Page 15 of Hunted by the Headless Horseman (Roars and Romances #5)

“Thaddeus knows your dirty little secret, Belladonna.”

BELLE

They come, herding me right after I pull my stockings up and my dress down.

I don’t get a cry out before strong arms grab me from behind, a hand slamming over my mouth to smother my speech.

“Don’t struggle, you little tramp. It’s pointless.”

My blood congeals. It’s been years, but I would recognize the voice anywhere. His second in command. Rich masculine laughter ripples around me. I kick and thrash harder than ever, but they have my legs.

I get my hands free for two seconds—just enough time to wrench his palm down.

“Ja—”

I get one shrill scream out before the hand comes down again.

A knife presses to my throat, and I freeze beneath the deadly blade, knowing he won’t care if my skin is a little carved up. They drag me deeper into the forest. Deeper in the direction of my nightmare.

“Stop your nonsense, sweetheart. Thaddeus wants a word with you.”

I’m coming, Belle. I hear him. The growl in his throat, the urgency in his voice. Jack is coming. It makes me braver, mouthier. Anything to delay the darkness from crushing me. Splintered memories, ones I haven’t thought of or felt in years, rise. I’ve suffocated them beneath a thousand and one bookshop tasks, crystal-healing, and OCD tasks. With Jack, they’ve been further than ever.

It’s been nine years. And I’m stronger than ever.

After Jeremiah drops his other hand, counting on me not to scream with the knife poised at my throat, I spit out, “Thaddeus can go to hell where he was born and be the devil’s bitch for all I care.”

His grip on me tightens, but I gnash my teeth.

“If he puts his filthy hands on me again, I’ll bite them off and shove them down his goddamn throat.”

The others laugh. I recognize them. When you’re a well-endowed girl raised in a patriarchal cult, you get very familiar with all the boys who wanted a damn piece of you.

Lucas is on my left. He’s scrawny but a slippery son of a bitch. Literally. His mother was a total bitch who covered for him when he assaulted his own cousin, then insisted on them marrying so she would not be “sullied”.

Malachi is on my right. He’s the strongest of the bunch. Muscles like mountains.

Saul. The quiet one. And the most dangerous. Not afraid to get his hands bloody.

Levi, the gunslinger, another dangerous one.

And Jeremiah, the goddamn mouthpiece for Thaddeus. Always licking his boots. Fucking coward who’d probably still nurse from his mommy’s tit if she were alive. He smells like onions.

Five men all for little ol’ me. How special I feel.

Jeremiah grips my curls, yanking on them so hard, my scalp howls. The tip of the knife nicks my throat, and I wince.

“Foul little witch,”

he snarls a familiar insult.

“You won’t get off that easy this time.”

He thinks it was easy for me to escape? Mimi put her life in danger to get me out. And I had to…acid scalds my throat at the memory of what I had to do.

Jack is coming. Just bide your time. He’s coming for you.

“Nine years,”

I hiss at them, flicking my eyes to the men of my past. Men who were once boys pulling my hair or copping a feel of my butt or boobs whenever they could.

“You left me be for nine goddamn years. I’m too “tainted”, remember? A witch. Why now?”

Jeremiah curls his sinister, disgusting breath in my ear, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Elder Thaddeus knows your dirty little secret, Belladonna.”

My skin crawls. Elder. The name is like a sharp, lone claw carving through my chest. He was just a Brother last time I saw him.

Wait, my secret. No! Terror spears me, ices my blood. Oh God, no! Goddess, please! How could he know? No one knew, except for Mimi, and she took it to her grave.

My lungs collapse. My heart screams. I can’t…can’t breathe. No wonder they’ve come for me. I wasn’t the first he chose. The others, the other girls, “failed”

because men are never at fault in the Covenant. Because the last hundred years of scientific progression bow to the Covenant’s code: men are mighty, women are weak.

“You may have poisoned yourself, little witch, but you know how good Thaddeus is at purging the poison from the blood. He will cleanse you. You have something he wants…”

He cackles, giving my earlobe a nip while rubbing my belly suggestively.

