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God, she’s so fucking weird.

Her dark hair is piled up in a messy topknot as she chews on the end of a pencil before laughing at something Galina says.

My brain slowly replaces the pencil slipping between Bella’s lips with images of my own rock-hard cock.

Of her soft, full lips wrapping around my swollen head. Of her big blue eyes looking up at me as she begs me to fuck her throat, then getting on her knees on the bench and looking coyly over her shoulder as she flips up her skirt and tells me to make it hurt.

Fuck.

I grit my teeth as I reach down to cup my erection through my pants. I groan low as I squeeze, my eyes trained on Bella as I feel a drop of precum leak from my heavy cock.

Movement catches my eye at the side of St. Aldric’s Chapel.

What the fuck…

My hand instantly drops from my dick when I realize Father Hale is staring right at me, a vaguely ominous look etched on his face.

I stare back at him, unblinking.

The seconds tick by. Then, as if he didn’t just catch me palming my erection like a fucking deviant, his gaze drops back to his gardening as his muscled arms swing the gardening hoe above his head again.

What the fuck is this guy’s deal?

But again, he’s not my focus today. The muscled, oddly mysterious chaplain might not have much of a searchable past, but I’ve hunted down enough creeps and kid-diddlers to know one when I see one, and this guy isn’t that.

My attention shifts back to the bench just in time to see Bella and Galina stand, hug, and then go their separate ways.

She’s all smiles. All calm. All downright normal looking, which is honestly the biggest red flag I can imagine when it comes to Murder Muppet.

She’s up to something.

And I have to say, feeling like the prey for the first time is very odd sensation.

The jeers, cheers, catcalls and general anarchy of the spectators hit me like a drug.

It’s weird. I’ve never been the type of person who’s hungry for attention, and I generally hate being the center of it. But for some reason, when I step into a boxing ring and feel that savage collective energy of the crowd, I fucking love it.

Spectator fights feel like the last tie we have as a species to our primitive urges. It’s the one time we can shed thousands of years of society, order and rules and simply behave like the beasts we once were. No matter who you are—parent, schoolteacher, minister, doctor—you can just cut yourself free of it all and clamor like a savage for blood.

I truly believe that on a purely primal level, we all crave seeing blood spilled and life-force flowing freely from a wound. But most people learn early to bury that craving. Society abhors savagery, because savagery reminds us how close this whole fucking thing is to toppling over into complete anarchy.

But as much as we pretend otherwise, we’re all still animals. And deep down in our lizard brains, the sight and smell of blood being spilled gets us fucking hard.

Knightsblood already has official hockey, football, rugby, lacrosse, field hockey, soccer, and even wrestling teams. If you’re looking to do something athletic that also lets you smash the fuck out of your fellow students, you’ve got options.

But if you’re looking for even more than that, there’s the very unofficial boxing club, with Adrik Volkov, Bratva heir, resident campus cold-as-ice motherfucker and head of The Reckless, running the show.

Adrik and I have a strange relationship. Historically, the leaders of the four campus clubs have always been allies, since the clubs themselves are never meant to have anything more than a friendly rivalry between them.

But things are different this year. Part of that is Adrik’s brutal, calculating nature. A bigger part is the unspoken beef between him and Achilles Drakos, Bella’s cousin who heads up Para Bellum. When Adrik became head of the Reckless last fall, the already “most different from the others” club became even more insular and closed off. Wilder, more dangerous. More seeped in Bratva brutality and violence.

What an absolute shocker that my homicidal bride fits right in.

Adrik and I square off in boxing matches fairly frequently. But other than that, we have a mutual “live and let live” mentality.

No beef.

No need to be friends, either.