Felicity's Beast World Apocalypse-Chapter 103: Bite

She wobbled on Voss’s back. Her fingers trembled. The buff flickered for a second and she felt the whole line tighten in response.

Sarge was there.

He did not shout. He did not ask. He grabbed Felicity around the waist and lifted her off Voss in one clean motion, turning her like she weighed nothing, setting her behind him so close her shoulder brushed his back. The contact made her feel small in a way that hit her stomach first. Not weak. Contained. Placed. Safe because someone else decided it.

All four husbands noticed and pretended not to.

Not because they were blind. Because they had already accepted that Sarge had been circling the edge of her life for a long time. Because what mattered in that second was not Sarge’s hand on her, it was the horde reaching for her throat. Victor’s gaze flicked once, sharp, then returned to the threat. Damien’s jaw tightened until the muscle jumped, then he cut down another body without looking away. Ivan’s shoulders dropped lower, breath turning heavy, his entire stance turning into a wall.

Voss snarled, furious at the separation, but he pivoted instantly to become the first line again, not to reclaim her, to keep the reach away.

Sarge’s hand came to the back of Felicity’s neck, firm and grounding.

He did not speak about it. He simply anchored her there.

Then he got hit.

Not a glancing blow. Not a shove. A coordinated slam from inside the mist, too fast, too intentional, like the control had learned his shape and chosen his weak point. It crashed into his ribs and shoulder at once, driving him sideways, and the sound that came out of him was not a word. It was a raw broken breath.

His knees buckled.

For a second Felicity saw his body lose the argument with gravity.

Her entire chest seized.

Her hands flew up without permission. Light gathered so violently it made her vision blur. She lurched forward and caught his arm, fingers shaking hard enough she could feel it in her bones, her nails digging into his sleeve like she could hold him upright by will alone.

Blood soaked dark into his gear.

His breathing turned uneven.

His face tightened in contained pain.

Felicity’s eyes went wide and wet, and she did not wipe them because she did not have the spare hands. She stared at him like the world had narrowed down to one man taking damage meant for her, one man still trying to stand even as his body failed him, one man whose entire existence in that moment screamed that he would let himself be destroyed before he let anyone take her.

Her trembling got worse.

Not fear alone.

Something else.

Something that made her stomach flip and her throat close because she hated how much it mattered.

The line held around them. Steel flashed. Magic cracked. Victor and Damien and Ivan and Voss tore the horde back, carving space with weapons and their powers, pushing the dead hands away from Felicity’s reach so she could focus on the one thing in front of her.

Sarge sagged once.

Felicity made a sound that was almost a sob and almost a growl. She planted her feet. She pulled in air like she was about to drown.

Then she healed.

Not a careful patch. Not a steady repair.

A ultimate heal.

She slammed her power outward like a wave, flooding Sarge’s body first, knitting bone, sealing damage, forcing breath back into rhythm, dragging him back from the edge with sheer stubborn light. The heal didn’t stop there. It burst outward into the whole line, washing over Victor’s cuts, Damien’s bruised knuckles, Ivan’s torn shoulder, Voss’s bleeding flank, Snow Team’s exhaustion, Marx’s ragged breath, Sam’s shaking hands, even Shadow and Draco’s strained muscles.

Everything reset. Everything surged back to full as if the last minutes had never happened.

And with the heal came something new.

The buff changed.

It didn’t just sharpen. It detonated.

Felicity felt it ripple through them like a switch flipping from human limitation to something monstrous. Strength multiplied. Not doubled. Not tripled. It felt like a thousand percent, like gravity had loosened its grip on their bodies. She watched Victor’s wings flare once and the air itself seemed to recoil.

She felt Damien’s presence turn colder and heavier. She saw Ivan’s stance widen like the ground belonged to him. She saw Snow Team’s posture lift, eyes narrowing with sudden dangerous capability.

She realized what she had done and panic spiked in the same breath as triumph.

Her nose started bleeding.

Warm and fast.

She tasted iron as it ran over her lip.

Her vision swam for half a second.

Sarge’s hand came up and caught her wrist, steadying it, grounding her again, and Felicity stared at him, shaking, blood on her mouth, power still humming under her skin like a storm.

The horde surged in again.

And everyone on her side moved like something that had been unleashed.