He’s been dragging me more into the woods, but the second I hear the telltale thud of boots, I know he’s here. I crane my neck to see him advancing through the trees, pumpkin head still attached.

Noohnohno! It’s four against one. Worse than terror, all I feel is horror. Because Jack can’t see.

And I can’t lose him!

“Jack!”

I cry out, clenching my eyes as Jeremiah digs the knife in harder. The others have stopped, and they’re sizing up the stranger dressed like a gothic nightmare with the cane in his powerful grip.

“He’s got a knife on me.”

I hint to him.

“You’ll turn right around and go back to where you came from if you know what’s good for you, sullied freak,”

barks Jeremiah.

Strange phrase, Jack muses inside our bond as he turns his pumpkin head from side to side as if sensing the positions of the others. What is good for me is not to my back. She is before me. And in my blood.

Up till now, I’ve spoken out loud to him. Limited access. Now, I pray and pray that it will be complete and unfiltered access.

“You deaf?”

Lucas asks in his scratchy voice.

“He said to git. This be Covenant business.”

Please, Goddess, let him hear me! Levi is on your left flank, Jack! He has the gun. Three of them herding you, Jack. One in the middle. The others are on your sides. Don’t underestimate them. They all know how to fight.

All Brothers know how to fight. Elders are masters at it.

Levi hasn’t drawn his gun yet, a small blessing.

“You’d better unhand me right now,”

I warn Jeremiah, swallowing hard against that blade, but his grip has loosened slightly. No, Thaddeus won’t let him harm me beyond repair—not when I have what the bastard devil wants most.

Jeremiah cackles in my ear.

“Why? You gonna spit in my face like you did for your redeemer the day you decided to run away like a child and leave everything behind?”

“I left nothing behind. And no, I’m not going to spit in your face.”

I turn my chin to catch his eye, baiting him, diverting him.

“Unlike you, I’m not a child anymore, Jeremiah. I’m a grown woman. And grown women don’t spit.”

Just a little closer. I slowly tip my chin down.

“Oh, what do they do?”

“They bite.”

chomp down as hard as possible, hearing a bloodcurdling screech and tasting iron blood. The knife drops. Something cracks. Behind me are the sounds of bodies brawling. Jeremiah smacks the side of my face, hard, enough for me to loosen my jaw.

“Fucking bitch.”

Ripping free, he shoves me to the ground, kicking at my rib. Pain guts me, and I sob from the throbbing hurt. I can feel the deep bruise forming. Anytime I move, it hurts. Not the first time I’ve had bruises.

A body drops before me, and I gasp, scrambling away from the sight of Levi knocked out cold. Jack focused on him first. Yes, he needed to take out the gunslinger. Now, Malachi is facing him, and they’re circling one another. Jack still has his cane and fully intends to use it.

“Jack,”

I cough out his name.

He tenses. Malachi closes in. A silent scream leaves my throat. I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have distracted him.

Through my blurred vision, I see the chaos unfolding. Jack wields his cane like an extension of his own body, deflecting blows and striking with a speed that leaves the other men stunned and stumbling. Despite his lack of sight, Jack relies on all his other senses, ones a little sharper because I am here.

And he knows the terrain. It doesn’t matter that these guys were born and bred on this land. After two centuries of haunting these mountains, Jack knows it more.

One moment, he spins to avoid a punch, then cracks the silver-tipped cane across an attacker’s jaw, sending Malachi sprawling to the ground with a hard thud that shakes the earth beneath me.

My breath chokes in my throat as Jack twists the cane in his hand, revealing a hidden blade shooting from its end. Awed, I part my lips at the blade gleaming in the dim light, and with a swift flick of his wrist, he swings the cane at Saul. Saul dodges easily, but his laughter is his downfall. And his taunts to Jack.

My Headless Horseman knows exactly where to swing that cane. In one powerful move, he upends Saul, sending him crashing to the ground. Saul’s head strikes a rock, and I gasp from the sickening crack and the sight of blood gushing. Bile swirls in my stomach.

Jack is focused on Lucas now, who keeps escaping the swing of Jack’s cane.

“Come on, you shadowy bastard! Scared to show your face?”

