Mallory reaches the shelter, and I exhale in relief. What the hell is she doing here? I can’t believe anyone at the Sorority would let her strike off alone, and she’s too smart to have snuck off.

I should have gone back to the Sorority before heading to the shelter, so I could tell her my plan. So I could take Sebastian up on his offer. But I was worried that if I took that detour, Varian would beat me here, and that would negate my home field advantage. I can’t afford to let him get the drop on me.

Yet now the damn supply drop has complicated everything. It’ll bring a steady stream of men right through the field, stomping all over and around my shelter. Turning my long-awaited revenge killing into a public brawl anyone could jump into.

Mallory shouldn’t be here. She was supposed to stay safe at the Sorority. Varian was never supposed to get near her.

Maybe he won’t show.

That feels like a strange thing to hope for, after waiting for this moment for so long. But nothing—not even avenging Norah—is worth putting Mallory in danger.

There are eight or nine men already around the massive crate when I get to it, and I grab the smallest by the back of his shirt and jerk him away to make room for myself. He spins on me, fist already flying before he has a chance to focus on my face. To realize his mistake.

He tries to pull his punch at the last minute, and it glances off my chin.

I pound into his gut until he hits the dirt, then I aim one finger at him, hoping he understands that I’m telling him to stay down. Hoping the others will learn from his error.

The man crawls off, dragging his bag through the dirt, and I turn back to the crate and elbow aside the closest men. Then I start shoving things into my bag. Speed is the key to a good haul. Speed, and a willingness to barrel through anyone who gets in your way.

I’ve never made it to a drop this quickly. Most of this stuff is long gone by the time I find the crate, and I usually wind up having to take food from men who’re on their way back from the drop. That second-hand shopping method has always provided enough food to let me skip the next couple of crates.

But today, there’s a feast. Which is a fucking blessing, because I can’t bring Mallory with me to another drop, and I can’t leave her alone. I can’t even stand to think about her down in the shelter by herself, probably terrified that someone will—

I glance back, to see how thick the flow of prisoners is. There’ll probably be around a hundred of them, over the course of the day, and I won’t be able to go back to Mallory until—

There are two men standing in the middle of the field, staring at the ground. Right where my shelter is.

Fuck.

I throw my pack over my shoulder and abandon the crate to the men piling up behind me. They’re all too desperate to get at the supplies to give a shit why I’m leaving, so no one turns to look.

There are several other men heading away from the crate across the field in various directions, but they’re too eager to avoid getting robbed to care where I’m going, as long as I’m not coming after them.

I force myself to walk rather than breaking into a run, because that would draw attention to me. But I’m still half a field away when the men pull open the hatch and descend into the shelter. My shelter.

My home.

At least, that’s what it’s felt like since Mallory moved in.

I approach the shelter as casually as possible, then I set my bag on the ground and listen, trying to get a feel for what I’m in for.

“Okay,” Mallory says, and her voice shakes on those two little syllables. “If I do, will you leave afterward? Please?”

Fuck no. They’re not going to touch her. I pull open the hatch and jump down without bothering with the ladder. The impact of my shoes on the concrete jars every joint in my body.

Two men spin to face me, startled. One has Mallory pinned against the wall, his filthy boots trampling all over my mattress. Before they can recover from surprise, I grab the other one and slam his head into the wall.

“Barrett?” the first one says. “What the fuck? You’re going to have to wait your turn.” His name is Jason something or other. He was champion a few seasons before me, according to the talk. I have no idea who his friend is, nor do I give a shit.

I point to the open hatch, silently demanding they leave, though I know that won’t solve our problems. If they tell the others about Mallory, we’ll have a riot on our hands. If Varian spots her, a riot will be the least of our problems.

My best bet is to kill them in here, then wait until the crowd around the crate has disbursed before I drag them into the woods to rot.

“Barrett…” Mallory pleads, and I give her a calm nod. I’m here. Nothing is going to happen to her.

“Oh shit,” Jason says, while his friend gets to his feet, blood dripping down his temple. “She’s yours? This is your place?”

I nod, because it’s too difficult to explain to him without words that Mallory doesn’t belong to anyone. But that I will rip his head from his neck if he doesn’t let go of her this second.

“Okay, let’s talk about this,” he says, without letting go of Mallory. Then he laughs. “Sorry. Poor choice of words. Because he can’t talk,” he adds, for his friend’s benefit.

“We’ll leave her with you, if you let us have a go at her first. That work for you?” he asks his friend.

The friend nods.

