The face is more familiar now. He sees me and looks up, eyes cold and dark, a hint of a grin in the corner of his mouth, while the announcer is finalizing his speech to the crowd.
Vincent Legrand.
Oh, this is perfect. Looks like I’ll be the one having the real fun tonight.
Rose
“It’s Vincent Legrand,” I shout into my earpiece. “He’s the one in the ring.”
“Are you sure?” Josh replies. I’m barely able to hear him through my earpiece over the roar of the crowd.
“I’m positive. I can see him perfectly from here,” I reply.
“Not good,” he says back.
“What do we do?” I speak loudly, trying to be loud enough for him to hear me over the crowd, but not so loud as to attract undue attention. Thankfully the bleachers are full of drunk, overly noisy, rowdy humans, so I’m guessing no one cares.
There’s silence on the other end. I strain my ear to make sure I’m not missing anything, but there’s just a long pause, until I finally hear Josh on other end.
“We let them fight.” Josh’s voice is resigned.
“Are you kidding? I must not have heard you right,” I reply, incredulous at what I think I just heard.
“They have to fight, Rose. We’ll get Legrand either way, but we can’t disrupt the fight or it will cause a stir. We couldn’t stop it even if we wanted to.”
“What about the SWAT team? The police? We can stop it before it happens.”
“Their operation is in the neighboring building that houses the mob offices. Primarily their records,” I hear, missing a word or two as the crowd gets louder and louder. “Aside from Legrand, none of their key targets are at the fight, and they don’t want a scene. If a single policeman enters this place then all hell will break loose and neither we nor they will be able to catch anyone.”
This is crazy. All of a sudden our simple plan has backfired. And the one on the receiving end of that shot is Hawes. He has no clue what he’s getting into.
Right now, I don’t care about the operation. I don’t care about catching Legrand. I don’t care if I lose my job. I care about Hawthorne. I can’t let him do this.
I jump up from my seat and go to the side of the ring. The cage is raised several feet off the ground, so it can be more easily seen by the crowd. I grab the cage and shake it violently, shouting, hoping to get Hawes’ attention.
“Hawes! Get out of there! It’s Legrand!” I cry at the top of my lungs. But the crowd is deafening now, waiting for the match to start, excitement building on top of anticipation of the big match.
I can see Josh out of the corner of my eyes, no longer walking drunkenly, but running up to me. I can see several bouncers coming up as well, probably to deal with what looks like a rabid fan who is closer to the ring than she should be. Before the bouncers reach me, Josh pulls me back to my seat on the bleachers.
“What are you doing?!” he asks, angry and befuddled.
“We have to do something. There’s no way Hawes can fight Legrand in the ring,” I reply.
“There’s nothing else we can do, don’t you see?” Josh says, talking animatedly with his hands.
There’s the sound of an air horn heard above the crowd, piercing through the arena, signaling the beginning of the match.
Nothing else to do but watch and pray.
Don’t die, Hawes. Please.
Hawes
The match has started, and I’m so excited I can hardly think. I get to wipe the floor with Legrand and Rose will get to see me do it.
Sure, he may be a shifter-killer, a wanted man, an outlaw. But I’m Hawes.
It’s exciting to think that I’ll get to fight someone a rung higher than a regular human for once. Someone who can actually put up a fight. The ultimate distraction.
A real fight.
The horn blows and I begin circling Legrand, hoping to get a feel for his style. He doesn’t do anything. Just stands there and watches me circling. Those dark eyes, watching me closely as I move. I dodge right and left, and he just follows me with his eyes, studying.
It’s kind of unnerving, but if he’s not going to be the one to throw the first hit, might as well be me I guess.
I lunge with a front kick, hoping to get a feel for what he has in terms of speed. He doesn’t move an inch, and my kick catches him squarely in the stomach. Aside from sliding back a few inches, he just glares and looks back at me.
If he wants to be a punching bag, I’ll oblige him.
I regain my footing and throw a punch at his face, catching him squarely in the jaw. His head flies to the side, then returns back to its place.
