Page 74 of Mountain Refuge

And now he and my son were gone. It was obvious fromTrenton’s position that he’d tried to shield Lucas. My boy. My precious, precious boy.

Myson.

My sons.

Innocent. Both so innocent and too good for this world to take from me so cruelly.

I thought I hated Sebastian Gunther.

I had not known hatred until this very second.

Adam, Elijah, my name no longer mattered. I was Rage, I was Vengeance. This man had taken too much from me. I would not allow him to take my daughter too.

Gunther opened his mouth as if to give me another command, but I moved before he could. I leapt across the room like a rabid dog. No weapon, I used my fists to take the man down. Belle got knocked down in the struggle too, and some small part of me noticed that she managed to crawl away.

The gun went flying, skidding across the room.

My fists flew through the air like battering rams. I connected with any part of him that I could, though mostly his face. Gunther tried to bring his hands up to defend himself, but I straddled his chest and locked his arms under my knees.

I had never noticed before that Gunther and I were about the same height. He had always seemed so large to me. But that was his power, authority, and money. He had none of that now. At this very moment, he was nothing more than a man who had cost me nothing but pain, suffering, anxiety… And my sons.

He threatened my daughter.

HehurtBelle.

He took Lucas, my baby, from me.

He had robbed me of the chance to claim Trenton as my own.

I howled out my agony. I forgot what was happening outside this room. I forgot about my bullet wound, the pain of whichwas nothing compared to the anguish coursing through my heart at the loss of my sons.

I was more beast than man.

I was Vengeance.

Long after life left Sebastian Gunther’s body, I continued to pelt him. His teeth cut my fists, his nose caved in, and his blood bathed my skin.

It did not even bring me comfort to know that Sebastian Gunther’s last minutes on this earth were spent in pain.

Epilogue

Corbin

We had various graveyards spread throughout the mountain known only to those of us who lived upon it. These were not gravesites that were visited or well maintained. They were nothing more than locations to dump bodies of those who tried to harm those who we protected.

The fourteen mercenaries and Sebastian Gunther claimed such graves.

By the time the others had arrived, the battle had been over. Beyond scrapes and bruises, I had a knife wound in my back. In fact, I literally had aknifein my back until Brooke had removed it for me. Her face was cut up pretty good from her glass window exploding too close to her. Thankfully none of the glass got in her eyes, though she did have a good piece embedded in her cheek. I got it out for her using a pair of tweezers.

Elijah was… Well, it was difficult to determine his injuries at first. Then again, not all wounds were physical.

Dalton and Tommy arrived long before Walter and Josie did. Despite still healing from her injuries, Josie insisted on coming down with Walter. We were all shocked at Tommy’sappearance, but the man just stood there with a scowl and his shotgun muttering about Brooke’s SOS saying the kids were in danger. I always knew the old coot had a soft heart. Not that he would ever admit it.

Other than some bruising to her neck, Belle was fine. None of the blood splatter on her had been hers. Brooke tried to shield Belle’s eyes as much as possible through the living room to get her out of the cabin.

I had to physically drag Elijah off of Gunther’s mangled corpse. In fact, none of us even knew it was Gunther until Belle had said something. Elijah had been so enraged that he’d kicked and hit at me to continue getting at the body on the bedroom floor. I passed Elijah off to Brooke to help calm him down.

Then I had to check the bodies of Trenton and little Lucas.

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