AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Stella, you are in shock and losing blood. We have to get you to the hospital!” He tries to lift me from the ground and get me to stand, but my legs refuse to hold me and I crumble in his embrace.Shock, yes I must be in shock.It’s why I feel so cold, shivers taking over my body and making my teeth rattle.
“Jaxon…” His name leaves my lips, and dread fills me.Where is Jaxon?Is he still trapped inside with the rest of those madmen? My hand clutches the chest strap of the man in front of me tightly. “Where is Jaxon!” The words are ripped from my lips in a panicked scream.
“He’s still inside. He hasn’t made it out yet.” He tries once again to lift me, but this time fire fills me with renewed strength and I make it to my feet. Jaxon is still trapped inside with the men that want to kill him. I need to get to him. I can’t let them hurt him. I turn in his grasp and push away from him, stumbling on my feet a few steps.
“Stella! Where are you going? You’re hurt, we need to get you medical attention.” He tries to grab onto me again, but I push backward, sliding in River’s blood in my bare feet.No! No one is fucking stopping me from getting to Jaxon.There is no way I will allow them to take me away from here to get medical attention, while Jaxon is still trapped inside at the mercy of psychopaths.
My eyes catch on the glint of metal inches away from River’s hand, his sightless and empty eyes greeting me as I bend down and grab his gun, lifting it in my left hand and gripping it tightly. I point the gun at the man moving slowly towards me. “NO! I am going to get Jaxon, and if you try to stop me, I will blow your fucking brains out.” I don’t wait for his reply or to see if he will make a move. I turn and run back into the dark alley and the way I had escaped from.
“STELLA, WAIT!” I hear shouted behind me, but my blood is loud in my ears and adrenaline is rushing through my body. I make the dash quickly across the alley and back towards the emergency exit door that is still partially ajar. Grabbing the door, I slip through it, my feet sliding across the floor and almost making me fall.I have to get to Jaxon!The thought races over and over through my mind until it is a staccato beat along with the sound of my heart.
I move slowly through the backstage area, trying to get my ears to cooperate and stop ringing and my teeth to stop shattering. I don’t hear the sound of shooting, just screams of fear and panic bouncing off the walls. I approach the curtained area just as Clark’s man makes it to my back. He goes to grab onto me, but I point the gun at his head with a warning look.He will not stop me. If I have to shoot him, I fucking will. He raises his hands in a gesture of surrender, backing up a step. My eyes shift over the stage in front of me just as a shot rings out in the space and gets my attention. I move forward, and the guy slides in front of me with his gun drawn, ready to protect me. Over his large shoulder, I see Clark on the stage, his leg bleeding and drenching the ground around him as he slams his gun over and over into Kalista’s father’s face.
“Clark…” I don’t even know if words are leaving my lips, but panic fills me. Clark is shot and bleeding. Where the hell is Jaxon? Who is protecting Jaxon? The guy in front of me motions for me to step further into the curtained area and move slowly and silently towards the side of the stage and the steps leading back into the main room area. “Clark's bleeding out. I have to get him out of here. You need to come with me so I can keep you safe.” He whispers and grabs onto my right wrist, and shooting pain rises up my arm, over my shoulder and across my back. A harsh pained cry leaves my lips as I pull back from his grasp.
“For fuck sakes. Stella, we have to get you to safety!” He tries once again to grab onto me, but I move away from him, quickly pointing the gun at his neck. “Get Clark out of here. I have to find Jaxon.”
He looks like he’s going to try to force me to go with him towards Clark, but a shout catches his attention and mine. Clark is yelling Jaxon’s name frantically. I peek out from around the curtain and spy my husband looking ragged a few feet away from the stage.
A breath leaves my chest harshly at seeing him alive before me. It’s replaced quickly with cold fury as I watch Kalista slip up behind him, a gun in her grasp and pointed at the back of his neck. Jaxon stops cold in his forward movement, panic evident across his features even from the distance, I’m standing in. I grip my gun tighter and move slowly forward, using the curtain to once again disguise my movements and slip down the first couple of steps, crouching low and making my way to the first table, ducking below it and using the tablecloth to hide me. My shoulder aches with each of my movements, fire burning up and down my arm. I grit my teeth and keep moving forward. I need to get to Jaxon, nothing else matters.
I look back and watch as Clark’s man stares at me with horror and frustration before moving stealthily towards an injured Clark. He takes off his belt and wraps it tightly around Clark's leg, and drags him back into the curtained area and out of view. My attention is drawn back to Kalista and Jaxon. He’s egging her on, the ruthless idiot, as if he is trying to force her to shoot him. Their words echoing over the space clearly.
“You did this to yourself, Kalista. You tried to fight a war with a wolf, when you are nothing but a fucking worm. She is a queen, and you are dirt under her feet.” OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD. This man is an idiot, baiting her with his words, causing her to get angrier at him and lose control. Does he have a death wish? Does the fucker want to make me a widow after all? I swear if we make it out of this, I’m going to dick-punch him for all this shit.
