Page 78 of Crooked Crows (Boys of Briar Hall 1)

Not to take a piss.

Not to jerk it when I woke from fever dreams of Ava Jade.

I hadn’t dreamt a goddamned thing in years until now. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.

“Hey,” Grey pressed. “You good?”

“Is he ready?” Corvus asked, storming back into our private area with a sour look on his face.

I lifted the dregs of my whiskey from the stool next to me and swallowed them down. Fight nights were the one time I let Corv regulate that shit. I’d had exactly four ounces of whiskey since we arrived an hour ago, and I wasn’t allowed a drop more untilafterthe fight. Something about not wanting to kill the other guy.

Personally? I thought it would make for an exceptional show.

“Yeah,” Grey answered for me, and I knocked my glass back down onto the stool, glancing up through the dark hair covering my forehead to the clock.

Two minutes.

Heat swelled in my core, pouring steam into my muscles. I rolled my shoulders and twisted on my stool, stretching out my back muscles. I’d already gone through the rest of the stretching and pre-fight bullshit earlier, but my lower back was tight as fuck and I didn’t want to risk it locking up in the ring.

“How’s it looking?” I asked, shaking my head at Grey’s offer of water.

“Better than we hoped. Conor Jones talked a big game. Won his last five consecutive fights. The bets are stacked against you, but not by much. A last-minute bet pushed it closer to even.”

Which meant that when I won, the payout would be greater for our proxies, and therefore,for us.

“Just put on a good show,” Grey said, clapping me on the shoulder and giving a squeeze as he fixed me with a pointed stare.

“Don’t I always?”

He snorted. “And don’t kill him.”

“No promises,” I muttered, getting to my feet as the crowd outside began to grow louder than the thudding music. After I killed that one guy back in April, they were hesitant to let me fight again at all.

If the roar of the crowd out there was an indication, I’d say it helped.

Deep down, people were more fucked up than they liked to believe. Even the investment bankers and the mortgage brokers and the lawyers. They came here tonight not just because there was a fight and they could make some coin. They came because those dark parts of themselves craved chaos. Blood. The possibility of death.

The only difference between them and us was that they wouldn’t admit it. They choked it down and snuffed it out. Pretended it wasn’t there. Trauma hadn’t destroyed the barriers their darkness hid behind, but it’d shattered ours. Setting us free.

Corvus gripped the thick black curtain, and I grimaced.

This was the part I didn’t care for. Growling quietly to myself, I waited, bouncing from foot to foot, letting that unnamable thing inside of me slither to the surface. The rawest, most primal parts of myself awakening as a spark of adrenaline ignited them.

I shook my head, opening my mouth to allow Grey to shove the guard in. He gave my cheek a hard slap, and I let it ricochet in warm waves through my body, stoking the fire.

Fuck yeah.

I grinned over the mouthguard as the music changed, shifting to the entry song Grey chose for me. The distant echo of cheers accompanied the synth sounds asFireblared over the speakers, and I stepped out.

I kept my head down as I stalked toward the ring, bristling as shouts and jeers assaulted my ears. As unfamiliar hands attempted to clap on to my back and arms, reaching, keeping me hemmed in on both sides. Stopped only by the look on my face and the weak half fence holding them back. I envisioned cutting each hand clean off at the wrist as I passed, which made it all bearable.

This was part of the show.

A part I endured as a means to an end, but when a meaty hand slapped against my cheek, my lid popped and I whirled, striking him once in the jaw. He stumbled and fell, making the surrounding crowd have to catch him.

Silence fell for an instant before the cheers erupted anew, louder and more wild than before as the unconscious man was forgotten, left to fall unceremoniously to the floor.

“Back the fuck up from the fence,” Corvus snarled as he and Grey moved to form a protective barrier on either side of me. “I saidmoveassholes.”

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