My hands fisted at my sides. I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to claw his eyes out with my bare fingers. But I was afraid to move for fear of pushing the blade deeper.

And I would not beg. For my life? Maybe. For someone else’s life? Definitely. But not to avoid a little discomfort and an ugly scar. Not to indulge some vengeful psychopath’s thirst for power.

So Dean dragged the blade through my skin. I held my breath and fought not to close my eyes. Not to look weak. He cut slowly, tracing the line of my cheekbone, and I stood frozen, screaming on the inside. The pain was minor compared to the jagged gash in my arm, but my eyes watered immediately. Tears stung my new wound, thinning the blood running down my face, dripping from my chin. I could smell it. I could see it, a haze of dark red on the lower left edge of my vision.

“Stop.” The fury in Jace’s voice was as bleak as Dean’s future, as dark as my own rage.

Dean paused but didn’t lift the blade from my skin. “Let Alex go and get down on your knees. The longer you wait, the longer I cut.”

“No,” I whispered, moving nothing but my lips. If Jace let his brother go, Alex would kill him. No hesitation. No self-indulgent torture. No bad-guy monologue. Just a single, fatal blow to the head. I would lose him and Kaci. “No, Jace.”

Marc, where the hell are you?

I rolled my eyes toward Jace, and saw his features twisted in agony, as if he literally shared my pain, as well as my fury. The tip of his blade had pressed a dimple into Alex’s neck, but had yet to break the skin. He took a deep, shaky breath, but held his ground, under my order.

So Dean cut some more. Slowly.

A feline whine leaked from my throat. My fists curled tighter. I wasn’t worried about the wound; they weren’t really trying to hurt me.

I’ll admit it: I was pissed about the scar.

We can heal wounds quickly, but we can’t erase them, so whatever Dean did to my face would be permanent. The bastard was carving his mark into me, and it would be there every time I looked into the mirror or touched my cheek. For the rest of my life, every time I saw my own face I would think of Colin Dean, and of what Alex had told him to do to me. Every time Jace saw me, he would remember.

So would Marc.

When he heard me whine, Jace flinched. “Drop the knife now,” he growled, and my eyes rolled to the right to bring him and Alex back into focus. “Or I swear I’ll kill him.”

Dean shrugged, and the blade bit deeper as he dragged it slowly toward the corner of my mouth. “You kill him, and I get the girl. After I’ve prettied up her other cheek.”