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Devin cringed and flinched as shouting dissolved into roars of challenge. Even from this distance, she could hear bodies hitting walls, the crash of anything not bolted down ripped apart. It seemed to go on forever, never winding down, never seeming to slack off as it had with Beau and Rey during their last brawl. Whoever was out there had no intentions of stopping.
The timbre of one particular rage filled shout shot straight through her. Slamming around her skull, it clawed at her spine until Devin shivered. An unconscious step taken forward, Jackson’s hand driving her back snagged her attention for the briefest moment. When a bellow spiraled into a scream of pain, nothing could stop her.
Devin ducked beneath Jackson’s arm, bulldozing her way through the tight knot of dancers to the door. Amid their screams of denial, she wrenched the locked door open and stumbled out into the hall. Choking on the scents of smoke and darkness, she didn’t pause. Feet turning her towards the garbled yelling, she fell into a sprint. Dodging grabbing hands with ease, men she didn’t recognize swarmed the narrow space.
She bit back the instinctual scream, clenching her teeth over the suffocating terror as she ricocheted from one side to the other in her efforts to evade. She was small, far weaker than anyone else even now, but she was fast. Feet pounding against the forever sticky floor, Devin burst from the dark hall onto the dance floor. She couldn’t make sense of it all for a moment, though some instinct knew where to take her. Across the dance floor littered with broken glass and twisted lights, dodging more men in dark clothing similar enough to be a uniform. Past the bar with its lighted glass shelves in ruin and the stench of all the alcohol they once held seeping across the wood planks.
There.
Rey standing over a man on his back, face a bloodied ruin, though he spoke with measured tones. She heard none of it. Not the shouted warnings or the threatening growls. Devin skidded to a stop a few feet away, eyes wide as fear spiraled into something else altogether. A riptide of emotions she didn’t want to name as something vicious and blood soaked raised its head within her heart. It tinged her vision in shades of old blood as she took a step forward.
Rey’s hand came up, the one not bent at odd angles against his chest. A staying palm held out to Devin as he faced the Alpha scrambling to his feet. The blue-eyed monster growled, reaching for that other perfect arm. His intent clear enough as he hissed some question at Rey.
“If you think this ends any other way than your head on a pike, you’re dead wrong,” Rey said, calm as a summer day, though his dark gaze flicked to Devin as he tracked her slow step forward.
“You’re going to get him killed,” Beau growled at her ear, pitching his voice for her ears alone. His hand landed on her shoulder, giving her a glimpse of gruesome tears across his knuckles, the flesh of his fingers hanging in gory ribbons.
“Let go of me,” Devin said through a growl of her own, eyes never leaving Rey.
“Shut up and be a good bitch or I’ll make sure you wished you were dead,” Beau whispered, and if not for the evil brutality, they could have been the words shared between lovers for all the rich promise they held.
“Too late.”
“Don’t do anything stu—”
“No,” Devin screamed and lurched forward, somehow breaking Beau’s strangling grip on her shoulder as she rushed towards Rey’s side. Knees slamming into the hard planks, she slid at the last to throw herself around his waist. Protecting such vital organs as the other male threw his head back with a sound of rage personified.
Devin waited for the crushing blow. Beyond surprised when it didn’t come. A sickening crunch followed by the deafening rapid-fire pops of guns unloading made her think she had been though. Until Rey’s wheezing breaths became too loud in her ears to hear anything else as she wrapped her body tighter around his when he thought to dislodge her. Something within her chest eased at the low rumble of his voice against her wet cheek.
“What were you thinking,” Rey demanded, the heat of his question diminished as he gathered her closer. Nose buried at her neck, he cradled Devin’s trembling body.
“Wasn’t really,” Devin mumbled through numb lips, unable to believe what had just happened.
“You stupid—”
“What did I tell you, Beau,” Rey yelled, managing to be intimidating through the wet gurgle of blood and with a quivering female climbing up him.
Ignoring them all, Devin’s fingers picked apart the rips in his clothing, gasping and whining at every deep cut and oozing wound littering his body. Tears streaked her cheeks in scalding rivulets as she ghosted her fingertips over the swollen, raw flesh of his cheek.
How could she be so upset? Devin swayed as Rey guided her to stand, though she still reached out to help him as he rose from the floor. He’d crush her if he fell, but she acted as if she could take on the weight of the world. Arm tight around his lower back, she followed his slow pace to a chair that somehow made it through the demolition.
“I’ll call Marco,” Beau ground out as he pulled his cellphone from his pocket. The cracked screen came to life, letting him stab out the number. He barked orders at the milling crowd of bruised and broken men to clean up as he waited for someone to pick up on the other end of the line.
“I’m okay, sweetheart,” Rey murmured against Devin’s hair, neither caring that he smeared fresh blood all over her as he held her close.
“No, you’re not.” She sniffled back the inexplicable tears, curling tighter around his torso. A protective shield as large bodies crowded around them.
“I am, but I need you to go with Jackson right now. He’s going to take you upstairs.”
“No!”
“Yes, sweetheart, because if Beau touches you again, I don’t think I can stop myself.” Rey dragged in a slow breath, arm clenching tight around Devin’s back. “I’m right behind you.”
“No,” Devin said through a quiet growl, though she took a careful step back. Eyeing the men she’d seen around the club, her gaze settled on Jackson. The only face she trusted in all this mayhem. Chin lifting, she issued the airy command, acting as if she had some authority. “Help me get him upstairs.”
Jackson glanced at Rey the once, startled when Devin snarled at him, repeating her demand on a savage sound that had no right to be so vicious coming from something so small. With Devin reprimanding the Beta and Alpha both, they made their way to the elevator. Rey grunted, indicating his pocket when Devin went to press the button for the second floor. After fishing the ring from his pocket, Jackson took the keys from Devin’s slack fingers and inserted one into the slot below the round buttons. The elevator didn’t go up, but down.
Devin wanted to be surprised, but nothing about her time at Wicked had been normal, or as expected. Shoulders twitching in a shrug, she held Rey steady as Jackson went through the open doors to flip switches, flooding the space with stark white light.
