So, when Mutt ducked to the left to fake me out, I mustered up the dregs of my energy, fortified it with my steely sense of justice and swung my fist in a brutal uppercut that connected with Mutt’s chin just as his momentum came forward.
His eyes widened before the pain set in and then they rolled to the back of his head as he swayed then fell in a heap to the churned-up mud at my feet.
The crowd fucking roared.
Twenty-two men down, seventeen to go.
Sweat rolled down my bare heaving chest, taking blood and dirt with it, staining the waistband of my grey sweat shorts so that nearly the entire fabric was heavy and saturated. I wanted to shuck them off, lie in the cool dirt and die the way my body seemed to want to.
But I focused my mind by chanting, just one more, just one more.
Then Grease was stepping over the rope and into the ring, middle-aged but packed with dense muscle he’d accrued over a lifetime of work in the gym. His smile was mean, sharp like a blade, his fists curled into meaty hammers.
“This is it, brother,” he taunted me. “Time’s up for you.”
Reaper signaled the start of the fight by hollering, “Blood up and body down. First to hit the ground, loses.”
Before he was even finished talking, Grease sprung forward, his fist going at my temple.
I wanted to move, I could hear Harleigh Rose’s voice begging me to be careful in the cacophonous jumble of yells from the crowd, but I couldn’t find the speed to escape that fatal punch even though I tried.
It connected with a sound I felt more than heard, the knuckles crunching against that soft spot over my ear, the fist meeting bone with a dull boom that exploded in my brain and tossed it bodily against the other side of my skull.
I struggled to find my way through the disorientating darkness, to stay conscious so I could keep Laken safe, make sure Wrath won The Fight so Harleigh Rose was never touched.
But I couldn’t.
And a second later, I fell to my knees in the stinking mud and passed out.
I wanted to go to him, but I couldn’t.
Instead, I had to watch as Hendrix and Pope dragged him from the ring and into the house, Laken fluttering around them in distress. I wanted to knock her buzzing body away with a fly swatter and take my rightful place at Lion’s side.
Instead, I stood beside my mother as she frequently made out heavily with Reaper and continued to watch the muddy bloodbath that was Berserker tradition. It was only when Wrath bent down to whisper in my ear, that I stopped thinking about Danner and started worrying about myself.
“Gonna win this thing, no worries, Harls,” he said quietly with an oddly comforting squeeze to my arm.
He’d started calling me that recently when we realized that we actually liked each other enough to turn our fake relationship into a real friendship.
“That’d be good,” I told him.
His grin was a white ray of hope in his dark beard. “Gotcha.”
I stood back so he could pull his black tee off by the back of his neck and reveal the huge, muscled and tattooed length of his torso. The women around me sighed at the sight, but I only rolled my eyes.
“Show off,” I muttered.
Wrath surprised me by winking.
Then he swung his leg over the rope and entered the ring to fight Grease, who was still standing after another fifteen rounds.
This would be the last fight.
Winner takes all.
As in, winner takes me.
Reaper didn’t announce the beginning words to the fight as he normally did the second the fighters entered the circle. Instead, he whispered softly so that Grease would approach us where we stood in a VIP section of the crowd.
He spoke to his Sergeant at Arms too quietly for me to hear, even standing so close to him, but I watched as he slipped something to Grease that glittered metallic in the bright stadium lights.
I blinked, and Grease was back on his side of the ring, Reaper was saying the words and the fight was on.
Wrath started off fierce, his fists so powerful that one punch seemed to rock the older fighter to his very core. It was an amazing thing to see, like David versus Goliath only this time, I hoped like hell my Goliath won.
I could hear some of the women yelling at him lasciviously, tossing panties into the mud at his feet.
It wasn’t nearly as many as already littered the ground from Danner’s fights.
Wrath may have been a powerhouse, but it was Danner who was lethal as the sharp edge of a blade.
I could still feel the wet in my panties from watching him, his cut muscles emphasized by the strain of the fights, glittering in the white light like a marble warrior but covered like some savage warrior in blood and mud.