Lowlander Silverback (Gray Back Bears #5)(27)

His people had gone too far, and now Kong would make his stand.

He’d rebelled in his youth when he was a blackback, but Ivan and Gordon had broken him at Fiona’s orders. He’d fought and bled and almost died to keep his freedom, but in the end, he’d been too weak to hold it. Things were different now, though. He was fully mature, and he hadn’t sat around waiting to be called. He’d focused his energy on building a life, yes, but beyond that, he’d fought anyone who would face off with him in Judge’s barn for the sole purpose of never being weak again.

Kong turned onto the black asphalt road that led to his cabin. It was littered with leaves that blew in little tornadoes. In the distance, beyond Damon’s mountains, lightning lit up the sky. The air out his open window smelled of ozone and rain. Fitting weather for Mac’s passing. Fitting weather for the turmoil within him.

Back at 1010, Layla was probably curled in on herself, crying. The memory of the hopelessness in her eyes as she’d cradled Mac’s body slashed through him. Red rage unfurled in his veins as the cabin came into view, a modest one story with huge logs he’d stripped himself. Three bedrooms—one for him and two for the guards who had made his life a living hell. Who had routinely poked and prodded him down a straight path, making all his decisions, keeping him toeing the edge between surviving and actually living. Constantly reminding him his life belonged to Fiona and his seed to a strange family group he hadn’t chosen for himself.

Fuck Fiona. Fuck his guards. And f*ck some predetermined family group. He was Layla’s—body, soul, bone, and blood.

Rhett had unleashed something inside of Kong that couldn’t be caged again. He’d awoken a monster.

Rhett stood from a rocking chair on the porch, a cruel smile twisted on his lips and an excited glint in his blazing silver eyes.

Kong pulled his car in front of the cabin and parked it, then slid out and said, “You went too far.”

“No such thing,” Rhett murmured. His eye twitched, and he smelled of fur. “See, that was always the problem with you, Kong. You had this moral compass that weakened you. You’re a f*cking silverback. You don’t have to tiptoe around ethics. We take what we want,” Rhett gritted out, clenching his fist in front of him. “We do what we want, and you know why? Because everyone else is beneath us. And what did you do? You made friends with bears and falcons and ravens. With humans. You, the Lowlander Silverback, f*cking royalty and destined to father the next generation of highborn gorillas, and you befriended bottom feeders.” Rhett spat. “I should’ve been the Kong.”

“If Fiona’s idea of the Kong is a silverback who murders on command, then perhaps you should’ve been. Weak?” Kong shook his head slow. “You do everything she says, no questions asked, at the cost of your soul, and you call me weak.” Kong lifted his chin. “You’re the bottom feeder, Rhett. Begging for scraps, guarding a silverback you hate because Fiona said his dick is important. You’re a glorified cock blocker turned murderer. Tell me, did it make you feel good to kill an innocent old man? Did it make you feel strong to overpower a human on his deathbed?”

“Shut up.”

“Do you feel proud that you’ve done what your master told you to?”

“I said shut up!” Rhett paced the porch. “You’re wrong. Fiona respects me. She trusts me to do the things others are too weak to. I’m her right-hand man.”

Kong huffed a humorless, single laugh. “You stupid, blind f*ck. Fiona respects no one.”

“You’re wrong! I pay my dues, and a family group is as good as mine someday.”

“And why would she give you females, Rhett? Why would she give a guard dog her prized possessions?”

Rhett linked his hands behind his head and narrowed his eyes. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to get in my head. Trying to get me to betray my own people.”

“No, Rhett. I don’t care about getting in your head, and I don’t care if you betray anyone. Your life is over after tonight. Can you hear your heartbeat pounding in your chest? I can. Enjoy it now because the sound won’t last for long. Listen,” Kong said on a breath. Even over the breeze of the oncoming storm, he could make it out. “Bum-bum, bum-bum. So fast. So scared because you can see it in my eyes. Your death is coming, and I’m the grim f*cking reaper.”

Rhett’s smile stretched his face into something feral. “A challenge from the mighty Kong?”

Kong dipped his chin once.

“All over a human. Did you know,” Rhett said, pulling his shirt over his head, “old Mac knew why I was there the second I slipped in his window? He tried to yell for help but I was faster.”

Kong shook his head, warding off the black inky tendrils of rage that were pushing against his insides. “Stop it.”

“He yelled under the pillow. Little. Pathetic. Human sounds. I took a picture for Fiona. She likes to see bodies.”

Kong’s skin exploded with a ripping sound and a volley of cracking bones that echoed across the clearing. He slammed his oversize fists against the ground, shaking the earth. Rhett’s silverback burst from him and charged. Kong beat his chest, the sound popping like a drum before he lowered to all fours and ran for Rhett.

He was going to bleed him, rip him, kill him for hurting his mate. For hurting Mac. They clashed with a force of an eighteen-wheeler head-on collision. This wasn’t posturing like so many gorilla battles were. This wasn’t beating the chest and circling before one decided he was beat on dominance alone and slunk away. This was a rip-roaring, bloodletting, fur-ripping, skin-hacking, body-beating battle to the grave. The woods were filled with the death chants of their roaring.