Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 146530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
The two men circled one another, each assessing the other. Bear had always ended a fight fast with any opponent. He won with his sheer brute strength. Jonas never gave him an opening. Never took his eyes off him. He appeared to be an experienced fighter, battle-scarred and more than willing to kill. He wasn’t enraged, he was methodical. Calculating.
Submit. Damn it, Bear, he’s going to kill you.
Never once had Crawley used that tone of desperation. He’d always had complete confidence in Bear’s enormous strength. Bear knew instinctively his beast would never surrender, nor would this enemy accept or trust it. The three of them had already betrayed their word.
He’ll kill me anyway. We didn’t do what he said. Bear knew just by that admission that he was telling Crawley he couldn’t win.
There was a brief silence. Maneuver the son of a bitch closer to me. You have to be clever about it, Bear. Use your brain. Don’t let the beast take over. We’re in this together. I’m not letting him have you. I think he’s alone. So far, no one else has shown up to help him out.
Bear didn’t think Jonas needed much help. He inched closer, and Jonas didn’t back up like any other fighter might do. He glided to the side, mirroring Bear’s footwork. That was when Bear realized the forest around them had fallen completely silent.
You hear that, Crawley? No birds. No rodents. Or reptiles. Everything in the forest is afraid of him.
Or they’re afraid of you, Bear, Crawley hastened to say.
Bear knew better because, for the first time since he’d been enhanced, he was scared. He could secretly admit it. He was facing a killing machine. Cold. Calculating. Cunning. Highly intelligent, trained and very experienced. He wasn’t just scared; he was terrified. He had to go on the offensive before he couldn’t think, only react. That would be a very bad place to be.
He rushed his enemy again, and Jonas gave no quarter, coming at him toe to toe, as if they were more bears than men. They swung punches, the force behind each individual blow enormous. He didn’t dare take a hit from one of Jonas’s massive fists, not when the man could punch with the force of a freight train. The most he could do was to try to follow Crawley’s advice. Maybe with the two of them, they’d have a chance to bring the bastard down.
It wasn’t easy to slip the punches, and Bear was an experienced fighter. Time slowed down, even though he knew it was only seconds that passed. He dodged and weaved and kept trying to use his superior size to push Jonas into moving back toward Crawley one step at a time. Just one small step. Maybe two. He was feeling desperate. Jonas was lightning fast, feinting one way and then striking another.
The kick came out of nowhere. The blow was savage because Bear wasn’t expecting it. He’d been concentrating on those fists with that blurring speed and power enough to break him in two. Jonas didn’t need his hands when he had a kick like that—far, far more brutal than anything his fist could have delivered—and there was no doubt the fist would have broken his spine. Bear felt bones shatter. One lung collapsed instantly while the other began a slow crumpling. Every organ in his body turned to jelly, cells ripped apart by that jarring, vicious kick that destroyed him.
Jonas stepped back and just stood watching him with eyes that were ice cold and utterly detached. A rifle spat out a warning shot and then another. As Bear collapsed, slowly falling to his knees, he tried to find Crawley, sending up a little prayer the man hadn’t been shot trying to get to him. Everything had happened so fast.
Crawley stood frozen several yards away, his hands locked behind his head, a stricken look on his face. Bear fell forward, his eyes, nose and mouth suddenly buried in a thick layer of leaves and dirt. Sounds dimmed. Receded altogether. The world went black.
10
Jonas trudged along the path, allowing Jeff and Kyle to stay between Crawley and him as they continued down the mountain toward their homes. He was connected to Camellia on three levels—through Whitney’s pairing, the mycelium underground network, which was very powerful and allowed them to share feelings very easily, and another network, one even more powerful. He suspected it was the Middlemist Red Camellia.
He tried to puzzle out how that would work. Those nerve endings. He saw her work on Kyle and take away his pain. He’d thought it was the mycelium running underground and through them, but he knew it was so much more. They were bound on a molecular level, through nerve endings and even in their brains.
He deliberately hadn’t disconnected from either of the two networks that connected them together when he became his true self. Telling Camellia was different than showing her the effects of the various predatory animals and reptiles Whitney had thought it would be a good idea to shove into him. Whitney had blended and mixed those violent traits until he had the most aggressive male he could possibly come up with. He had purposely enhanced an already dominant personality into something Jonas had to fight night and day.