I point at the hatch again. Get. The fuck. Out.

“Think it through, man,” Jason says. “You start a ruckus down here, and everyone out there will come running. You won’t be able to fight us all off. They’ll fucking rip her to shreds, fighting over her. Or, you can let us each have a go, and we’ll keep your sweet little secret. Right, Neal?”

The other guy—Neal—nods. “Yeah, man. One good nut’s enough to buy my silence.” He glances at Mallory and seems to be assessing her, while a bulge develops in his pants. “How do you wanna do this? One at each end, or you wanna take turns? ‘Cause I’d take her mouth, no problem.” He rubs at his crotch, and I punch him in the side of the face.

His jaw cracks. Neal stumbles sideways, and his shoulder slams into the wall.

“That’s gonna cost you,” he snaps as he stands up, clutching his chin. “I’m about to ring the fucking dinner bell on your bitch.”

“Wait!” Mallory cries, her voice barely over a whisper. “I’ll do it. Whatever you want. Just take what you want, and go. Okay?”

I give her a fierce head shake.

Jason turns to his friend. “You good with that? Maybe Barrett can stand lookout?”

“What’s he going to do if he sees someone coming? Knock three times on the hatch?” Neal snorts. “What happened to him, anyway? Why can’t he talk?”

“Just do whatever you’re going to do and get out,” Mallory snaps. She turns to me. “Go up the ladder, Barrett.” Her eyes are pleading with me not to watch this.

I shake my head again.

“This is my choice,” she insists through clenched teeth.

“Whatever you have to tell yourself, honey,” Neal says as he stalks toward her. The right side of his jaw is already purple and swollen. The bone’s definitely cracked. Tomorrow he won’t be able to move it.

Screw her choice. This isn’t a choice. It’s a fucking crime.

Jason pushes her onto her knees, and my jaw clenches so hard I can hear the bones creak. Then—

“They’re coming!” Mallory shouts. There’s a bruise on her cheek and blood dripping from her scalp.

I blink at her, trying to understand what just happened.

“Barrett! We have to go!”

Jason lies at her feet, his eyes practically protruding from their sockets. The strap of her leather satchel is wrapped loosely around his neck, layered over the deep marks it’s cut into his skin.

“Barrett, come on! Get your stuff!” Mallory snatches her bag from around the corpse’s head, then she shoves her things back into it, from where they clearly fell out during the fight.

What fight?

“You don’t remember, do you? You blacked out?”

I nod, and the concern behind her eyes seems to carry the weight of the entire planet.

Still trying to put the pieces together, I step back and trip over something, and I go down hard on my ass. Neal. I’ve tripped over Neal. His head has been beaten into the concrete floor so hard that his skull has shattered and chunks of gray matter are leaking out, along with blood.

Fuck. I did this.

Fuck yeah, I did this. I only wish I could remember beating that bastard’s head into pulp. Though based on the ache in my own jaw, he got in at least one good shot of his own.

“Barrett!” Mallory shoves the extra backpack at me, the one that used to be Cody’s, then she starts climbing the ladder with her satchel over one shoulder. “They’re coming!”

So they are. I can hear feet pounding the ground. Voices shouting. Evidently the slaughter I can’t remember unleashing was anything but quiet. And if Mallory screamed, they’ll all know there’s a woman here.

I hoist her higher up the ladder, and I wish I could tell her not to wait for me. To just run. But no number of grunts and inarticulate syllables will make that clear, so as soon as my torso clears the top of the shelter, I point at the woods. There’s no one in that direction, that I can see. The crowd racing toward us is coming from the crate, trailing abandoned supplies in its wake.

They definitely know there’s a woman.

“I’m not leaving you!” Mallory shouts as I pull myself through the hatch.

I take her by the shoulders, hard enough to get her attention. Then I wiggle my fingers like water flowing and point at the woods.

Run. Hide near the stream. I’ll find you.

I can’t say it, but she hears it. She’s spent nearly all her time the past few weeks riding my cock and learning my silent language. Bless her fucked up little heart.

I turn her by the shoulders and give her a swat on the ass. And when she takes off running, I turn to confront the mob, hoping to at least slow them down. To give her a chance to hide.

The crowd pivots almost as one to follow her, and I race to intercede, grabbing arms and punching kidneys as I cut a swath through them. I trip, and kick and shove. Anything to knock them off their feet. To slow them down. Half of them are too small and slow to have been gladiators, and one hundred percent of these fuckers are much more interested in getting to Mallory than fighting with me. Which makes this less like a brawl and more like a game of bowling, where I am the ball.