This guy isn’t dangerous, he’s crazy.
I back off, waiting for his counter, but there’s nothing. He looks like he’s calculating something in his head. It’s devious. But he doesn’t show me anything. The perfect poker face.
The crowd is wild and each blow riles them to new heights. Some are yelling for The Chainsaw to do something already. Others are calling for me to put the idiot out of his misery, or something like that.
All I can feel is a terrible sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach. And somewhere, Rose’s eyes are on me.
Can’t let her down now.
I rush at Legrand, hoping to land a knee square into his chest. This time, Legrand moves, redirecting my knee with a circular motion made with his elbow.
Finally, a target that moves.
I counter with a left hook, then a right. Legrand’s technique is good though. Really good. He’s able to put his arms up to catch my swinging fists with his hardened shoulders, avoiding any real damage. Hoping to catch him off guard, I whirl with my elbow toward his face. The cranking motion of the attack creates incredible force, and it’s often enough to knock an opponent out in one blow, if it lands correctly.
Legrand just ducks to the side, looking completely unaffected, his facade unbroken. I spin again on the ground, hoping to sweep his leg and bring him to the ground, where I’m confident my Jiu-Jitsu practice will come in handy, but he simply skips backward.
Not only is he fast, he’s experienced too. When did Mr. Shifter-Murderer have time to work on his MMA form?
I’m not used to matches like this, and I step back for a second to catch my breath. Even going at my fastest, he’s unnaturally fast. I remind myself that he’s a shifter too. Except that even most shifters wouldn’t be a match for me.
He’s just got great technique, I think. It’s just that, right?
Legrand’s eyes have changed. They’re no longer thinking, as if he’s somewhere in the back of his head. They’re focused now, completely on me, like one of those creepy optical illusions that is always staring at you, no matter what direction you look at it from. Only instead of a statue or a creepy ghost, it’s the eyes of a killer.
I got this though.
Legrand approaches me, throwing a roundhouse, which narrowly misses my face as I duck under it. Instantly afterwards he throws several jabs. I’m able to block them, but they’re not the jabs from a human MMA fighter. Or any normal shifter for that matter. It stings, even though I’m able to mostly deflect the blows with the harder parts of my body. He leaps and brings his knee toward me, and I back up quickly, the force of it narrowly missing me.
While I’m still trying to process the rapid change of events, The Chainsaw swivels and throws his leg backwards, catching me squarely off guard. The force is incredible, and it throws me back against the cage, which is closer now than I remember it being.
It looks like he was trying to corral me against the edge of the ring. It’s a terrible place to be, generally. The only way out is through your opponent.
Being slammed against the cage hurts, but I’m reeling from the blow from his heel. It felt like a thousand bricks focused into only a couple of square inches of space. Even my incredibly hard abs are struggling to recover, and I’m trying to gasp for air.
Wasting no time though, Legrand charges into me, slamming into t
he reinforced fence that acts as the boundary for the ring. He’s locked one of my arms in his, the other hand wrapped around my neck, preventing me from slipping past him.
I try to wriggle free, but it’s no use. Not only is his technique flawless, his strength is incredible. I’ve fought shifters before, often outnumbered, and they were never a match for me. Until now.
Legrand, his face inches from mine, looks into my eyes, which I can now see are dark grey, cold and soulless.
Using my free arm, I try to get Legrand to move, striking him in the side. But stuck against the fencing, I can’t get any leverage. There’s no space to move in to get behind any of my punches.
He holds my locked arm tighter, and I can feel my joints and bones bending as he tries to snap my arm with the vice made by his armpit. I’m able to resist it, but just barely.
Legrand just looks at me and shakes his head slightly.
“Tsk, tsk, Hawthorne. You didn’t think you were the only one with alpha strength, did you?”
I guess before now, I thought it was something that only ran in the family. But now the truth is staring me plainly in the face.
Oh shit.
