Page 137 of Psycho Beasts
Molly slammed her hand against my back. “Sadie, if you lose, you die. Snap out of it.”
She smacked me harder, and more blood sprayed across both of us.
Survive.
Sun god, I hated surviving. It fucking hurt.
“Do you hear me?!” She shook me back and forth, and my teeth rattled behind my mouth guard. I gagged as some of my teeth went down my throat.
So much for the mouthguard.
“Sadie!” She dumped cold water on my head and stabbed another needle into my arm.
If one more person stabbed me in this realm, I swore to the sun god…
“Do you hear me?”
Whatever she’d injected into me made my throbbing eyes open wide.
Adrenaline coursed through me.
“Is that even legal?” I asked.
“No. Now you’re going to defend for ten minutes, do you hear me?”
I nodded with conviction and turned around. However, gravity wasn’t working, and my broken legs collapsed beneath me.
Z’s voice sounded. “Initiates, you cannot leave your ring to help another initiate.”
Someone screamed, and it sounded like a tussle.
Z barked, and the sounds of dozens of gun safety’s clicking off echoed. “Cobra, Jax, Ascher, Xerxes, you’ll be shot through your forehead if you leave your ring before the end of this trial.”
There was the sound of more fighting.
I waved my hand tiredly in their direction, trying to get them to calm down, but I hurt too badly to do anything else.
Z yelled, “The bullets are enchanted to kill an alpha! You have one second to get back into your ring or you will be shot.”
Cobra hissed loudly.
I did the only thing I could—I flipped him off.
Never mind. My middle finger was bent at a weird angle and wouldn’t move. It was my pinky finger.
But I hoped he got the point.
After long, tense moments, I relaxed with relief when no gunshots rang. Not that I could even turn my head to look; my neck hurt too badly.
Agony throbbed, and the hazy, smoke-filled room contorted and churned around me like a living beast.
Vision wavering, I clenched the rope on the side of the ring to keep myself upright.
My labored breath was too loud.
Warm blood gushed from cuts on my forehead and dripped into my eyes, and my broken fingers shook as I struggled to wipe it away.
I was missing almost all my fingernails and distantly remembered an opponent ripping them off with his teeth.