The pins keep getting back up, but every fall costs them a few seconds, and every second counts.

Mallory runs for the woods with everything she has, and I’m glad I’ve been insisting that she exercise. I can’t stop the mob forever. I might not be able to stop some of them at all, so she’s going to have to hide when she hears them coming, even if she hasn’t made it to the stream yet. She knows how to be quiet. Mallory knows how to be everything a man could possibly require her to be.

Those are her survival skills.

About two-thirds of the men give up before they get halfway across the field, not because I’m still throwing punches, but because they know their odds of getting near Mallory are slim, considering the numbers. One by one, they make their way back to the crate, picking up dropped supplies on the way, determined to make out with a lion’s share of the loot while the other wolves exhaust themselves chasing my little rabbit.

Of the remaining third, a handful of men have veered toward the shelter, settling for looting my shit, since they clearly aren’t going to get near my girl. Fuck ‘em. None of that stuff is more important than Mallory.

By the time she disappears through the tree line, there are six men still chasing her. One is slower than the others, and I overtake him easily. He’s average size, but a determined little prick. I tackle him, shove his face into the dirt, and punch the back of his head until he passes out.

Ignoring the pain in my hand—I may have cracked a knuckle—I get up and start running again. There are five left, but my lungs are burning and I’m running out of steam. Then the man in the lead looks back to see how many men he still has to outrun.

Varian. My pulse spikes. Adrenaline hits me like a shot straight to the heart. I glance at the other men still running with their backs to me, and suddenly I realize they’re all familiar, even from the back. They’re all with Varian, and they’re still dressed like they were this morning. They haven’t given up because they know who Mallory is.

Varian skids to a stop and makes a round-em-up gesture with one hand, spinning his index finger in the air. “Grab this asshole. This is about to get interesting.”

I turn, and too late I realize what’s happened. He recognized me all along. He waited for me to take out the others, then he and his men slowed down so I could catch up to them.

The first man, Filip, grabs for my arm, trying to pull me to a stop. Leon is right behind him. They’re the only surviving members of Varian’s original crew—the other two men I failed to kill for Norah. The two other men are new, and one of them is big. Arena big. Looks like Varian recruited a gladiator after Warren turned him down.

They form a semi-circle around me, ready to pounce the moment I make a move. Or the moment Varian gives the word. He stands just behind them, out of my reach, arms crossed over his chest. Glaring at me. Up close, I can see that his hair is longer now, though still pale and greasy. Prison life has put some muscle on him, but he’s still smaller than most his men. Weaker too, no doubt. That’s why he has them.

“Barrett.” He spits my name out like profanity. The same way I would say his name, if I could. “I thought that must be your calling card, this morning. Have you been out here the whole time, living in a hole in the ground?”

As if I’m the one who’s been hiding. I killed fifteen men stronger and faster than Varian in the ring. One-on-one, he doesn’t stand a chance against me. Which is why this won’t be one-on-one.

“Guys, do you know who this is?” He’s talking to his men now, and I decide to let him hold this kangaroo court, because the longer he talks, the farther away Mallory will get. The more time she’ll have to hide.

“Barrett Oliver,” the biggest of his men—the former gladiator—says. “Champ from two seasons ago. I hear the fucker pulled one guy’s head clean off.”

Not exactly. According to the coroner’s voiceover during the background reel, it was an internal decapitation. A move I can only repeat under ideal circumstances, but I’m willing to give it a try, if Varian comes any closer.

“Yeah, well, before that, he was Barrett Oliver, foot soldier. My foot soldier.”

He’s leaving out the part where he promoted me to hitman. The part where I spent three long years as Varian Roys’s personal assassin. Even though I didn’t want the fucking job. The offer Varian made me was to kill or be killed.

“You guys remember him, right Filip? Leon? This fucker tried to take us out.”

Actually, I never actually tried to kill either of them. There was no way to, after I shot Varian, because they were both arrested on the scene for discharging unregistered weapons in an attempt to get to me. I got nabbed a week later.

“Yeah, well I can’t really blame him, after what happened to his wife. What was her name again, Barrett? Nina? Nikki?”

“Norah,” Leon says.

“That’s it. Norah. Hot little piece of ass. Barrett got to watch us run a train on his pretty little wife, right before we put a bullet in her brain.”