Chapter 2
Rose
Every second sitting here, watching Hawes in the same ring as Vincent Legrand, is torture. I’m frustrated even more by the fact that we have no intel on him. Nothing that we could exploit to our advantage. We’re sitting ducks here, and all we know for sure is that he’s a cold-blooded killer.
“Are you sure there’s nothing we can do?” I ask Josh, knowing what his response is.
Josh doesn’t respond, just watches the fight. I can see sweat beading on his temple. He’s as nervous about this as I am, he’s just trying to keep his cool or we’ll all lose it I think.
Right now they’re locked together against the cage, Hawes and Legrand moving a little here and there, trying to find a weakness in the other’s technique. I haven’t seen many fights, but between my self-defense training and watching a handful of fights while on Hawes’ case, I know the difference between a good position and a bad one.
And right now Hawes is in a bad one.
“Get out of there, Hawes!” I yell, not as a hopeful fan cheering for their favorite fighter, but as a desperate woman who doesn’t know what else to do.
Hawes is trying to trip Legrand now, using his leg as a hook to hopefully bring Legrand off balance, but it’s no use. The Chainsaw’s technique is really good, and he simply sidesteps out of the way, keeping his feet planted far from Hawes’ reach. There are a few shallow punches from Hawes, but none can connect well at this distance.
The crowd is still going wild, and the noise only adds to the chaos my mind is swimming in, trying to reconcile what is happening against what should instead have happened.
“How did Legrand end up in the ring? How did we not know about this?” I ask Josh.
“None of our sources gave us any idea that he would be the one fighting tonight. It must have been a last-minute change, which they could get away with because they’re the organizers. It had to have been a setup,” Josh replies, rubbing his temple worriedly.
I’m still watching Hawes, though. Through sheer strength, he’s able to free his arm from Legrand’s grasp, putting a few inches of space between them. With a quick motion, Hawes jumps onto Legrand in flying guard position, wrapping his legs around Legrand’s midsection, forcing the larger shifter to take his weight.
We sometimes worked in this position at the gym. Though technically an advantageous position you can attack from, you’re still vulnerable to strikes from the enemy, and it can be dangerous if you’re locked with a larger, more aggressive foe.
Legrand keeps Hawes pinned to the cage, almost as if he’s trying to push free of Hawes’ grip. Hawes pushes back against him, and for a few seconds they’re locked at a stalemate.
In an instant though, Legrand swivels, with Hawes still wrapped around him, propping himself up by hooking an arm around Legrand’s neck. Before we can even anticipate what will happen, there’s a loud slam heard across the room as Legrand jumps forward and rams Hawes into the ground, his elbow driving into Hawes with incredible force. For a split second I can see Hawes gasp for breathe as Legrand sits up and tries to pull Hawes’ legs off of him, hoping to escape Hawes’ guard.
In normal MMA matches this sort of thing wouldn’t be allowed. But it’s only a harsh reminder that this isn’t normal MMA.
Thankfully, Hawes keeps his legs tightly locked, and Legrand is unable to pull out of Hawes’ guard. Recalculating his plans, Legrand goes on the offensive. Hawes has barely recovered enough to put his arms up to protect himself, just in time as Vincent begins throwing a flurry of punches down on the still-recovering Hawthorne. Even with Hawes’ arms up, I can see the incredible force Legrand is hitting with. Though he may not be connecting with any vulnerable spots, it has to be whittling Hawes down. He has to get out of there fast, or counterattack, and soon.
Typically with MMA, it doesn’t make sense to strike against an opponent who is blocking your attacks, as it wastes energy and strength, which can leave you vulnerable later in a match. But I can see how Legrand’s strategy has shifted. His early attacks were hoping to end the match quickly. Break an arm, land an easy choke, anything that could finish fast, but that would only work against someone inexperienced or overly cocky. Hawes may be cocky but it’s mostly justified, so luckily, he didn’t fall for any of that.
But now I can see that, without an easy victory early on, Legrand’s plan looks to simply wear Hawes down. And because Legrand is a shifter too, his stamina and power can last drastically longer than any regular human’s. All Legrand has to do is last longer than Hawes. Or at least weaken Hawes enough so he won’t be able to recover from any of the more powerful moves.
