck and stabbing him in the back, but he managed to pull her back.
A stake broke through his ribs and nicked the corner of his heart. With every beat, warm blood pooled in his chest cavity and squeezed his lungs until it became difficult to breathe.
Blood filled his mouth and spilled over his lips; weakness finally started seeping through him as his legs wobbled, but he retained enough strength to stay upright. He wouldn’t for much longer.
When another Savage jumped on his back, he almost went down as one of them burst into ash in his face. The debris momentarily blinded him, but when he blinked it free, he discovered Kadence using her weapon to slice and dice the Savages hanging from him.
When the main crush was either dead or retreating, she wiped away the blood and ash coating her face. “Are you okay?” Kadence’s white-blue eyes fell on Elyse’s blood-soaked body between his legs. “No!”
When she dropped to the ground beside Elyse, Saxon finally had the chance to notice the fight was waning. The bodies of dead Savages and Alliance members littered the ground, but Logan, Elena, Ronan, and other members of the Alliance worked to take out the few who remained.
Most of the Savages were either dead or had fled after the demons or away from them. But from what he could see, much of the Alliance had fallen too.
Is that Roland?
It was. The head of security, an older hunter who had survived longer than most hunter men and who mainly monitored their security systems, had insisted on being in on what he called the final battle.
And for him, it was.
Saxon had liked the gruff, no-nonsense man with a heart of gold. He shouldn’t have been here, but Saxon had no doubt the mostly retired hunter had taken more than his share of Savages with him before he died.
His gaze fell to Elyse, and with a sinking feeling in his blood-filled chest, he knelt at her side and rested his hand against the beautiful face of the only woman he’d ever loved.
CHAPTERFORTY-FOUR
“A lotof the others went into the tunnel after the demons,” Kadence said as she tore open Elyse’s shirt. “We have to help them.”
Kadence ripped Elyse’s shirt into pieces before wrapping one around her friend. She cinched the shirt and looked at Saxon as he knelt at Elyse’s side.
Pale and bleeding profusely, he looked about to fall apart as he cradled Elyse’s cheek. Kadence fought back a wave of anguish as she tore her attention away from them.
