Chapter 34 – Bells #2
I sprint down the corridor, past the locked doors, past the stairwell where I came in, and I'm three steps from the corner when gunfire erupts.
POP.
POP.
POP.
The sound is concussive in the enclosed space, slamming my eardrums, and I skid to a stop.
Rex doesn't have a gun.
No.
No no no—
I turn back.
More footsteps now. Not Rex's or Stephen's. Multiple, coming from the stairwell, boots pounding in coordinated rhythm. More guards. Fresh ones.
I round the corner and run straight into them.
Three of them. Tactical vests, sidearms drawn, and the one in front clotheslines me across the chest with a forearm that lifts me off my feet and drops me flat on my back on the concrete.
All the air leaves my body.
I'm gasping, trying to roll, trying to get up, when a knee drops onto my spine and my arms get wrenched behind me. The zip tie cinches tight around my wrists—too tight, the plastic biting into skin—and I scream more from rage than pain.
"GET THE FUCK OFF ME—"
A hand fists in my hair and hauls me to my feet.
I thrash.
Kick one of them in the shin hard enough to hear him yelp.
Slam my forehead into another's nose and relish in the satisfying crunch.
But my hands are bound and my knife is somewhere in the dark behind me and there are three of them and one of me, and they drag me back through the corridor with my boots scraping the concrete.
The rehearsal theater.
The birdcage.
They throw me inside.
I hit the bench and bounce off it onto the stone floor, my bound hands taking none of the impact. My shoulder screams. My cheek grinds against cold stone.
The cage door clangs shut.
I'm still trying to get to my knees when they haul Rex in.
Two guards on each side, dragging him by the arms, his boots leaving twin streaks of blood on the stone. He's wrapped in heavy industrial chains, the kind used for rigging, wound around his torso and arms and cinched tight behind his back, binding his wrists at his lower spine.
He's still snarling.
Still fighting for me.
They pull the cage door open and dump him inside.
This time, the lock goes on.
Rex tries to get up immediately—pure instinctual alpha, his body refusing to stop even though it has nothing left—and his arms strain against the chains and the tendons in his neck stand out like cables and he makes it to his elbows before his strength gives out.
He collapses.
Face down.
His breathing is ragged. Harsh, wet, labored sounds that tell me the bullet is doing things bullets shouldn't do inside a body. His back is soaked through, the blood spreading into the chains.
But the worst part, the part that absolutely guts me, is what he does with his face.
He turns it away from me.
Grinds his forehead against the stone floor, tucking his chin, angling his scarred side down and his dark hair falling forward in a tangled, bloody mess to cover the rest.
Even now, even chained and bleeding out and barely conscious, even though the guards are leaving and closing the door behind them and Rex and I are alone, his first instinct is to hide.
"Rex…" I choke out.
His body goes rigid.
"Don't," he growls into the stone. "Don't fucking look at me."
"Rex," I say again. Softer this time. "Please…"
"Don't."
His voice is a wreck. Barely a whisper scraped across broken glass, the word half-muffled by the stone floor where he's pressing his face like he can grind himself into nonexistence.
My hands are zip-tied behind my back. The plastic bites into my wrists every time I move.
But I can move.
And right now, moving is the only thing that matters.
I wriggle across the cold stone floor toward him. It's ungraceful as fuck—shoulders hunching, knees digging, my bound arms wrenched at an angle that makes my rotator cuff scream. Blood smears under my hip. His blood. There's so much of it.
"I said don't—"
"And I said look at me, so we're at an impasse."
He growls.
I get close enough. My thigh presses against the top of his head. He flinches—a full-body jerk that makes the chains rattle and clank against the stone—but I don't pull away.
I shift my weight. Tuck my legs underneath me. Angle my body until his head is resting against my thigh, then I lean forward and nudge his hair aside with my nose.
Just my nose.
No hands because I can't fucking use them.
I nuzzle into the crown of his head, breathing him in. Sweat and blood and underneath all of it, his clean, frigid scent.
My scent match.
My mate.
Bleeding out on a stone floor in a gilded cage because he came for me anyway.
A low, broken sound vibrates through his body and into mine.
He's shaking.
The tremors aren't from cold. They're the deep, involuntary kind that come from a body pushed past every limit it has and running on nothing but animal stubbornness.
His back is a wet ruin. The chains are so tight they're cutting into his forearms through the sleeves of his shirt. Every breath comes out ragged and wet.
"You're okay," I murmur into his hair. "You're okay, you're okay, you're okay—"
"I'm not," he grinds out. "And stop—stop trying to comfort me—"
"Tough shit."
He makes a sound that might be a growl or might be a groan. I can't tell. It doesn't matter.
He turns his face into my stomach.
Hiding.
The movement is desperate and instinctive, his forehead pressing hard against me, and I feel his destroyed cheek and exposed teeth against my thigh even through my pants.
My heart rate spikes, but not from fear of Rex.
From the overwhelming, nauseating terror that he's going to die right here with his face hidden in my lap because he thinks that's the kindest thing he can do for me.
I press my nose deeper into his hair. Keep nuzzling. Keep breathing.
