Page 47 of Making Choices

“Both of you need to step down.” Cherub’s initial plea hardly penetrates the flames of jealousy licking at my heels, but her follow up request sets me alight with the painful promise of the possibility of making her mine one day. “This is between me and Venom.”

The den falls silent.

Venom.

She called him Venom.

Not once in the eleven years we’ve been patched into the Shamrocks has she broken her vow to address her man by his road name like this.

The day I accepted my top rocker, I ceased to be known as Carter.

Benedict became Toker.

Every brother since has had his road name adopted by Cherub, except one.

Venom was excluded.

He remained Zeke.

Her sole exception.

Not anymore…

Growling like a feral animal, Venom pushes past me. My brother follows closely behind with worry etched into his features. Hunter’s concern cuts fine lines around his eyes and his mouth as Venom asks in the same robotic tone he gets when he’s on the cusp of losing control, “So that’s it then? It’s over?”

Reluctance emanates from Cherub, even as she says, “Y-yes… it is.”

“After four years of dealin’ with your shit, I’m just tossed aside now Daddy’s here to save you?” The colour drains from Cherub’s face in the wake of Venom’s cruelty. Leg bouncing, fingers curled into fists, he snaps at her, “What? Got nothin’ to say for yourself?”

“I have nothing to say because you’re not worth arguing with.” With tears running down her face, Cherub straightens her spine and gives as good as she gets. She gestures at her battered face, then her ribs, and finishes at the top of the thighs I know are still bruised. “Plus you’re right. I need someone who can protect me, and that evidently isn’t you, is it?”

In the face of his worst fear finally falling from the mouth of his soul mate, Venom’s control snaps. The monstrous side that I’ve witnessed first-hand, the dark, feral side he’s kept carefully hidden from his woman, breaks free of its leash, and his entire body tenses like he’s ready to destroy every person on the planet to prove that he’ll never let anyone hurt her again.

I understand his pain. I felt it myself last night when I touched the marks on her thigh. My matching agony at the damage that’s been inflicted on the woman we both love is the only reason I step forward and save Venom from compounding his fuck-up after he viciously proclaims, “Since that’s how you feel, I say we are done. I’m not gonna tie myself to a needy bitch who’ll never have the courage to step outta her daddy’s shadow.”

With a harsh, two-fingered jab straight to the notch between his collarbones, I force him to back away from his woman. “That’s enough.” Venom steps up into my face and gnashes his teeth. I match his savagery, baring my canines as I shove him again while Toker hustles Cherub out of the den. “Go and cool off somewhere.”

Growling like a feral dog, he grabs one of the potted plants Charlie uses to decorate the coffee table and hurls it at me. I sidestep and the clay pot shatters against the wall next to the doorway Cherub just left through. My own temper explodes. I capture him in a headlock and drag him outside into the playground, away from witnesses and potential intervention.

Venom needs to pay for putting Cherub at risk.

Although he tries to fight me off, and would usually best me, I’m fuelled by a level of rage I’ve never felt before. The knowledge that he could’ve hurt my duchess powers me. Gives me the strength to meet him head on. Forces me to see him as the enemy rather than my best friend.

Every time he throws a punch, I counter with a vicious strike of my own.

He knees me in the gut. I hammer fist him in the kidney.

Venom sinks his teeth into my shoulder and I knee him in the ribs.

When he bends in half, I take hold of his throat with one hand and squeeze until his face turns blue. Venom drops to his knees. I follow him. He gasps for air. I loosen my grip to pat him on the back, then gather him in a tight hug. Although he initially stiffens, he quickly relents and leans into me. With a heavy heart and an even heavier conscience, I hold him while he breaks.

“She bla-mes me.” Venom’s voice cracks as he speaks. “Prom-ised me she didn’t, but she does.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

He sniffs. “She doesn’t trust me to keep her safe.”

“Cherub doesn’t trust any of us to protect her,” I confess. He jerks against me like I’ve shot him. “Everythin’ she said back there was for show, but there’s some truth in it.”

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