Kings of Anarchy (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #3) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,109

life, including the deaths of your loving family."

Tatum swung her fist at me with a savage brutality that sent pain bursting through my jaw and knocked me away from her as the taste of blood coated my tongue.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Kyan's voice interrupted us as he and Blake stepped through the front door and I stormed away from Tatum with a pure force of will. There were marks banding her throat where my fingers had dug in and the fury burning between us made it painfully clear that that hadn't been part of some fantasy we'd been playing out.

"I'm just explaining to our resident whore that not every member of the Night Keepers wants to fuck her," I sneered, the words burning on my tongue as my own cock taunted me with its hardness and called me out on my own bullshit from within my pants.

I'd expected Kyan to strike at me but when Blake's fist slammed into my gut, I was taken off guard, stumbling back against the wall just as Kyan leapt at me too.

I didn't even care that these were the most important men in the world to me as every rotten, ruined, tainted piece of me broke loose and I launched myself into the brawl with reckless abandon, bathing in the pain and relishing doling out more of it.

I only realised that Tatum was screaming at all of us to stop when someone hauled Blake off of me and I spotted Monroe standing there looking savage as he tried to piece together what was happening.

"What the fuck is this?" he bellowed as I shoved myself to my feet, my ribs aching in a way that said Kyan's fists had just set back the healing process. But I didn't give a fuck. I didn't give a fuck about anything anymore.

I shoved through the press of bodies surrounding me, snarling at all of them as they tried to speak or intercept me or talk about me like I wasn't fucking here and I kept going until I made it outside.

The rain was hammering down over the lake and my bare skin flared with goosebumps as I strode straight down the path that led away from The Temple and kept going towards the water.

The other Night Keepers and Tatum were yelling behind me, but I couldn't hear them over the feral beast that had laid siege to my mind.

I kept walking towards the lake at a fast pace, the hand that had gripped Tatum's throat clenching and unclenching. I could never lose control with her like that again. I'd just come so close to snapping with her and I knew in the depths of my dark and depraved being that if I ever did that there would be no salvation for me.

She was the one person I'd ever met who made me even consider being a better man than the twisted thing I'd been born to become. She made me question things I'd never questioned and made me care about hurting her like I'd never done for another soul. I couldn't let her see the very worst of me. I couldn't bear it if she did.

I strode straight down the bank and out into the freezing water as the rain slammed down on it and the wind howled all around me.

I couldn't feel any of it. My flesh was dead to the pain of the cold and the rage of the storm just like my heart was dead to normal human feelings of love and kindness. There was no saving me. But I could try my hardest not to corrupt her too thoroughly.

I didn't stop walking until the water lapped up over my waist and the shouts of the others and demands for me to return to them were stolen by the wind.

I didn't even suck in a breath before plunging my head beneath the water. I blew out what little air there was in my lungs as I pushed myself down to sit on the lakebed, the freezing water enveloping me and memories of the cold and the dark welcoming me in like an old friend.

I wasn't the kid who had been beaten. I wasn't even the kid who had been yelled at. My father was a cold and controlled man. I'd never even known him to raise his voice. If my behaviour was deemed unsuitable or my emotions too readable, he had simply and effectively punished me. The dark was where I'd learned