“That the best you’ve got?” Sloan asked, his voice carrying through the rain. “No wonder you needed demons and doctors to do your dirty work.”
Darius roared and came at him again. This time Sloan met him head-on, blocking the first hit, taking a shallow cut across his shoulder from the second, then grabbing Darius by the throat and driving him backward through the mud. The half-breed swung hard, catching Sloan across the jaw, but Sloan barely moved. He smiled through the blood in his mouth and slammed his forehead into Darius’s face. The crack of bone carried through the storm.
Darius stumbled back, blood pouring from his nose, his mismatched eyes burning with hate. “You think you won?”
“I know I did.” Sloan stalked toward him, slow and deadly. “You lost the second you touched what belongs to me.”
Darius wiped blood from his mouth, then glanced toward Becky. “The child?—”
Sloan hit him before he finished the sentence.
The blow sent Darius sideways, but Sloan caught him by the front of his shirt and yanked him back, hitting him again. “Don’t look at her.” Another hit. “Don’t speak to her.” Another hit that snapped Darius’s head back. “Don’t think of her.” The last hit sent him back a few steps as Sloan let go.
Darius snarled, claws ripping across Sloan’s forearm as he twisted free. The pain was sharp, but Sloan ignored it, moving with him, forcing him farther from Becky with every step. Darius was strong. Stronger than a half-breed should have been, and Sloan could feel something dark riding under his skin, something that didn’t belong in this realm. Demon power which explained the unusually long claws. The evilness rolled off him in sick waves, making the rain hiss where it hit the mud around his boots.
“That what they gave you?” Sloan’s lip curled with anger and hate. “A little demon power to make you feel like a man. You could have warned me about that, Daniel.”
“Didn’t see the need.” Daniel called out with a smirk. “Didn’t help him any. He’s still a pussy.”
Darius’s face changed, the rage turning into something uglier. Sloan wanted him angry.
Darius charged, faster this time, claws aimed for Sloan’s throat. Sloan caught his wrist, twisted hard, and kicked his knee out from under him. Darius dropped, but before he hit the ground, Sloan grabbed him by the hair and drove his face into his knee. The half-breed’s body went loose for half a second, and Sloanused it, slamming him into the mud hard enough to shake the ground beneath them.
Darius rolled, coughing blood, but still fought to get up. Sloan let him.
“You sent men after a woman and her son.” Sloan circled him, rain running down his face, his fangs fully lengthened now. “You hid behind demons. You hid behind a doctor. You hid behind a plan that isn’t even yours.”
Darius spit blood into the mud. “You don’t know shit.”
“I know you needed Becky because you couldn’t create anything on your own.” Sloan’s eyes narrowed. “You needed her body and my blood because without it, you had nothing. And you will die with nothing you son of a bitch.”
Darius snapped.
He came at Sloan with everything he had, and for a few brutal seconds, they went toe to toe in the rain. Fists hit flesh. Claws tore through skin. Mud sprayed beneath their boots as they traded blows hard enough to make the Warriors watching shift with the need to join in. Sloan took a hit to the ribs, another to the side of his face, then blocked the next and answered with one of his own, driving his fist into Darius’s stomach so hard the half-breed folded. Sloan grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him across the ground.
Darius slid through the mud and crashed into a tree, the trunk cracking behind him.
He pushed himself up, slower this time.
Sloan stalked toward him with no wasted movement and no mercy in his black glare.
For the first time, real fear flickered in Darius’s eyes, and Sloan saw it. So did every Warrior and Guardian standing in the rain.
Sloan smiled, but there was nothing human in it. “There it is. You finally figured out how this ends. How you end.”
Darius bared his bloody teeth and lunged one last time.
Sloan glanced at Charger as he spun and grasped the dagger in one fluid motion, plunging it into Darius’s still-beating half-breed heart. The surprised look on Darius’s face just before he dropped dead didn’t come close to being enough, but his concern was Becky, not this piece of shit.
Stepping over him, he ripped off what was left of his shirt and wiped what blood the rain didn’t rinse away then tossed it. His eyes never leaving Becky who stood still clutching the gun to her chest. Her eyes wide as she stared at him.
“She wouldn’t let anyone take the gun,” Rafe whispered, as he approached.
Sloan walked up to Becky, his eyes taking in every mark, every bruise, every place someone had put their hands on her. Touching her battered face, he forced himself to stay calm, then slowly took the gun from her and tucked it into his jeans. It broke something inside him that she only felt safe giving it up to him. Gently, he picked her up, cradling her against him as he began to walk away from the nightmare she had just lived.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered over the rain and wind.
“I never doubted you would come for me,” she said, and the absolute certainty in her shaky words hit him harder than any blow Darius had landed. For a second, his vision blurred. He could have lost her. Could have lost their child. The thoughtslammed into him with a force he hadn’t been ready for, because somewhere between finding out the truth and holding Becky in his arms, the impossible had become real. The baby was his.