Lucas bellows.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him—Jeremiah—slipping through the shadows, knife glinting in his hand, eyes fixed on Jack’s back. A surge of panic and fury rips through my veins, and without thinking, I scramble to my feet. The adrenaline storming through me dulls the pain as I lunge forward, screaming at the top of my lungs, “Don’t you touch him!”

I launch for Jeremiah as hard as I can. He raises his arm to strike Jack, but I collide with him. Wind knocked out of me. The pain of his earlier kick seems magnified.

Then, a sharp sting spears me, and I realize the knife has grazed my side, but I push through the pain, knocking Jeremiah off balance. His eyes widen, and he bares his teeth as we tumble to the ground, my hands grappling for his weapon. I manage to twist his arm, hearing a sickening crack, and the knife drops to the ground.

Jeremiah howls in pain, but his cries are silenced by the sharp, cold thrust of Jack’s blade. Lucas is down, knocked out beside Saul.

I don’t know who is still alive, but they’re all passed out. I don’t care. The pain splinters through me, returning tenfold as the adrenaline tapers off. I curl up into a little ball, hugging my chest, my gasps quick and short because it hurts too much to breathe. Sticky viscous fluid drips from my side, but it doesn’t seem too deep. My bruised ribs hurt more.

Jack turns, his shoulders heaving. Without a word, he crosses the distance in a single stride, his hands already moving to inspect my wound. Belle, he murmurs, his voice a low, concerned rumble. What have you done?

“I couldn’t let him…hurt you,”

I whisper, wincing as his fingers brush against the torn fabric and the blood seeping through it.

A sob leaves my throat as he scoops me into his arms, holding me against his chest with a tenderness that contrasts with his earlier violence. Hush now, he says softly, his grip secure and strong. I’ve got you. My sweet, strong summoner.

He carries me through the darkened forest, his pace swift but careful. It’s probably a few miles to his manor, but I marvel at how the telltale fog curls around us a few minutes later. As if Jack can summon the veil that leads us to his manor anywhere he chooses.

It’s thinner during October, he explains as if he heard my thoughts. It still takes time and energy, but I must get you home, Belle.

I’m already home, I almost say.

He brushes the pumpkin cheek along the top of my head, no doubt hearing me. I shiver in his arms, nuzzling closer into his chest.

The manor looms through the fog, the beautiful gothic architecture like a comforting, albeit spectral, vision. Jack doesn’t hesitate, kicking the door open with a forceful push and moving swiftly through the halls and to the upstairs bedroom.

I wince as he gently lays me on the bed, excuses himself to run the bath, then returns to strip away my torn clothes, covered in dirt and blood at the side.

I shiver as the cool air touches my skin, but Jack’s hands are steady, his touch sure and unflinching. He picks me up again, and I curl into his arms as he brings me to the bath he’s drawn, lowering me into the steamy water, soothing my cold skin.

Fuck, Belle…I hiss when he traces his fingers along the wound on my ribs. I am afraid to look down, afraid it will trigger a rush of memories. Don’t move, he commands.

“Where would I go?”

I ask, voice hoarse and worn. I shrug, and he tucks his glove beneath my chin.

If you weren’t injured, I’d tan your hide.

“Guess I’m very unlucky,” I mumble.

He mutters something that I can’t hear, not even in our bond, before moving into the other room. Returning in short order, Jack has two items in his hands. One is a small container, which he explains is a salve. The other is a recognizable bottle of Tylenol. How interestingly modern, but I don’t question it.

I look up at his pumpkin head, the slitted triangle eyes too menacing for the wondrous soul wearing them. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t possess a heart. He is the kindest and most beautiful man I’ve ever known. And I’ve known quite a few men. None like him.

I adore him. I…I think I love him.

Maybe I never knew what love truly felt like until I met the Headless Horseman with a hollow heart.

After I take the pills, Jack sets the salve on the bathroom counter to be used soon. As he begins to turn away, I catch hold of his hand, pressing my fingers into the solid leather of his grip.

“Don’t leave. Um, could you…will you join me?”

I ask softly, feeling tears rising because of what I’m about to do.

He hesitates, but I tug on his wrist.

“Please, Jack?”