“You were supposed to keep us alive.” He draws his fist back, and it takes everything I have to stay rooted to the spot despite seeing it coming, my jaw exploding in pain a moment later. “This. Isn’t. Living!” Each word is punctuated by another hit and I take every one as my due. A warning rumble escapes him as he shoves me away from him. “Hit me!”
Spitting a mouthful of blood on the ground, I swipe the back of my hand over my mouth. “Oh, I plan to, but you said it yourself. This is my fault, right? So, this is what I deserve.” Straightening my spine, I hold his condemning gaze. “If you’re still miserable, then obviously I’m not suffering enough. If the one hundred and thirty-four people in Pack Varyn feel anything other than completely fulfilled in life, then certainly, I failed them.”
Taking a shallow breath, I shake my head incredulously with a humorless chuckle. “I was damned the moment I was born, given the ability to take on a fraction of other people’s pain. Afraction,Jake.And somewhere along the line, people decided that it was an alpha’s responsibility to take oneverything, that our lives meant nothing. That in the grand scheme of things, one person’s life was a worthy sacrifice, that we could pin all of our problems on them to deal with so the rest of you could be free. But your problems don’t magically disappear because you don’t have to look at them anymore;Ihave to deal with them.”
Without giving him a moment to prepare himself, I draw back my fist and return the favor, cracking one of his ribs and possibly my knuckles at the same time. “I spent my entire life trying to take care of people that didn’t give a shit if I was drowning and miserable because it was my ‘job’. And still, it wasn’t enough.”
Instinctively, I dodge his next two attacks, jumping a bit to make sure when I drive my fist into his cheek, it has some extra force behind it. “I’m never going to be enough because I’m notsupposedto be. I’m here to take the edge off when things are so bad that you’re on the verge of self-destructing, not to fix all of your problems for you.” Locking my foot behind his ankle, I jerk, sending him sprawling on his back with my next hit. “You’re the ones that gave up, that would rather sit around bitching and moaning than actually do something to change your situation. I tried foryearsto get any of you to give a damn, to find a reason worth fighting back against Wilder so you could have better lives.”
Straddling his chest, I return the favor and punctuate each word with another hit. “Your. Life. Doesn’t. Mean. More. Than. Mine.” Panting, I look down at the bruised and bloodied face of someone I considered a friend, forced to realize that it was only the luck of the draw that put us in each other’s paths. We fell into our roles without question, not because we were made for them, but because we thought we had no other choice. “I hate to say it, but I can see why Ash snapped.”
Not letting him get another word in edgewise, I drive my fist into his temple, knocking him out cold. Rising to my feet, I start to walk away, only for a nameless face in the crowd to call out, “It’s a fight to the death!”
Facing his general direction, I use my shirt to wipe the blood from my face. “He's already dead inside. But hopefully this was the wakeup call he needed to light a fire under his ass.”
Another calls, “You can’t walk away or it picks up when he’s conscious.”
Heading to where Sabrina’s seated on the steps to the cabin holding her breath, I call over my shoulder, “Show me where it says that. If Jake wants to challenge me again, that’s on him, but it’ll end the same way it did today, and as many times as it has to before he gets the fucking point through his thick skull. Same goes for the rest of you.”
Meeting Sabrina’s hypnotically coral gaze, a rush of conviction chases away the ache from my body. “The way we’ve always done things hasn’t done our kind any favors, so it’s time we stop sitting around bitching and moaning and actually do something to change it.”
Chapter 8
Sabrina
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Hissing in a sharpbreath, Hunter grumbles, “Seriously, wait until we get inside, will ya?”
Ignoring his protests, I take a seat on Damian’s lap beside him on the top step of the porch, holding the ice pack to Hunter’s bruised face. “A swollen black eye takes some of the heat out of the way you’re glaring at everyone, so if anything, I’msavingyour reputation, you big baby.”
Grumbling under his breath, he covers my hand, sliding it up an inch and keeping it trapped beneath his. “Not like they don’t already hate us anyway, I suppose.”
“I’m slapping ice on your face, not sucking you off in front of a crowd, calm down. What’s the big deal?”
His fingers flex on top of mine. “Seems like a dick move to rub it in their faces right now, is all.”
