“Is there something you want to share with the court, Mr. Hayes?” Judge Patel asks, and it’s like Hayes had only been waiting for someone to ask.
“Fuck yes, there is.”
He turns to Jay, pointing a crooked finger at him.
“Rhodes, you think you’re such hot shit, and yet all this time,I had him.I had him on his knees, and that mouth…whoo-boy.”
Judge Sanderson bangs his gavel so hard it finally cracks in two.
“Mr. Hayes! You will cease this behavior immediately.”
The single guard grapples with his prisoner, but he is no match for Hayes when he’s on a roll.
Hayes limps out from behind the table, dragging the single guard with him, and now that he has Jay’s attention, he’s not going to stop.
“No, I don’t think I will.”
His voice drips with twisted satisfaction.
“Do you know how tight he gets when you hurt him a little? How he cries? He likes it—” He cuts himself off, laughing again. “Well, he likes it when I hurt hima lot,too. Useless dumb cunt.”
“Mr. Hayes! If you do not cease this immediately, we will consider this your supervised audience!” Judge Jones shouts.
A second guard bursts through the door, grabbing hold of him, but Hayes drags both across the floor until they finally contain him.
He’s within ten feet of Leo’s mates when he yells—
“Fine! Do you know how long I have waited to tell you this to your face, Rhodes?Forever!Your bitch will always have been mine first.Mine.Covered in my bites, kneeling at my feet—”
It all happens so fast.
Leo isn’t sure how he gets over the railing, past the prosecution’s table, or by the guards.
But then—Grayson is on him.
Hayes isdown,his unhinged rant is cut off mid-word by the most vicious punch Leo has ever seen.
The crack of breaking bone echoes through the courtroom as Hayes’s head snaps back. His nose shatters, blood spraying across the floor. Several teeth go flying before he collapses, unconscious.
Leo’s pacifist mate is gone, leaving a snarling predator, red eyes blazing, long fangs bared in a deadly growl in his place.
Grayson teeters on the edge of a decision—whether toendHayes for what he’s done.
His black hair swings wildly around his face as he looms over the wreckage of his enemy, chest heaving, rage rolling off him in waves.
The room is deathly silent.
No one dares make a sound.
No one wants to be the one to draw the attention of the feral enigma barely clinging to control.
Two security guards rest their hands on their tranquilizer guns, but they remain holstered as the situation teeters on the brink of disaster.
“Gray,” Nix whispers.
He leaps over the railing, landing lightly before gently gripping Grayson’s sleeve.
The front of the courtroom is suddenly flooded with the warm, familiar scent of toasty vanilla cookies.
