Page 100 of This Blood That Breaks Us

Sirius wasn’t talking, only looking between us with flared nostrils and a hardened jaw.

“Both of you, follow me.” We left the sparring room and followed Sirius through the hallway.

“Why are you taking us to the atrium?” Zach asked.

“Privacy.”

He led us to an empty entryway with marble floors and stopped right in front of a large wooden door with a sun and the moon carved into it. He turned on his heels to face us. His normally slicked-back hair was falling wildly at the sides of his face.

“Give me your arm.” His eyes darkened, and he beckoned for me.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Fear laced my brother’s voice.

“Give me your arm,” Sirius repeated.

I went to give it, and Zach pulled me away from him.

“No. Not before you tell us what you’re going to do.”

“What’s going on? Why are you afraid of him?”

“Because he knows, unlike Ezra, I might hurt you. And trust me, I intend to.”

“We’re not doing that,” Zach said.

“You say that like you have a choice.Give me your arm.”

Sirius’s eyes lost all color, then he lunged. There was a scuffle. A push and pull as we all scrambled on the floor, tugging andtearing each other’s clothes in an attempt to escape Sirius’s advance, but we were already too weak from the blood loss.

Zach yelled for me as Sirius grabbed him by the collar and pulled him through the door.

“No, wait!”

Pure ragged panic took over as I shook the door. “Sirius, no! Don’t do this.”

I didn’t even know what it was until I felt a sharp pain along my forearm. Like someone dragged a knife along my skin, but there was no blood. Frantic breaths sputtered from my chest. The bond pulled me apart from the inside as slices stung my skin, and I heard my brother’s screams from inside, but something else was there too—fire. Fire lit up my belly and propelled my feet to the door. Sirius thought he could mess with us and test the bond like weren’t real people with real pain.

Not my brother. Not my family.

“Open the door!” I punched the hard wood of the door, growing angrier and angrier.

I didn’t know where all the anger was coming from. Was it mine? Was it my brother’s? The lines between us blurred, but it didn’t matter. I pounded my fists harder into the door, ignoring the pain in my hand and my body while Zach called for me. The bond flared, but somehow, I was numb inside. My only focus was taking out that door that had to be at least five feet thick. The door was coming down one way or another.

Not my brother. No.

Zach’s desperate cries on the inside of the atrium echoed, and I hit the door harder.

Connell appeared next to me. “W-what’s happening, sir? I heard yelling.”

“Go, get Ezra.”

“Bu—”

“Go, before I kill Sirius!”

I kicked the door. It was budging. My entire arm was on fire, and my fingernails felt like they were being pried off. The skin on my knuckles peeled and bled, but it only strengthened my resolve. The door was coming down, and I would kill Sirius for doing this to us.

The wood finally cracked and burst open.