Chapter 25: Ain’t It Bully All Together, Though?

"Is that so, Uncle Hector?"

My voice cut through the heavy silence of the room, flat and chillingly devoid of emotion.

Karl’s chuckle petered out. Hector turned a dark glare toward me, already expecting to see a terrified, tearful Omega cowering behind her mother, but he never found it.

He frowned.

"Heh, look at this. It seems your child decided she had a death wish before the tournament even began," Hector snarled.

"Brianna, please... don’t," Valerie whimpered from the floor, clutching Bradford’s arm. "Leave it to us. Just go back to your room!"

"Listen to your mother, Brianna," Bradford croaked, wiping blood from his split lip as he tried to push himself up. "Don’t provoke him."

I ignored them both, stepping out from behind the counter with a slow, deliberate stride. I stopped barely three feet from my uncle, crossing my arms and tilting my head up.

"Look at you," I said softly, my eyes sweeping over Hector’s patrol uniform with blatant disgust. "Throwing your weight around in a broken house, punching a man who can’t fight back. You must feel like an Alpha, Uncle Hector."

Hector’s jaw clenched, a thick vein bulging on his forehead. "Watch your tongue, girl," he snarled, stepping into my personal space. "You don’t talk to me like that in your father’s house."

"Why not?" I asked, a slow, mocking smile spreading across my lips. "What are you going to do? Hit me too? Go ahead. Show Karl what a brave Beta warrior you are."

Hector’s face flushed a deep, ugly crimson. He growled, an aggressive wave of his Beta aura bursting out of him, washing over the tiny room to press down on my shoulders like weights. He wanted to crush me, to make me drop to my knees in front of his guest without ever having to lay a hand on a defenseless teenage girl.

But I didn’t flinch. And I didn’t tremble.

Instead, I raised one hand to my mouth and let out a long, slow, exaggerated yawn.

"Are you finished or is that just the warm up?" I asked, blinking lazily at him. "Your aura feels like a weak breeze. Are you sure you’re a patrol wolf?"

Hector’s eyes widened in sheer, stunned disbelief. How was a wolfless Omega standing under the full weight of a Beta’s oppressive aura without her knees buckling? A seed of sudden, unsettling doubt planted itself in his mind, but his pride couldn’t handle the embarrassment.

"Shut up brat! Just because I was going easy on you doesn’t mean you get to run your mouth," Hector snapped, refusing to accept whatever reason might be keeping me on my feet.

I scoffed.

"You? Going easy on me? Now isn’t that kind of you?" I laughed.

"This little brat," he clenched his fists at his side. As much as he wanted to charge at a girl that could be seen as no threat, he couldn’t risk making a spectacle of himself by getting into a brawl with a weak girl. "Karl," he called, stepping back. "Deal with her. She’s your age—teach this brat some manners before the tournament. I don’t want people saying I bullied her because I was older."

I scoffed, ain’t it bully all together, though? My eyes flashed with dark, murderous amusement as I turned my gaze onto Karl.

"Sending someone else because you’re terrified of a wolfless girl?" I purred, my voice dripping with pure venom. "Truly pathetic, Uncle."

"Shut your mouth!" Hector roared.

Karl stepped forward, a nasty, cruel smirk returning to his face as he cracked his knuckles. "Don’t worry, Hector. I’ve wanted to break this arrogant little parasite since the day she got into Ravenhollow. Let’s see if that mouth stays big when I tear it open."

He lunged forward, throwing a fast, heavy right hook aimed directly at my temple—expecting me to freeze like I had in the muddy alley six months ago, and like every other time I had been bullied.

Fools.

I dipped my shoulder, slipping under his strike with effortless grace. Before Karl could even register that he had hit empty air, I drove my elbow straight into his exposed ribs with the full force of my body behind it.

A sickening cracking sound echoed from the impact and Karl staggered. Surely, he didn’t know if it was my skull that had cracked just now, or if it was his own ribs, as if the pain hadn’t registered yet.

An even bigger fool than I expected.

​For a split second, Karl stood frozen, his right arm still extended over my head while his mind desperately tried to rationalize what had just happened.

He actually waited for me to drop to the floor, holding onto the foolish delusion that the sickening snap had come from my fragile body.

But even after a minute, I didn’t fall. He looked at me, confused.

"You... Why are you still standing?"

No sooner had the question left his lips had the reality crashed into him like a freight train. The initial shock had cleared, and so came the pain.

​Karl let out a strangled, blood-curdling gasp. His eyes bulged out of his head as the agonizing pain finally registered, sending a shockwave straight through his nervous system.

He doubled over, clutching his right side, his face draining of all color as he choked on his own breath.

​"My... my ribs..." he gasped, stumbling backward against the doorframe, his knees shaking uncontrollably. "You... you dirty little parasite... what did you do?!"

​"Karl!" Hector shouted, his jaw dropping in absolute horror as he watched the star Beta contender of the Fletcher family gasping for air like a landed fish.

​Hector’s brain short-circuited. He looked at Karl writhing in pain, then looked back at me—standing there as cool as a summer breeze, lightly dusting off the elbow of my top.

"You... you definitely did something. What did you do?!" He roared.

​"What did I do?" I asked, tilting my head with a cold, mocking innocence. "I simply stood my ground. Did you really think throwing a wide, unrefined hook with zero guard would work on me, Fletcher?"

​"You... you got lucky!" Karl snarled through grit teeth, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as the broken bone punctured his inner tissues.

He forced himself to stand upright, his eyes burning with a chaotic, unhinged rage. "You caught me off guard! A wolfless Omega like you couldn’t possibly hit with that kind of force! It was a cheap fluke!"

​I let out a soft, low chuckle, stepping forward until I was standing right over him. The oppressive, lethal aura of an assassin who had executed hundreds of high-value targets bled into the small kitchen, suffocating the air far more effectively than Hector’s pathetic Beta pressure ever could.

​"Luck?" I whispered, leaning down so my eyes were inches from his trembling, pale face. "Then by all means, Fletcher... stand up and show me how un-lucky I can get."

​Karl flinched, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead as he stared into my pitch-black, lifeless gaze. For the first time in his arrogant, sheltered life, he didn’t know what he was looking at.

​He swallowed hard, his bravado instantly shattering into a thousand pieces as he shrank back against the wall, utterly terrified to make another move.