I slip under the table next to me, my body meeting the dead one of a man on his side. Shock races through me at the acknowledgement that I knew him, he was a friend of my parents and always so kind to me, and now he’s needlessly dead under a table because of these assholes.
I’m going to end that fucking cunt once and for all. How dare she and her psycho father come in here and hurt all these people in an attempt to get to Jaxon and me. The recklessness and anguish of so many innocents suffering for her deranged perceived loss of my husband.I’m sure your actions against her didn’t fucking provoke her, huh?My mind screams at me. Well, I am as much to blame I guess, but not for killing innocents. That is all on them.Murderer…my mind whispers back and I shake my head trying once again to focus on Jaxon and Kalista’s conversation.
“I wanted you back…I wanted my life…back. She took everything from me!“ A harsh breath leaves Kalista’s lips as I watch from my position underneath the table. Tears are ugly black rivers down her face, making her look grotesque. “You are mine.”
Her words make even more rage bubble up inside of me. How fucking dare she say that! Jaxon doesn’t belong to her, he never has. He is and will always be mine.Only fucking mine!She has never understood that she would have never been enough for him. Not in this lifetime or the next. Jaxon has always needed a strong woman by his side. One that would challenge him and see that his legacy rises. She could have never offered him more than a warm cunt to satisfy his hunger. A hunger I stoke with the fire I create in him. Jaxon is an inferno, and I am his lighter fluid. He was put on this earth to be mine and I his. We are both made of the same thing, him and I. That eternal cloth that lets us push forward, be ruthless and demand more than this world ever bargained for. He is my beginning, and I am his eternal end.
“You are a cunt, and were a plaything, Kalista. Something pretty to stick my cock in. You were never going to be my queen. You are nothing to me. She is my everything, my heart and my soul. I will never return to you, you never had me. It was always her.”
His words, while reckless, given a mad woman is holding a gun on him, fill me with the strength I need to move away from the table and stand slowly. I raise my hand, clenching River’s gun tightly in my grasp and point it at the back of her blonde head. Jaxon’s eyes widen momentarily, catching mine, the look of desperation and fear on his features. Features that cause my heart to clench painfully, ones that I have grown to love with everything that I am.
In this moment, I see what our future could have been had fate been kinder. We could have grown an empire the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the time of theRoman Empire. We could have had children, a little girl running around with Jaxon’s mischievous smile and gray eyes, causing havoc on the male world around us. We could have grown old together, hand in hand, heading to the afterlife. In no world would I remain if the fates decided to take him. How could I when he is my heart and soul?A body cannot live without either.
44
Jaxon
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” Aristotle
Stella’seyesmeetminefrom such a close distance, but it might as well be miles. I watch as fear flashes across her blood-streaked face. Her arctic blue eyes are panicked, blood is soaked across the front of her jacket, and she bites hard down on her lip. She trembles before raising her arm in the air between us, pointing a gun at the back of Kalista’s head.
Kalista doesn’t realize that my predator of a wife is behind her, about to end her life as she ends mine. Pride fills me knowing that Stella is my ice queen who can defend herself against all comers. My wife never needed a prince on a white horse to save the day.She is her own savior.
I stare into the eyes that bring me so much pleasure and pain. The ones I would have never been prepared to live without, before shutting mine for what could be my final time. “MINE!” The battle cry rents the air with its fierceness. Two shots ring out loudly in the air, and I flinch waiting for the bullet to penetrate my brain and cause me to take my last breath.
Seconds stretch before us and then a body lands with its weight against mine, causing me to stumble backwards, before dropping down at my feet. My eyes fly open and meet two pools of blue mercury, a fire swirling from within them.
I watch as Stella drops the gun from her hand and sways before me. My gaze flies down to the body at my feet. Kalista is face down on the carpet, the gun still in her tight embrace, but the back of her head is completely blown away, and brain matter is splattered everywhere and dripping down mine and Stella’s faces. Kalista’s abdomen has a large splash of red appearing and soaking the fabric of her shirt.
My panicked eyes look around for where the second shot came from, prepared to put my body in front of Stella’s to protect her from any more shots being fired our way. My eyes meet the dark green eyes of Trig, one of Clark’s men a mere two feet away. It’s then that I realize he shot Kalista at the same time as Stella.Jesus fucking Christ, either one of them could have missed and I would be meeting my father no doubt in hell to hear all about my failings.
I tear my gaze away from his and back to Stella, whose arm is hanging limply at her side, her breathing rapid and her eyes dilated. “Mine!” She repeats over and over, her voice barely making it across the space between us. Her gaze stares down at Kalista, and her whole body shudders before me. I take a step forward, needing to wrap her in my arms and convince myself that she is real, that this is real.That we are both alive.
