Page 201 of Glutton for Punishment

Something changes in the air. Vibration runs through my bones like my insides have been asleep and are stretching awake. The static under my skin surges as my powers flood me.

They’re here.

My bonded.

Relief flashes through me, knocking the breath from my lungs. Followed immediately by concern.

If my bonded are here, that means they are in danger, and I am not sitting here waiting to be found like a damsel in distress.

My gaze moves to the handcuffs above my head. The chains clink. I focus on the metal links between the two cuffs. I’ve never felt more of my power or my control.

The chaos inside me surges forward, hungry, and I send it directly over the links. The metal disappears with a clean snap as my wrists drop free.

I breathe through the sensation of blood filling my arms as I shake them out. Then I remove each cuff with a thought. Another pulse of power and the restraints fall away one by one with a snap.

The last one releases my ankle, and I step forward, stumbling into the table. My shoulders roll as I test the tension, while my eyes scan the room.

I take a carving knife from the counter and slide it into my boot, then pull a gun off the wall. At the door, I pause, listen, and ease it open an inch. The hall is empty.

I slip out and move along the wall, stopping at each corner before rounding it. Deeper into the building, then up a set of stairs. The noise climbs with me—gunfire, shouts, explosions.

Fear rises, and I push it down. My bonded aren’t fragile. They can take care of themselves. I know that in my bones, even here in the middle of all this violence.

I keep moving through the empty hallways until I come up on a small group of Vex’s gang. I pull back before they see me and peer around the edge. Three men are clustered at the end of the hall, distracted. My power stirs beneath my skin. I could take them out…

One shifts. “Wait, did you hear—”

I push my chaos power under their feet instead of at them.

A violent rupture opens under them as my power devours the floor, and all three of them drop with startled shouts swallowed by the sudden collapse.

No time to waste.

I vault over the broken floor without looking down again and push forward, the sound of distant combat pulling me like a current. The next set of stairs is just ahead, and I take them two at a time, my hand skimming the wall for balance.

By the time I reach the top, my breathing is a little ragged.

I see more jogging in your future, Arwen.

The hallway opens into a large, windowed overlook, and for a split second I just stand there, frozen by what I see outside.

The violence stretches across the grounds like something out of a nightmare.

And the person at the center of it—

Maddox.

My heart stutters at the sight of him fighting.

He takes cover behind the column of a gazebo, avoiding the gunfire. My breath catches as someone rips a massive tree trunk from the ground and throws the heavy stump through the air toward him.

I almost scream, but Maddox turns just in time.

And catches it.

Both hands snap around it mid-flight, stopping it dead. The impact should have shattered bone. It should have thrown him backward.

Instead, the force of it becomes a visible thing. It coils around him like a dust devil, wrapping and compressing before he pulls it inward, absorbing it. Then he runs toward the attacker, using the trunk as a shield as he drives his fist into the man with enough force that the body launches backward several feet before slamming into the side of the building and collapsing.