Sarge saw it before anyone else did because he was the only one close enough to catch the detail the way you catch a fault line right before it splits. The blood wasn’t dramatic at first. It was a thin warm line at Felicity’s nostril, a sudden dark gloss against pale skin, the kind of thing you could miss if you were looking at the horde instead of the person holding the world together.

He saw her knees soften. He saw her eyes lose their anchor for a fraction, that distant flicker of distress like she had stepped half out of her body and didn’t know how to climb back in. Everyone else felt the new buff like a roar in their muscles, like a door being kicked off its hinges, but Sarge felt something else under it. He felt the cost. He felt the strain in her breath. He felt her power buck and flare like it was trying to outrun the fact that her body was still just flesh.

He couldn’t shout for her.

He knew what shouting did. It traveled. It made heads turn. It made the line chatter. It made Snow Team look back. It made the husbands flick their focus from the kill zone to her face. It made openings. It turned one person collapsing into everyone collapsing. He didn’t have that luxury, not with the mist still thick enough to taste, not with the horde still pressing, not with Byron’s control still testing the edges of their formation like fingers probing for a weak seam.

So he did the only thing that would reach her without reaching anyone else.

He stepped in close enough that her ear brushed his jaw and he bit her neck hard.

Not a lover’s mark. Not gentle. Not meant to linger.

A brutal, immediate pain designed to drag her consciousness back into her skin.

His teeth sank in at the hinge where neck met shoulder, where nerves flared sharpest, and he felt her jolt like she’d been struck. Her whole body snapped upright, breath punching out, eyes widening, hands flexing.

The sound she made stayed trapped in her throat because surprise stole it. Sarge’s stomach twisted at the taste of her skin, at the way his own body hated himself for doing it, at the way it still worked. It destroyed him to hurt her back, even for half a second, even to save her. He didn’t loosen until he saw her eyes lock again, until he saw the focus return like a blade sliding into place.

"Stay with me," he murmured into the same skin he’d just bitten, voice low enough it didn’t exist to anyone else.

Felicity’s fingers clutched at his sleeve, trembling hard, the buff still humming in her veins like a storm. She blinked once, twice, and swallowed down whatever panic was trying to climb out of her chest. Blood still slicked her upper lip.

Sarge’s hand came up and wiped it with the side of his glove before it could drip, quick and rough like he was angry at the universe for daring to make her bleed.

He felt the new buff in his own muscles, too. It was obscene. It was not normal strength. It was the kind of power that turned restraint into an active choice instead of a limitation. It told him he could lift her with one hand and throw bodies with the other.

It told him he could break bone like twigs. It told him he could solve problems in the simplest way possible, which was violence. He hated that his body liked it. He hated that part of him whispered that with this kind of strength, nothing should ever touch her again.

The mist shifted.

Victor felt it the same moment Sarge did, that tightening in the air like a breath pulled too deep. The control was still there, still clinging, still conducting the dead in subtle rhythm. Victor’s wings snapped open and he vaulted up and forward, not toward the thickest press but toward the place the mist felt densest, where it gathered like it was pooling around a spine.

He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t need to. With Felicity’s heal still fresh in every tendon and the new buff roaring through his frame, he hit the node like a meteor with intent. Steel flashed. Magic flared. His power raked through the mass like talons through cloth, shredding the knot that held the horde’s coordination together.

The reaction was immediate.

The mist recoiled like something alive deciding to back off.

It retreated in a sudden thin rush, peeling away from the asphalt and the dead bodies like a tide pulling out too fast, and for a half beat the world felt wrong in its absence, like silence after a scream. The horde staggered. Their steps lost synchrony. Their heads stopped turning in perfect unison. They became what they were supposed to be without the conductor. Hungry. Dumb. Slow.

Easier.

Everyone felt the change and moved with it.

Weapons rose and fell in cleaner arcs. Magic struck with more precision. Openings appeared and stayed open. The fight turned from desperate defense into controlled removal. Snow Team tightened into the formation Sarge had drilled into them until it was muscle memory, and with the buff in their bodies they were terrifyingly efficient. Kai did not surge forward. He stayed where he belonged, covering angles, breathing through the adrenaline, jaw so tight the muscle jumped, eyes locked on the perimeter like he was guarding something sacred and refusing to admit it. Marx moved like a man who had already made his point and didn’t need to prove it twice. Sam’s posture steadied. Shadow and Draco hit like heavy machinery, laughter gone, purpose sharp.

And then, in the middle of all that brutal order, Victor’s space split open like someone had kicked a hatch.