Page 85 of Brutal Unionn
My fury comes in hot—white and feral, rising in my chest like a scream I don’t have time to release. “And I don’t?” I spit, my voice a blade of its own. “You think you’re the only one with bigger things to deal with? You think this game stops being a game for you a long time ago?”
I snap my arm up,fast and vicious, and chop at his hand, trying to dislodge the blade. He grunts but holds firm. No disarm. No slip. That hesitation from before vanishes, and the steel remains steady. But I don’t stop there. My knee comes up, sharp and brutal, but he twists to avoid it. I spin on the ball of my foot and launch a push kick straight into his chest—one born more from rage than form.
He stumbles back, boots dragging through the dirt, shoulders rolling with the force of it. It isn’t enough to hurt him—not really—but it sends him flying several yards, and that is all I need.
I dive to the ground, dirt scraping my palms, and slide across the arena floor, grabbing one of the lost knives just as Sho begins to recover his footing. The metal kisses my fingers like an old lover. I rise to my feet again, taller than I feel, blood in myteeth, the ache in my ribs threatening to slow me—but it doesn’t. I unsheathe my second-to-last knife, hoping the final blow comes soon.
Sho stands across from me, that rusted blade now lowered but still in hand. His breath comes harder now. His eyes—darker. There is no grin this time. No taunt. Only that hollow space between us. The one we keep refusing to fill.
“You want to end this?” I growl. “Then do it.” I open my arms wide, blade in one hand, the other beckoning. “Come on, Sho. Show me you’re not just the one who survives me.”
His eyes narrow. And I can feel it in the air—the next strike won’t be about winning. It will be about deciding.
He strikes first.
A wide, arcing swing from overhead—easy to read, but not to ignore. I bring my blade up to meet it, steel crashing against steel with a thunderous clang that echoes through the pit like a gunshot. Sparks flash. My arms shake from the impact.
But the real blow comes a second later. His left fist swings into my ribs, a hook so fast and precise I barely see it before I feel it—right into the liver. My breath leaves me in a violent gasp as my body lifts off the ground and twists sideways, pain detonating through my core like a mine. I don’t even hit the dirt gracefully. My feet are swept from under me, and I slam down on my shoulder, the impact jarring up through my neck and into my skull, dislodging both knives from my grip.
I lie there for half a second, face twisted against the blood-soaked soil, trying to remember how to breathe. He is fast. Too fast. Stronger than before. Cleaner in his movements. Colder. He is better than me.
Sho isn’t fighting like the broken boy I leave behind—isn’t trying to impress me, outplay me, flirt his way to an advantage. He is fighting like a man on a mission. Efficient. Unforgiving. Unapologetic. I am not a dance partner anymore. I am a problem to be solved. A threat to be eliminated. And that… that does something to me.
I can’t tellwhat hurts more—the brutal efficiency of his strikes, the suffocating closeness of death, or the fact that I can see it in his eyes now. I am not a princess anymore. Not even a rival. Just a shadow in his path, a relic from a war he no longer wants to remember.
He circles around slowly, blade steady, steps calculated—not to gloat, but to line up the final strike. To finish me with precision. I let my eyelids flutter for a moment—just enough to let him believe I am done. Maybe I am. I am not sure anymore.
Then I remember how he beats that mountain of a man.
My hand curls into the loose soil and flings it high into his face.
Dust and grit fill his eyes. He roars—half in rage, half in pain—and I surge forward from the ground, finding only one knife, slashing upward with a wide arc. My blade kisses flesh, dragging a long, wet line across his left thigh from knee to hip. Blood pours fast. He staggers back with a hiss.
I stumble to my feet, ribs screaming, head spinning, and draw another blade—my second-to-last.
“This isn’t over yet,” I rasp, the words catching in my throat like broken glass.
Sho blinks through the pain, eyes narrowed, blood dripping into the dirt beneath him. He smiles. Just faintly. Just enough to remind me that even hurt, he is still calculating. “No,” he says. “But it’s about to be.”
He moves again with less speed, yet more precise, the pain in his leg slowing him but sharpening his focus. I swing hard, desperate now, but he sidesteps, and kicks—hard—his shin colliding with my forearm. The blade flies from my hand before I even register the pain.
Just as I draw my final blade—my last hidden weapon, the one I keep tucked between the seam of my waistband and my skin, for desperate moments like this—Sho catches my wrist in mid-motion. His grip is like iron, precise and final, and before I can react, he twists. A sickening pop echoes through my shoulder as tendons stretch past their limits. Pain bursts through my arm, white-hot and blinding, forcing a gasp from my throat. The blade falls, useless, forgotten, clinking against the dirt.
With a grunt, Sho forces me down, my knees hitting the blood-soaked ground, my arm still wrenched behind my back. His blade moves like a phantom, and I feel it—a whisper of metal at my neck. Cold. I can just barely see the dull gleam of it in my peripheral, like a silent promise. It isn’t theatrical. It is execution.
“You’re all out of tricks,” Sho grunts, breath uneven, like his strength is finally thinning—but I catch it. The wince beneath the words. He is still bleeding. Still human. Still fighting me as much as whatever haunts him. “Any last words?”
For a moment,my heart stills. Not from fear. From acceptance. This is it. My mission left unfinished. My purpose fails. I have lived through wars, betrayals, bloodbaths that turnentire rooms into crimson graves. And yet this… this is how it ends?
“Please…” I groan, the pain making my voice gravel-thick. “Just save Mia. If you take down the Yakuza, make sure you save her.”
Sho doesn’t respond immediately.
“Who is Mia?” he asks, voice sharper now—less soldier, more interrogator.
“She is my niece,” I mutter, the words tasting like rust in my mouth. “The Yakuza took her. Everything I’ve done—everything I’ve risked—it is all to get her back.”
Sho remains still for several seconds, and when he finally exhales, it is almost a scoff. “So I am just a pawn,” he says bitterly. “A bargaining chip.”
