Page 138 of Jayson
“I know you want your pound of meat,” he says. “We’ll keep him breathing as long as possible.”
I can work with that.
Because breathing doesn’t mean he’s whole. It just means he’s still breakable—still mine to destroy. And I want him conscious for every second of the lesson. Alive long enough to understand what fear really feels like… when it’s got a name, and it’s mine.
We spread out. Silent.
A storm coming for the devil’s last refuge.
And I swear, the forest holds its breath as we begin to close in.
53
JAYSON
We breach from three angles, slicing through the trees like a blade through flesh.
Kanyan takes command with a surgeon’s precision, splitting the team without hesitation. Five men veer off down the southern trail, shadows moving single file through the underbrush. Three loop around to the north, hugging the rise for elevation and cover.
I take point down the central path, flanked by Scar and Kanyan. We move in silence—no chatter, no hesitation. Just breath and bloodlust.
The first guard doesn’t stand a chance.
He’s turned away, pissing against a pine, steam curling off the ground. His rifle dangles from a loose shoulder strap, forgotten like a toy. He thinks the cold is the worst thing coming for him tonight, but he’s wrong.
I’m on him before he hears a thing. One hand clamps his mouth shut—just in time to muffle his startled grunt. My blade slices clean across his throat, a deep, vicious cut that opens him right up.
Hot blood spills over my glove, sprays the bark, paints theground in a wet arc. He gurgles, eyes wide and disbelieving, hands clawing at the wound like he can shove the life back in. He drops to his knees, then face-first into the drift, twitching as crimson leeches into the earth.
Scar steps over his body without pause. “One down,” he murmurs, like he’s noting the weather.
We push forward, a shadow tide crawling up Maddox’s mountain.
The second guard stumbles into Kanyan’s path—wrong place, wrong time. Kanyan’s knife glints once in the moonlight, then disappears between the man’s ribs. The sound it makes—wet, final—is followed by a sickening crack as it punctures through lung and spine.
The man collapses, limbs jerking like cut strings, blood bubbling at his lips.
A third breaks the treeline in a panic. He sees us—just in time to scream.
His gun is raised, but his finger is twitching. He’s way too slow.
I fire. One shot. The bullet punches through his forehead, jerks his head back like it’s on a hook. Bone fragments scatter. Blood explodes against the tree behind him like someone flung a bucket of it.
His body hits the ground seconds after his mind shuts off.
My earpiece crackles.
“Mason to all teams.” His voice is ice—controlled, lethal. “We just breached the perimeter. Lets end this now.”
I wipe the blood from my cheek, eyes fixed on the fortress rising just beyond the ridge—spotlights sweeping, gunmen on patrol, oblivious to the blood bath creeping closer.
Alive,Kanyan said.Barely,I think.
By the timewe’re twenty feet from the cabin, the ground behind us is littered with bodies and blood, but only three guards are still breathing.
Not for long.
They’ve lost their nerve. I can see it in the way they stumble back from the perimeter, weapons raised but hands shaking. One of them’s screaming into a radio, barking for backup that isn’t coming.
