Page 44 of Imbalance
"I won't kill him, I promise," he dropped a kiss to my nose and strode back towards Jace.
I looked over all my men and nearly rolled my eyes at how damned excited they looked. Then again, I sometimes forgot how vicious these men were. I mean, seriously, seeing them like this, literally fighting to keep me and gain us an army.... My face flushed, and I swallowed, processing just how sexy I found that.
I just hoped they won, so I would have the opportunity to show them exactly how it made me feel.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Damien
Ifelt my Hellhound rippling beneath the surface, aching for the chance to show off in front of our mate. A part of me wanted to completely give myself over to him and let him do his worst to these men standing across from us, but I flinched at the memories that assaulted me from the few times I had allowed that to happen.
I couldn't let Ama see us like that. Not after we'd made so much progress together. She had made it clear that she didn't fear my Hellhound, and I didn't want that to change. It felt so fucking good to feel accepted by her.
Clearly, she had never heard the details or reasons why so many feared me. Honestly, even I felt dissociated sometimes from the things I heard about myself.
It was like when you drank too much, blacked out, and woke up to being told awful things you had done, with absolutely no recollection of doing those things. Sometimes, I had night terrors that I feared were small snippets of memories from my Hellhound’s point of view. It lined up with the vicious reputation I had—the Hellhound that had forced submission out of every single opponent we'd faced.
Thankfully, we had never killed anyone, but we had come damned close a few times with a few challengers who hadn’t submitted until it was almost too late for them to recover from their wounds.
"The rules of this battle are simple," King Cyrus bellowed from the edge of the training yard. "Fight to submission—not for blood."
A shiver raced through me, and my Hellhound surged to the surface at the thought of a challenge. I couldn't hold him back any longer and gave in to the shift, not having the time to take my clothes off first. My clothes shredded as my bones cracked and I morphed into my Hellhound form.
The mental barrier I held between us when I was in my human form collapsed. In this state, I was at his mercy and felt like a passenger in this body, only able to plead with him mentally to not be a menace. Hopefully, he would understand how important it was to not do anything that could potentially scare away our mate.
We cannot kill anyone, or even severely harm them.
Why?
Because we need their help. All we need to do is get submission from our opponents.
That's boring.
I mentally groaned as his clear distaste for the rules rang through our mental bond loud and clear.
I'm serious—you cannot give in to the bloodlust.
The fucker ignored me and instead focused on Ama as the king prattled on about what was allowed in the fight, but I couldn't even listen to him because my Hellhound's thoughts about Ama were so damned loud in my mind.
He was lusting after her hard and focused on the fact that our perfect vision could make out her nipples through the thin white dress she had on. They had pebbled as if she was turned on by the idea of watching her mates fight.
That thought didn't help quiet his desire to rip the throats out of our enemies to make her happy and turned on.
Need to mark her as ours.
Can you fucking pay attention to the battle at hand? If we don't win this, I don't think Ama will want us to mark her. She's going to be very upset if we mess this up.
This piqued his interest.
We can mark her if we win?
If we win without breaking the rules.
I actually had no fucking idea if Ama would be okay with us taking that next step and marking her, but I would say whatever I needed to tame his thirst for violence and help secure this victory.
"Begin!" Cyrus yelled, and our attention turned, razor sharp, to the opponent we were paired with.
We'd each be facing a hybrid who was one half the same species as us. Jace had claimed that this set the fight to be as fair as possible when he had briefly explained the setup of the fights last night before we’d retired to our rooms.
