The Silver Swan (The Elite King's Club 1)

Her mouth slams shut and then she laughs me off. “Oh, you’re not being serious.”

I laugh with her, though I’m very serious. My dad had to physically restrain me after some stupid bimbo slut and her bimbo-ass family uploaded a picture of them on Facebook with a dead lion that they had killed, holding its lifeless body proudly. One day, I’m going to reenact that very photo, only holding their first-born child.

Okay, so that was too far.

Yeah, that was a little far, but alas, whatever people think about hunters, I love animals. More than I love people. I—me and my family—have only ever hunted deer, unless it was duck shooting.

“Madi!” Tillie whispers into the back of my neck, her breath misting across my neck.

“What!” I hiss back, drawing my gun up. Tillie is following closely behind me, her chest rubbing against my back every two seconds. If we were in a horror movie right now, she would be the death of us.

“It’s getting dark.”

“Well, that’s what happens when it’s almost 8:00 p.m. Chill out.” I go to step over a fallen log, when I slip and fall to the ground, just as a bright green splatter of paint shoots over the trunk that’s near us. Tillie snaps out of her questionnaire, looks to the green paint, and then screams out in shock just as another splatter of paint hits her square in the jaw. I slam my hand over my mouth in shock. That could have easily knocked out some teeth. Rolling onto my stomach, I prop my gun up against my shoulder and peek through the scope, the diameter giving me zoom view. A bush rustles opposite us, but I know that’s too easy and was obviously set up. Noticing the bush moved from the right first, I whip the end of my gun toward the right where, sure enough, Brantley and Ace’s faces come into view, where they’re laughing at Tillie’s—and possibly my—stupidity.

I grin. “Boo-yah motherfuckers.” And then I squeeze the trigger, my gun pointing toward Brantley’s smug-ass face first. When I see the bright pastel pink splatter all over his shocked mug, I quickly point it toward Ace and squeeze again, this time getting him exactly where they got Tillie, on the corner of her jaw.

They both scream aloud. “Fuck!”

I laugh and turn back to Tillie, who’s weeping up against the trunk of the tree, tears pouring down her cheeks, smudging the green color on her face.

“Hey.” I shuffle closer to her. “It hurts, huh? Don’t worry. I got them.”

She shakes her head, the tears not threatening to leave. “It’s not that, Madi.”

“What’s wrong?” I ask, shuffling closer to her, but my finger still trigger ready.

“My dad. Well, um….”

“Your bruises?” I whisper, more to myself than to her, putting two and two together, her being upset, and then the first thing she says is her dad.

She nods. “He’s a drunk. My mom left when I was two, and he has always reminded me about how I owe him because he stuck around when she didn’t.” She swipes the tears off her cheeks again. “He gets rough most nights.”

“You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to, Tillie. It’s okay.”

She smiles, pushing her long mousy brown hair away from her face. “Anyway, I just wanted to explain why I overreacted about that.”

Footsteps get closer, the crunching of their closeness vibrating out, and I quickly stand, shielding Tillie and raising my gun to whoever is coming.

“Whoa!” Bishop grins, his hands raised. “Just me, baby.”

I narrow my eyes. “Oh yeah? Last I checked, you said I wasn’t allowed to come and play. So, um…” I look down to Tillie, and she smiles at me with a knowing twinkle in her eye. I wink at her and then look back to Bishop. “That makes it us against you.” His smirk drops, and then just as he’s about to pull the trigger, I squeeze mine, and bright pink paint splatters all over the front of his hard chest before I turn the tip to Nate, giving him two solid shots to his chest. Grinning, I drop my gun. “See—”

Black paint hits me across my chest just as a sharp sting plows into me. “Oh my God!”

Bishop keeps grinning and then lowers his gun. “For a trigger-happy chick, you sure bitch like a girl.”

I go to whack him with the back of my gun, when he pushes it out of the way, his hand coming to my throat. He drops me to the ground with a thud, his grip still around my neck like a collar. He runs the tip of his nose over the bridge of mine, his waist pinning me to the ground and a smile tickling the corner of his lips. “See, baby? Don’t get fucking cocky.”

Nate rolls his eyes just as Brantley and Ace come around one of the tree trunks. “Fucking bitch,” Brantley grumbles, wiping the pink paint off his jaw.