his grip as he tried to choke me out.
I threw my fist into his side and then the other again and again as darkness drew in around my vision and he continued to squeeze with all of his strength, even as his ribs cracked beneath my blows.
Winter shrieked at him in fury and she suddenly appeared behind him, my hunting knife gripped in her hands as she drove it straight at his back. He twisted aside as he saw her coming and the blade sank into his shoulder before being ripped out of her grasp as he lurched away.
He tore it free but I was already rocking up to meet him, throwing my fist into his face so hard that I felt bones break beneath my knuckles and the knife fell from his hand. It clattered onto the stony floor somewhere but I didn’t even bother to look for it. That asshole had taken his fists to my girl. And I knew this hadn’t been the first time.
He was going to find out what it was like to have the shit kicked out of him by someone bigger and badder than he was before he died.
Farley roared a challenge, lunging towards me and I swung my forehead straight into the bridge of his nose to meet the attack.
Blood poured and he fell back, giving me the advantage I needed to take him. I dove on top of him and threw my fists into his face, his chest, his gut, everywhere and anywhere that I could to deliver as much pain to him as I could manage in retaliation for what he’d done.
I saw red, the blood, my fury, her pain, all of it etched into my flesh and burning with this desperate need to destroy the men who’d tried to destroy her. But they’d failed. They couldn’t have her and I was ready to lay out their corpses at the feet of my hungry goddess.
I didn’t even realise he’d fallen still until Winter’s hand landed on my shoulder.
I looked up at her with a feral snarl on my lips, but instead of fear or horror, I found wonder and desire written into her beautiful features.
My breaths were laboured and my heart rate unrelenting as I sat before her, straddling her enemy, bathed in his blood and all I wanted in that moment was to drag her into my arms and kiss her until I took all of her pain away for good.
The knife was in her hand again and she offered it to me, her intentions clear. Farley was dead beneath me, I could tell, but she didn’t want any what-ifs haunting her. I drove the blade into his heart with one swift blow to seal his fate without question.
I stood again, panting as I looked around, expecting the fight to continue but finding it over instead.
“Shit,” I cursed as I looked over to where Duke had been sprawled out on the ground and seeing nothing more than a puddle of blood where he’d been. A trail of it led away from us, between the rows of cannabis plants towards the darkened mine shaft I’d used to get here.
My gaze moved to Farley and I realised he’d escaped this world too easily too. My fists and fury sweeping him away before he’d had a real chance to suffer. Fuckers got off easy.
“Are you okay, baby doll?” I growled, turning to her instead, the only one here who truly mattered anyway.
She was staring at me with her lips parted, those green eyes wide with an emotion I couldn’t quite place.
I moved towards her, reaching out before realising my hands were stained with blood and lowering my arm again.
But she closed the space between us anyway, launching herself at me and leaping into my arms.
I wrapped my own arms around her in return, crushing her against my chest and inhaling the sweet scent of her hair as I swore to myself that I’d never let her go again. It hurt to hold her like that, to know I’d come so fucking close to losing her for good, to letting her down in the worst of ways. We lingered there in each other’s arms, gripping one another so tightly that it seemed as though we might fuse ourselves into one being if we didn’t stop soon.
“You’re safe now,” I promised her. “I’ve got you.”
She squeezed me so hard that I could feel it right down to my soul, the salty tracks of her