There’s a sound in my head like the grinding of steel against stone. Like the roar of an inferno. It’s the sound of pain demanding to be unleashed. Of blood ready to be shed. My fists clench, and I can’t even feel my fractured knuckle anymore. All I can feel is the wash of rage over me, like waves crashing over a rocky shore. Drenching me in the taste and the feel of violence.

All I can see is my beautiful, sweet, gentle wife trying to crawl across the blood-splattered rug toward me, agony drawn in every line of her face. All I can hear is her screaming my name when the next fucker grabs her around the waist and throws her down on the floor.

She begged them to kill her.

By the end of it, I begged them to kill her, because I knew that’s the only way her pain would end.

Because of me.

Because Varian Roys’s family controls most of Kallisto—an entire fucking planet—and no one leaves the organization without permission. Wherein permission is defined as a bullet to the brain.

At the end, Varian gave her a choice. He would either take her back to Kallisto as one of his girls or kill her then and there.

She looked right at me and told him to kill her.

But we’re not on Kallisto anymore. We’re not even in that fucking solar system. Varian doesn’t have that kind of power here, even with the backup his family’s supply drops have bought him from half a galaxy away.

“We thought you were dead, Barrett,” Filip says. “I shot you in the fucking head.”

I mime knocking on my own skull, then I flip him off.

Varian laughs. “Metal plate. The fucker has a metal plate in his skull. An old war wound. Saved his life.” He looks right at me. “But I hear it took your voice.”

Localized brain damage from a sliver of shrapnel, just like Kaya told Mallory. Doc said I was the luckiest man in the galaxy. Yet it still took a year in the hospital before I could remember my own damn name. Another year before I could remember Norah’s, though her face was in front of me every time I closed my eyes.

I spent the years training. And planning Varian’s death.

He survived my bullet, and I got the death penalty for killing six of his eight guards. Yet fate has given me a second chance, here in zone three.

He’s probably thinking that very thing.

“He’s playing awfully nice, isn’t he?” Varian asks his goons. “Is that for Mallory? You think you’re buying her time? Is that what you thought with Norah? Did you think that if you just let us take our pound of flesh from between her legs, we’d let you both go?”

Rage boils through me. I didn’t let them do anything. Fuckers woke me up with a steel pipe to the skull. By the time I regained consciousness, they’d chained me to the fucking floor and stripped my wife. But they waited to take her until I woke up. Until I’d have to watch the whole thing.

“This is like Norah part two, isn’t it?” Varian taunts. “Only this time I won’t be taking your girl. I’ll be taking mine back. And that little bitch has earned her own damn beating.”

He will not touch Mallory again. I will die before I let that happen.

“When did you figure out who she was?” Varian asks me.

Of course, I can’t answer him, but he doesn’t really want me to. He just loves the sound of his own voice. And the sound of my teeth grinding together while I plot his death. Again.

“She’s pretty good, isn’t she? I trained her myself, and that bitch can deepthroat a fucking baseball bat. Damn.” He whistles. “I’ve missed that little whore. Maybe we’ll play with her for a while, before I kill her. But I will kill her.” Varian steps forward, positioning himself between Filip and Leon. “Where’d you send her, Barrett? I saw your stupid gestures, and I know you’d never send her out there without a plan. Because you have to save the girl, don’t you? They were always your weakness. A beautiful little fuck toy with tears in her eyes. Someone to protect. But that’s not going to work out any better for Mallory than it did for Norah.”

“It’s not like he can tell you where he sent her.” Leon snorts, as if he’s just told the wittiest joke.

“Fortunately, we’re not depending upon Barrett for that information. Mallory won’t get far. She’s not built for long-term exertion.” Varian makes a gesture at my head. “Evan, knock him out and bring him with us. We’re going to party tonight, boys!”

Varian turns toward the woods, and I lunge for him, but a wall of human flesh forms in front of me. I throw the first punch and it’s a good one. Breaks Leon’s nose. Filip and Evan, the former gladiator, toss retorts at my head, and for a few seconds, this is an all-out dirt brawl—a cloud of dust, flying fists, and spurting blood.

Then Filip and Leon manage to grab my arms. They haul me to my feet, and I can feel every blow I’ve taken. Every minute of sleep I missed last night. I fight them, but they’re not trying to take me down. Not anymore.

They’re holding me for Evan.

His first punch throws my head back. The next one bruises my ribs and sends brutal shockwaves through my spleen. I kick out, and he stumbles back, but he rebounds and throws a blow at my skull. A blow I can’t deflect, while Filip and Leon have my arms.

The last thing I see is Evan’s hulking form. His flying, blood-splattered fist.

Then the world goes dark.