pulling him away from a college girl he was preparing to catcall, and strode toward me.
Fear shot through me. But I was a member of Hell’s Ankhor. I represented my club now. And I wasn’t going to turn and run from these assholes.
“Well, hey there,” Ryder drawled with a sneer. I was near a classroom building, near a side door—tucked away just enough from most of the roving eyes of the passing students hurrying to their next class. “Just the kid I was hoping to see.”
They were here for me? My adrenaline spiked even higher, but I steeled my expression and didn’t let it show.
The emails. They’d been the ones sending them.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I should’ve trusted my gut. I should’ve said something. I’d spent so much of my life doubting myself, my own perceptions, and now that doubt was about to get me killed.
“What the fuck are you doing on campus?” I asked sharply. “You’re banned from the territory.”
Baxter laughed, surprised at my tone. Ryder made a face that was almost impressed. “Right, right. Banned. The Hell’s Ankhor territory is pretty big, though. Where the hell are we supposed to go?”
“You should’ve thought of that before you betrayed your club,” I said.
Trip joined Baxter in laughing.
Ryder glanced around, and seeing no one watching us, grabbed me by the front of my shirt and shoved me further away from the open space, into the shadowed alley next to the building. “Yeah? And what are you gonna do about it? Gonna show me some club justice, huh?”
He shoved me up against the brick wall, and the sudden impact of the brick against my back made my self-control break. Ryder’s scowling, cruel face was so close to mine, his cigarette-scented breath washing over me—fear made my blood run cold as I cringed away. I pushed ineffectively at his hand on my shirt.
“Fuck off,” I said in a wavering voice. “Get the fuck out of my face. Blade’s gonna know about this.”
“Oh, you gotta run to your daddy Blade for protection, huh?” Ryder snapped. “You pathetic narc. Can’t even stand up for your club yourself, huh?”
Even though I knew it wasn’t true—even though I’d proven it wasn’t true, more than once—Ryder’s words still cut through me like a knife. Suddenly I was a scrawny, helpless teenager again, cowering away from my brothers’ threats. Helpless. Outnumbered. Better to just hold my breath and bear the abuse in hopes that it’d end a little sooner.
But.
I didn’t have to be that scared, lonely kid anymore. I’d grown past that. Hell’s Ankhor had given me the strength, and the skills to prove to them—and to myself—that I was more than that.
So I gripped both his forearms in my hands, intentionally meek, so he wouldn’t suspect anything. Then, when his grip tightened, I dug my thumbs hard into the flesh between the tendons as I simultaneously hooked my foot around his ankle and kicked hard to the side.
Ryder barked in shock and pain, releasing my shirt as his feet flew out from under him—he went down hard, sideways, slamming his hip and shoulder into the pavement.
Baxter only laughed harder at Ryder’s expense. Trip, though—Trip rolled his eyes, like he was over the whole affair. He charged forward, and with Ryder still lying prone between us, punched me hard across the face.
Only a long history of getting punched in the face saved me from snapping my head back into the brick wall behind me. My ears rang from the shock of it, and the taste of copper bloomed on my tongue. I’d bitten it. The guys were saying something, but I couldn’t quite hear—it was as if my brain was suddenly full of static. Dizzy. A low throb that I knew would soon be a familiar pain.
“Hey!” a man’s voice called. “What the fuck is going on? Did you just punch him?”
Ryder scrambled to his feet, suddenly pale.
“I’m calling the cops!” The man was halfway outside of the door—he was a young professor scrambling to get his phone out of his pocket.
“This isn’t over, Kid,” Ryder hissed. “I saw you in Junee with the dear old vee-pee yesterday. I’m gonna fucking come for you. Seems pretty efficient to take out the Hell’s Ankhor golden boy and Dante’s little pet all at once. So both clubs will know they can’t fuck with me and get away with it.”
Baxter spit at my feet. “Come on, guys.”
They bolted around the back of the building. Once they were gone, the professor ran to