“C’mon, Hawes, do something,” I hear myself whisper, the sound almost completely drowned out by the crowd.
Hawes is taking a beating, and Legrand is relentless. It doesn’t even look like his breathing has intensified, despite the incredible exertion we can see. Thankfully, Hawes is able to grab one of Legrand’s wrists, attempting to pull it back toward his chest so he can isolate, usually for something like an arm-bar or a Kimura.
“Good job, Hawes, you can do it,” I hear Josh mutter at my side. His eyes are fixed on the match, intensely watching.
Hawes has the right positioning as well, both arms cranking Legrand’s arm back. His alpha strength should definitely help him in this situation. Not even Legrand should be able to pull out of this. For a second, things are looking positive, Hawes turning his body so his leg can isolate Legrand’s arm from the rest of his body at the shoulder. But then it changes direction. Legrand grabs his trapped arm with his other arm, and is able to pull it back from Hawes. Slowly, but gradually, Hawes loses his grip, as Legrand is able to pull the trapped arm away from Hawes and back toward his own body.
How in the hell can that be? Hawes is the strongest shifter I’ve ever met. No amount of technique should have been able to get Legrand out of that, especially with Hawes’ strength behind it.
I can see shock on Hawthorn’s face. What was determination a second ago has turned to panic. Not only is Legrand’s arm far from being arm-barred, Hawes lost his positioning on Legrand while trying to do the move, and his legs are no longer locked around Legrand’s midsection. Rather than try to move back into guard, Hawes attempts to bail, probably so he can take the fight off the ground and back onto their feet. He pushes off Legrand and rolls, trying to pop back onto his feet.
Legrand doesn’t miss a beat though, and he lunges for Hawes while he’s rolling. Thankfully, Hawes is able to get to his feet quickly, throwing a few punches that miss Legrand completely, but enough to keep distance between them.
The fight is back to where it started. Only now Hawes looks battered and bruised. There are small cuts everywhere on his body, especially his arms, probably from where Legrand’s punches made contact.
Legrand, on th
e other hand, is just as calm and collected as he was at the beginning. He’s starting to sweat, but he looks like he could do this all day. Hawes, on the other hand, doesn’t.
“Damnit,” I hear Josh swear to my left. “It looks like we have company,” he says with a nod to our right, the direction of the doors we entered from.
At the entrance I can see a dozen or so men standing at the large double doors leading into the building, looking intently into the audience. One of them spots us and points, saying something to his group. They turn in our direction, and all begin to walk toward us, quickly, but trying to not look hurried.
“We have to get out of here,” Josh says, standing from his seat. “Now.”
I stand and follow Josh, walking quickly away from the direction the men are coming from. I glance up at the ring and see Hawes and Legrand throwing punches at each other, desperation rising in me since I cant keep my focus on the fight, but instead am confronted with the fact that all of us are in danger right now.
Don’t give up Hawes, please.
Chapter 3
Hawes
This guy just won’t quit. He’s like a machine. A terrible, soulless killing machine made to make my life a living nightmare right now.
“I hate you, Legrand. Just putting that out there,” I tell the machine. It gives no response.
This feels like it’s been going on forever, though it has probably only been a minute or two. Normally a bell would have sounded marking the end of the round, but there’s none. Their ring, their rules I guess.
The guy is freakin’ tireless. Every time I try to find a hole, he has already covered it and is smacking me with upside the head with the shovel he used to cover it. Figuratively speaking.
I shake my head. Focus, Hawthorne. This isn’t a joke.
I’ve been in tough pickles before, but nothing like this. Legrand really lives up to his name. It feels like no matter how hard I give, I get it back twofold. I can feel my body running down, my muscles starting to give here and there. My natural regeneration helps, but it can’t heal faster than Legrand can dish out the pain.
Ultimate Alpha Boxed Set: A BBW and Wolf Shifter collection Page 32
