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My breath stuttered. Fuck, fuck, fuck! What the fuck was happening up there?

Jesse and Roark gripped the railing as they took the stairs two at a time, their heads tilted back and eyes up.

I strained my ears, picking through the varying pitches of cries, listening for Shea. I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t… Oh God, if anything happened to her…

At the top of the stairs, I threw myself forward, following Jesse and Roark and Darwin, and fucking hell, the cries grew louder. No, not cries. They were blood-curdling, oh-Jesus-save-me screams of fear.

My spine turned to ice, and the hairs on my neck stood on end. I picked up my pace, down the hall, into the third bedroom, and slammed into Jesse’s back.

The screaming was so loud I stumbled back, my view blocked by Jesse and Roark. I pushed forward, my bare feet slipping on the wet carpet. Wet? I glanced down.

Blood.

It was everywhere.

The unholy screams in the small bedroom shivered my skin with goosebumps. But it was the smell, the overwhelming scent of copper and iron, that sent my heart crashing into my ribs.

My hands shook and my toes squished through wet puddles as I pushed around Jesse and Roark. They didn’t stop me from stepping in front of them, but I only had a millisecond to question that before my vision filled with blood.

Streaks on yellow walls. Splatters on brown work boots. Smears on pale skin. Pools around limp bodies. Torn pink pajamas, zippered flies spread open, lacerated flesh, stab wounds, and holy fuck, one of those bodies was castrated.

My limbs went numb, and my ears rang. Death pervaded the air so thickly I inhaled through my mouth and held my breath as I took in the rest of the room.

Link squatted over the bodies of a woman and a man, his hand wrapped around a red-stained blade. And Shea…oh God, her eyes were hard but alive, showing no signs of physical pain, no visible wounds. She stood beside Link and glared down at the third body. Another man.

A total of three dead.

Four women huddled on the bed in the corner, their shrieks muffling into heavy sobs, hands covering faces, arms hugging stomachs. No blood on their pajamas. The slaughter concentrated on the walls and floor near the door, spreading out around the three bodies.

The dead man at Shea’s feet lay on his back, a metal instrument—Shea’s scalpel?—buried in his eye socket. His tattooed arms lay askew around his head, the zipper of his jeans gaped open.

I looked away and reminded myself to breathe, releasing a heavy exhale.

“Wha’ happened, Shea?” Roark’s brogue slipped out without censure. He abhorred murder, but it was obvious she’d killed this man in self-defense.

She closed her eyes and wiggled her jaw, as if struggling to unclench it.

Darwin skirted around her and rooted his head under the arms of the wailing women, licking their hands and faces.

Link watched them for a moment, rubbing the knuckles of his knife-wielding hand against his bald head. “When I noticed the guards missing from the stairs, I ran up here and—”

“I want to hear it from Shea.” Only my lips moved, the rest of my body detached as I stared at the hunk of flesh in Link’s other hand.

Blood dripped from his fingers, plopping on the mangled hole between the spread legs of the man beneath him.

I shouldn’t have been shocked by all the gore. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a castration. When I’d killed the Drone’s brother, I’d relieved him of his pathetic dick. And before that, I’d severed all of Steve’s parts in my haste to split him sternum to groin in my father’s basement after he’d raped me.

The clash of past horrors and present fears spun through my head, jerking me off balance and thrusting me into a fever of heaving breaths and hot skin. The room vanished as remembered pain ran riot through my body, stretching my limbs and cutting my flesh, locking me in a nightmare of memory, in a place where men couldn’t be trusted.

My hand jerked to my forearm sheath and started to release one of the blades.

“Evie. Breathe.” Roark’s arms came around me from behind, hooking across my belly. “I’m here. You’re safe.”

His accent was calm and coaxing in my ear, a voice that would never hurt me or rape me or lie to me.

I gripped his arms, holding him to me, letting him know how grateful I was for his constant protection.

Beside me, Jesse lowered his head, glancing at me then up at Roark out of the corner of his eye. He and Roark exchanged a look, then he turned his attention back to the room.

Link shot another glare at the sobbing women. “Fuck. Someone get them out of here before my head explodes.”

I lurched forward to help them, adrenaline surging through my stupor, but Roark held me in place.