Page 2 of Property of Scar

By the time the crowd’s roar peaks, I’m already moving. There’s no warning for it, no visible tell. One second there’s distance between us, and the next, I’m closing it in a blur of speed that most of them won’t even register properly, my shoulder driving straight into his chest with enough force to lift him off his feet and slam the air out of his lungs.

The impact lands deep and solid.

His body folds around it as the breath leaves him in a violent rush, and a line of blood sprays from his mouth as he chokes on it, the sound wet. He is shocked—nothing like the confidence he wore a moment ago, and I don’t give him time to recover.

My fist drives upward into his jaw, the uppercut snapping his head back with a crack that echoes through the pit, and this time, the blood comes in a spray, teeth shattering under the force. One breaks loose entirely, spinning out across the concrete in a sharp, white arc before skidding to a stop near the edge of the cage.

The crowd loses whatever restraint it had left.

They’re screaming, begging for it.

I taste the air again, copper, heat, and the sharp edge of my own restraint, and instead of giving in to it, I finish it.

He stumbles coming out of the hit, off-balance for half a second too long. I snatch his wrist before he can recover and yank him forward hard enough to drag a grunt out of him. His boots skid across the concrete while his shoulder twists, and his arm bends where it shouldn’t.

Then I crank.

A crack rips through the pit loud enough to cut through the screaming crowd. His body jerks violently, knees buckling while the cage erupts around us. His forearm folds under the pressure with a wet, splintering crack that cuts clean through the chaos of the crowd. His scream tears free of him again, raw and animal, his body trying to compensate, to fight, to survive on instinct alone.

It’s already too late.

The reaction hits a second later.

It starts as a surge, a ripple through the bodies pressed against the cage, voices rising over one another in a fractured roar as the shift in control becomes undeniable. Then something in it sharpens, the noise narrowing into something more focused and deliberate, until the sound begins to take shape.

“SCAR!”

Someone bellows my name, the sound raw.

“SCAR… SCAR… SCAR!”

It catches fast.

My name spreads through the pit, voices locking together, rhythm forming as the chant builds, louder and heavier with every repetition, fists slamming against the chain-link in time with it. The metal rattles under the impact, a harsh, relentless noise that turns the entire space into something primal.

They’re not just watching anymore.

They’re calling for it.

Calling for me.

The shifter hears it too.

I see it in his eyes, that final flicker of understanding moving into something closer to panic as the crowd turns, as the energy of the room settles firmly on one side of the cage. His broken arm hangs useless, already swelling grotesquely, his body trying and failing to recover, to find footing in a fight that has already moved past him.

Blood spills from his mouth in uneven bursts as he drags in a breath that doesn’t come clean.

The scent hits again.

Stronger this time… thicker.

It drags at something deep and instinctive, something that wants to abandon restraint entirely and sink teeth into the source of it, to end this in a way that has nothing to do with fists or the rules of the pit.

“Scar… Scar… Scar!”

The chant pounds around me, inside me, feeding the moment, feeding the violence, feeding the hunger.

I shut it all out.