Chapter 21 I Can Kill For The Woman I Love
Rayne's POV
Prince Kaelen set down his own glass slowly.
"You know," he said, leaning back with the relaxed posture of someone choosing their words carefully, "I'll give you this....you sat through all of that without breaking." He smiled.
"Almost without breaking." His eyes dropped briefly, pointedly, to where my hand still rested in my lap.
"Though I suppose even the most disciplined man has his limits. Especially when the woman doing it already knows exactly where those limits are."
A few people near the table went very still. Prince Kaelen continued, his tone pleasant and unhurried.
"Makes one wonder whether it was actually strength that kept you in that chair," he tilted his head, "or whether you simply had no choice."
I said nothing. I took another slow sip, set my glass down with a soft click, and looked at Kaelen with the expression of a man who has already decided how this ends and is simply waiting for the other person to catch up.
Kaelen smiled wider. "Nothing to say?"
"Then maybe the girls were right to—"
I stood. I didn't raise my voice. I simply came to my full height in one fluid motion.
Kaelen held my gaze for a moment, then smiled and pushed back his chair.
"Outside then," he said. "More room."
Kaelen moved first not toward me but away from me. One second he was at the table, the next the chair was empty.
The air where he had been standing snapped like a whip, loud enough that the nearest guests jumped back, and the chandelier above swung hard as two wine glasses hit the floor and broke.
The doors at the far end of the hall were still moving when I went after him. Same sound. Same speed. Gone.
The crowd scrambled toward the windows and doorways.
Outside, the courtyard exploded. Kaelen hit me first..a straight punch that cracked the air like a thunderclap and drove me backward three full steps, my heel splitting the stone tile beneath me clean.
Kaelen rolled his neck. "There. That's better than sitting in a chair letting women climb on you."
I said nothing. Kaelen launched off the nearest pillar the stone shattering under his foot and came down with both knees driving for my chest.
I sidestepped and Kaelen hit the ground where I had been standing, sending cracks across six feet of courtyard tile in every direction.
"You're fast," Kaelen said, straightening. "I'll give you that."
"Stop talking," I said.
We collided hard. I drove my elbow into Kaelen's ribs with a crack, but he twisted with it and caught me across the temple with a backhand that sent me sideways into the nearest oak tree.
The trunk split on impact, the upper half toppling into the garden with a crash that shook the ground beneath my feet.
I stepped out of the wreckage, bark falling off my shoulders.
"She deserves better than you," Kaelen said, circling. "You know that, don't you? A woman like Brea...wasted on a man who sits still while other women throw themselves at him. When this is done, I'm taking her from you. Not challenging her. Taking her."
"Last warning," I said.
"I'm not finished." Kaelen vaulted off the low wall and came down hard.
I caught both feet and hurled him sideways into the second oak tree. He went through it entirely, wood exploding around him, and came up in a low crouch with his shoulder hanging wrong.
He rolled it back into place without flinching.
Kaelen came from behind fast, faster than before and locked his arm around my throat with both hands, pulling back with every ounce of vampire strength he possessed. My feet left the ground instantly.
"Yield," Kaelen snarled through his teeth, muscles cording along his forearms as he tightened the choke. "Yield and I'll make it quick. Don't worry, Rayne...I will take Brea from you. I will fuck your wife very well. Better than you ever could. She'll beg for it once she sees what a weak, still little man you really are."
The crowd had gone completely rigid Kaelen's own men frozen mid-breath, hands hovering near weapons they didn't dare draw. Someone near the back whimpered.
Then I heard her. One word, small and broken.
"Rayne—"
My hand shot sideways.
The kinetic pull surged out of me like a whipcrack. Fifteen feet away the silver handrail tore free from its stone housing with a sound like a gunshot, bolts pinging off the tiles as the entire length of metal ripped across the gap and slapped into my palm.
In the same motion I drove it back over my shoulder and slammed it flat against Kaelen's forearm.
His whole body seized, a strangled scream ripping out of him as the silver burned through cloth and skin. Every muscle locked rigid. His arms spasmed open, and I dropped back to my feet.
I turned.
And hit Kaelen once across the jaw—the full, unheld force of everything I had been holding back since the moment he first spoke her name.
A single punch that lifted him clean off the ground and sent him skipping across the stone before he slammed into the far wall and slid down it in a boneless heap.
He did not get up. The courtyard was absolutely silent.
I stood with the silver rail still in my hand, chest rising and falling. I looked at Kaelen for a long moment, then dropped it. It rang against the stone and went still.
I walked back toward the hall. The crowd parted without a sound.
I came through the doorway and found her immediately. Whatever was still written across her face the fear, not yet gone.
I held her gaze and let her see that I was standing.
I picked up my glass. Looked at the remaining challengers at the table.
"Who's next?"
Nobody moved. Not a breath. Not a shift of weight. Every challenger at that table found something very interesting to look at that wasn't my face.
I set my glass down. "Then the engagement stands."
I turned and found Brea in the crowd. I crossed to her without looking at anyone else, took her hand in mine, and walked.
Just steady and certain, the crowd peeling back on either side as we moved through the hall, every gaze burning into our backs.
I didn't look at any of them. At the edge of my vision I caught my mother's face. She was smiling small and quiet and deeply satisfied.
The murmur that rippled through the room behind us was not something I stayed to hear.
I pushed through the outer doors and kept walking, Brea's hand still in mine, into the open air of the courtyard.
"Where are you taking me?"
I didn't answer. I just bent, scooped her up, and launched.
The ground was gone in under a second. We shot upward hard and fast, the courtyard shrinking below us, the roof of the estate dropping away, the cold air hitting us full force as I drove us higher and angled toward the treeline. The woods stretched out ahead, dark and wide, and I went straight for them.
Brea's POV
The ground disappeared and my stomach went with it.
One second I was walking. The next I was in his arms and we had launched off the courtyard so hard the stone cracked beneath where we had been standing.
Then we were airborne sailing up and forward in a wide brutal arc, the estate shrinking behind us, the wind hitting my face so hard I couldn't get a breath in edgewise.
"Rayne" The word came out strangled.
I looked down. Bad idea. The ground was already far below us, rushing past, and then the treeline swallowed us whole branches whipping past on both sides as he landed once, hard, on a thick limb and launched off it again without breaking pace.
The impact jolted through my whole body and then we were airborne again, higher, the next tree coming up fast.
"Rayne, how high are we...."
"Don't look down," he said.
Too late. The next branch came up fast. And the next. Each landing a single savage beat before he was off again, driving us deeper into the woods, the canopy blurring around us.
"Are we going through that one.."
"Yes."
"That is not—"
We crashed through a gap in the branches and it ripped straight out of me—loud, raw, completely involuntary.
"AHHHHHH!" The sound tore out of my throat and dissolved into the dark and I didn't even care because my heart had left my body somewhere back over the courtyard and hadn't caught up yet.
I grabbed his shirt with both fists and pressed my face into his chest and just stayed there, shaking, the woods thundering past around us.
I had no idea where he was taking me. I had no idea how far we had come.
All I knew was the ground was somewhere far below us and the only thing I had was him, and right now that was a very complicated feeling to sit with.
But it was the best feeling of my life.