Coming for your heart

Chapter 80

Eren raised his sword and blocked the blow of a soldier. They brought some distance between each other, dancing around themselves like the hunter and the prey. Eren bit down a low growl. This man didn't understand that he wasn't the hunter.

Eren feinted an attack and when the man fell for it, he took his life with all the strength he could gather in his arms. It wasn't clean, it wasn't fast. It was messy and bloody and the wretched sound of the soldier loud enough to tear his ears apart.

They didn't have much time left.

Eren grabbed Armin and dragged him away from where they had been sitting.

"Come on!", he shouted at his friend, begging him silently to stay alert to the danger around them. They got held up by a wall of four soldiers, who seemingly came out of nowhere. Grisha's minions.

Eren narrowed his eyes at them, keeping Armin behind his back while raising the sword with both hands.

He had never received proper training like his brother. But he knew how to handle a sword, thanks to Hannes.

"Having a death wish, don't we?", he chuckled darkly and ignored the screeching around them. The soldiers didn't react to his provocation and he only had a small second to decide what to do before all four of them were at him.

A jump back saved his neck but he still had to defend himself against two of the soldiers, while the other two fought off two rebels, who were cursing. Eren couldn't pay much more attention to his saviors.

"Down!", someone barked behind him and he had enough of his mind left to do just that before an arrow got stuck in the first ones chest. Eren used the confusion of the other one to punch him right into his nose and drag his sword across the smaller man's throat in a swift movement.

Jean was by his side in a second, the hand around his arrow tightening when he watched both of them dying. Eren met his worried gaze, the other man's eyes directed at something behind his back.

"I don't know how long we can-"

His words got interrupted when Jean suddenly pushed him out of the way and cried out when a sharp sword met his arm. The arrow fell from his grasp as he panted in pain and backed away from the enemy standing in front of them, an amused smile on his face.

Terror rushed through Eren's veins as he met his father's eyes.

"Now, would you look at that?", the man asked with a small laugh. Eren felt like someone was strangling him. Memories plagued his mind and the wounds on his body seemed to hurt all at once.

Armin gripped his arm and Eren pushed him back.

Away from his father. Out of reach for that monster.

You won't take another family from me!

They glared at each other, the pure spite in Grisha's face almost unbearable.

"I thought we would meet again under more..." Grisha looked around the cave. At the corpses littering the ground. The blood on the stones and splattered across bodies. "appropriate circumstances but I will take what I can get."

"Should I be concerned because of your change in strategy?", Eren snarled, holding the sword tightly in his hands. "Usually you take what you want, no matter if it's yours to get."

"Is that a way to talk to your father?"

"You are no father! Neither to me nor to Zeke!"

His father barked a gruesome laugh and circled his son with a look that was on the edge of crazy and filled with a strange kind of entertainment.