Page 205 of Glutton for Punishment

“Angel.” The voice is a slow, wet scrape against the back of my neck. “What are you doing out of your room?”

Every muscle in my body goes rigid at the sound of Vex’s voice.

Before I can react, he spins me hard into the wooden wall, his body filling the space in front of me.

“Of course you’d be at the center of this mess,” he breathes, the words poison against my ear. “A little chaos to match my own. You belong with me.”

He licks up the side of my face and I buck against him, trying to push him away.

“I’d rather die,” I spit out. I hold my mental shields tightly as I feel him forcing against them.

“You’ll break, eventually.” His smile widens. “I always get what I want.”

I look up into his eyes as my power hums to life beneath my skin.

“Kneel.”

He laughs.

Then his body folds. One knee slams into the ground. The second follows. Shock and pure disbelief explode across his face.

His hands claw at the earth. Struggling.

“Stay.”

I step around him and pull the gun from his grip, pressing it into the bloody tattoo on his face.

“It isn’t fun when someone’s in your mind, is it?”

Hatred twists his face as everything he has inflicted on others reflects at him, just like what happened with Teeth.

A large rumble, sounding like a stampede, moves closer as people scream and yell over the gunfire.

“Run! Kael’s dead.”

Another shout, “He killed him! I saw it.”

The words snag my attention, and I look towards the commotion to see a large swath of fighters running toward the tree line edging the property.

I turn only for a second, but a second is enough. When I look back… Vex is gone.

“Damn it!” The battlefield swallows my shouts. But it doesn’t matter. The retreat has already started. Enemy forces are pulling back in every direction.

“Arwen, over here!”

I run to a panicked Atticus and into his embrace. Thank the universe he is safe.

“They’re saying Kael’s dead,” I say, gripping his face in my hands. “People are fleeing. We need to find Maddox and Brix.”

We sprint toward the last pocket of fighting, breaking cover only once—long enough to crouch behind a marble statue hedged in on both sides—before checking our weapons and pushing through the final stretch.

I find Maddox in the chaos, and something in my chest unclenches. He’s standing. He’s whole. The enemies remaining are badly outnumbered, and more are peeling off every minute, escaping into the dark at the edges of the estate.

The fight is ending.

His head snaps up, the bond humming between us like a plucked wire. The tension locked in his shoulders dissolves as he closes the space between us in three strides, his boots crunching on gravel. A hand, streaked with dirt and blood, comes up to cradle my jaw, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. is mouth finds mine with the force of a man who has just cheated death—a raw, claiming thing that leaves my lips stinging.

“I’m never leaving your side again.” The intensity in his voice sends a prickle of unease through me. I know protective Maddox. He likely means ‘literally’ never leaving my side…