"Phoenix and Raf are close," I whisper.
His body stills.
"I can feel them. Through the bond." I close my eyes and reach for those threads. The warm, solid ones, the ones that aren't flickering and fading. They're there. Bright. Getting brighter by the second. "They're coming."
Rex exhales against my stomach. A shudder runs through him that rattles the chains.
"Then we're fucked," he rasps.
I pull back an inch. "What?"
A hoarse, choked sound rips out of him. It takes me a second to realize it's a laugh.
"If it's up to Phoenix and Raf—" Another wet breath. "—we're fucked. Phoenix gets lost in parking garages. And Raf will stop to fight every guard between the front door and this room because he doesn't know how to walk past a problem."
"Rex…"
"I have to get you the fuck out of here." His arms strain against the chains. The links bite deeper and fresh blood wells around his wrists.
"Stop moving. You're hurt. You're making it worse."
"I don't fucking care—"
"I DO!"
The cage goes quiet.
His breathing fills the space. Harsh and labored and wet and each exhale has a rattle underneath it that makes my blood run cold.
"Rex."
Nothing.
"There's something I need to tell you."
His body tenses against my legs. "Bells—"
"No. You need to actually let me tell you this time."
A beat.
"Every single time I try, you stop me. You kiss me or you growl at me or you change the subject because you already know what I'm going to say and you're too fucking scared to hear it out loud."
His jaw clenches against my thigh. I feel the exposed tendons shift.
"If we die in this stupid tacky birdcage and I never get to say it, I am going to find you in hell and I am going to make your afterlife miserable, Rex.
I will haunt you for eternity. I will be the world's most annoying ghost. I will rattle chains at you and—well, I guess you already have chains, so—"
"Say it," he growls into my stomach.
I take a breath.
“You already know I’m a girl. But I'm also an omega.”
Silence.
The fluorescent lights flicker overhead, lighting the cage in stuttering shadow.
"And you're my scent match."
His breathing stops.
"Phoenix and Raf are too."
Nothing moves. Not his chest, not his hands, not the fine tremor in his muscles. Complete and total stillness, like I just hit pause on every biological function his body was still running.
One second.
Two.
Three.
I wait.
Because this is the moment where everything either clicks into place or shatters beyond repair, and I can't do a goddamn thing about it except sit here with his head in my lap and his blood soaking through my jeans and hope.
His exhale comes out slow through his damaged cheek, warm against my thigh.
"You deserve better," he grits out.
My lungs cave in.
"You deserve better than being scent-matched to a fucking monster."
The word comes out like he's said it to himself ten thousand times. Like it's carved into the inside of his skull. A statement of fact delivered with the same flat conviction he'd use to say the sky is blue or the earth is round.
Monster.
Like it's his name.
Like it's the only name that matters.
"Rex."
"Don't." His face presses harder into my stomach. "Don't tell me I'm not. Don't give me the speech. I know what I am. I know what I look like—"
"You look like an alpha who just killed his way through an opera house with a bullet in his spine to find me."
He goes quiet.
"You look like the guy who shielded me from a pyrotechnic explosion with his own body. Who gave me his room because I was scared. Who sat at a dinner table and ate with his pack for the first time because it would make me happy."
My voice cracks.
Shit.
"You look like my mate. You absolute fucking idiot."
The chains clink softly as his shoulders shake. At first, I think it’s a laugh, but then I realize it’s something deeper and more raw that he'd kill me for witnessing if he had any fight left.
"And honestly?" I add, sniffing hard because I am not going to cry in this cage, I am not. "I've always been kind of a monsterfucker."
Dead silence.
"Those are my favorite books. Ask Phoenix. He knows."
Rex's face lifts from my stomach by half an inch.
"You're fucking insane," he mutters.
"Obviously. I'm in a birdcage with a scarred man in chains. This is literally the plot of three of my favorite books. If it weren't for the blood loss and the stalker situation, I'd be thriving."
Something happens against my thigh. A twitch. The ghost of something his ruined mouth can't fully form but his body tries for anyway.
"Are you incapable of being serious?" he growls.
"Yes. You know this. We've been over this."
He blows a puff of air through his nose.
It's so close to a laugh, the tears start sliding down my cheeks. I screw my eyes shut, physically willing myself to not cry, and lean down to press my lips to the corner of his mouth.
The good side.
He turns his head slightly toward me.
He barely kisses me back. More of a press. His cracked lips against mine, tentative and shaking, tasting like blood. His nose brushes my cheek. His lashes—the ones he still has on his left side—flutter against my skin.
I shift.
My mouth drifts.
Not on purpose. Just following the line of his jaw, the warmth of his skin, and my lips brush the edge of the scar tissue. The place where the smooth skin of his undamaged side gives way to the ridged, melted terrain of the right.
Rex wrenches his face away.
Into my chest this time. The chains rattle as his whole body curls inward, his forehead grinding against my sternum through my shirt.
"I can't," he growls. The words vibrate through my body. "I can't..."
I don't push.
I lean forward and rest my cheek against the crown of his head.
And I hold him the only way I can.