Chapter 37 – Bells
BELLS
We make it six steps before the first guard rounds the corner.
Rex moves like something that shouldn't be upright. His left hand catches the guard's throat mid-stride, slams him into the velvet wall, and drops him in one swift motion that costs him so much energy he staggers.
I catch his elbow.
His bad side.
Rex flinches so hard his whole body twists. His damaged eye swivels toward me, unfocused, confirming what I've suspected.
He’s blind in that eye. Maybe completely.
"Wrong side," he snarls, pulling his arm free.
"Your right eye is fucked, Rex. You've got a blind spot on this side and I'm covering it, so deal with it."
His jaw clenches. The exposed tendons on the destroyed side flex and shift and the growl that rolls through his chest is pure frustrated alpha.
But he doesn't argue.
He lets me stay on his scarred side.
We move through the corridor in tandem. Rex taking point, me glued to his right flank, scanning the shadows and doorways he can't see.
The corridor bends left ahead. Rex slows at the corner, pressing his shoulder against the wall, his chest heaving. Blood is dripping from his fingertips in a steady rhythm now—pat pat pat—and the trail we're leaving behind us is basically a neon sign reading COME FUCKING FIND US.
I peer around the corner at knee height, beneath Rex's line of sight.
Two men.
Not the same caliber as the others.
The guards we've encountered so far were private security. Hired muscle. The kind of guys who wear tactical vests because they think it makes them look competent and shit themselves when a partially feral alpha who looks like Rex does comes barreling toward them.
These two are different.
They're standing shoulder to shoulder in the wider corridor ahead, blocking a service exit. Both are in dark suits rather than tactical gear. Strike one. Both are built like refrigerators. Strike two. Hell, the refrigerator build might even count for a whole pile of strikes.
What really cinches it is both alphas are standing with the loose, balanced posture of men who know how to fight and have done it for paychecks that don't require tax forms.
Stephen's personal detail.
I recognize the one on the left.
My blood turns to ice water.
I don't know his last name. Never wanted to. What I do know is his name is Keith, and he cornered me in a hallway at an industry party and told me all the things he wanted to do to me whether I wanted him or not.
"Bet you'd cry so pretty."
I drove my knee into his dick and bolted.
I'm sure he'd love the opportunity to get revenge for the kids I'm sure he'll never have.
My grip tightens on nothing, because I don't have a weapon, and the fury that floods through me is so fucking intense my vision actually tunnels for a second.
"Stephen's goons," I whisper to Rex. "Real ones."
Something in my voice makes Rex's head turn toward me. That single ice-blue eye finds my face and reads whatever's written there, because Rex has always been able to see through me with frightening accuracy.
His lip curls back from his teeth.
On the good side, it's a snarl. On the destroyed side, where there's no lip to curl, the permanent exposure of teeth and tendon just becomes more. The jaw muscles flex and pull, the ruined side of his face entering the territory of primal fucking nightmare.
He steps around the corner and walks toward the two alphas with a calm stride that’s somehow even more terrifying than if he was just barreling toward them.
Keith sees him first and takes a step backward with a horrified cry. The other's stance widens and his hand moves to the gun at his hip.
Rex isn't stopping.
"Stand down," the second guard barks, pulling the weapon.
Rex doesn't even acknowledge the gun. He moves forward suddenly and the second guard breaks formation, circling left, trying to flank.
Toward me.
Cute.
I step out from behind the corner.
The second guard clocks me and adjusts his trajectory. He's big and his whole body easily blocks my path.
Rex reaches Keith first.
Keith fires a second too late. His gun's already pointing at the ceiling instead of Rex because Rex's hand is wrapped around his wrist.
The sound Keith makes when Rex twists is deeply, deeply satisfying.
But I can't watch because Big Boy Number Two is on me.
He swings.
I duck. Drop low, feel the fist whistle over my head, and drive upward with my elbow into the soft tissue under his ribs. He grunts and lashes a backhand that catches me across the cheekbone.
My head snaps sideways and my boots skid on the blood-slick concrete. I stagger but don't fall. He's already coming again, crowding my space, using his size to press me toward the wall. His fist cocks back.
I step inside his reach, where his fists lose all their power, and I slam the heel of my palm up under his chin. His teeth crack together. His head snaps back. Before he can recover, I hook my foot behind his ankle and shove with everything I've got.
He goes down hard.
His skull bounces off the concrete and his eyes go glassy. He's not out, but he's dazed, and his hands are scrabbling at the floor.
I drop to one knee and rip the gun out of his hand.
It's heavier than what I trained with at the range, but the grip fits my hand well enough and my index finger finds the trigger guard and settles outside it the way I was taught.
Behind me, Rex has Keith pinned against the wall, his forearm pressed against the shithead alpha's throat. Keith's gun is on the floor somewhere and his free hand is clawing at Rex's arm, his feet barely touching the ground, his face darkening from red to purple.
Rex's face is inches from Keith.
A high, thin sound comes out of Keith and a dark spot spreads across the front of his pants. He's pissing himself.
"Let him go," I call to Rex, adjusting my grip on the pistol. "He's not worth it."
Rex doesn't move. His arm presses harder. Keith's eyes bulge.
I don't actually give a shit what Rex does to him. I'd love to see Keith get the life choked out of him while he pisses his pants. That's peak schadenfreude right there.
But Rex's arm is trembling and his legs are shaking too. Feral or not, he doesn't have the energy to hold an alpha Keith's size against a wall like this. Not after getting shot.
"Rex."
He drops Keith with a furious snarl.
Keith crumples, gasping, both hands at his throat. He coughs, retches, and scrambles onto his hands and knees.
The guard I floored is getting up too. He sways, hand to the back of his skull, blood in his hair.
"Stay the fuck down," I snap, raising the pistol.
He stays down.
Keith does not.
Keith looks up from his hands and knees, face a mottled mess, and his eyes find me. Not Rex.
Me.
And despite everything, including the gun in my hand and the alpha who just crushed his windpipe standing three feet away, an ugly sneer curls his lips.
That same look from the party. That same sick, appraising sweep he's just incapable of shutting off because it's coded into his rotten fucking DNA.
His eyes drop to my chest where the binder has shifted.
His mouth opens and he lunges for his gun.
I fire before I even realize what the fuck I'm doing.
The recoil kicks up my arms. The shot cracks through the corridor.
Keith screams and his hands fly to his crotch as he doubles over sideways, both legs clamping together, blood already blooming through his fingers and further darkening the front of his expensive suit pants.
He staggers upright through sheer adrenaline.
Lurches left.
Lurches right.
Then he runs.
Hobbles, really. A lopsided, bow-legged shamble down the corridor, one hand mashed between his thighs, trailing a thin line of blood behind him. The other guard runs, too.
I blow across the muzzle of my gun the way cowboys do in old westerns.
"Oops."
Rex stares at me. "You are," he says flatly, his mouth twitching, "the most unhinged fucking person I have ever met."
"Coming from you?" I flip the gun in my hand, catch the grip, and flick the safety on. "I'll take that as a compliment."
He snorts and keeps moving up the hall.
"You know," I say, trotting after him, "we really missed our calling as a spec ops squad."
Rex's head whips toward me. "No."
"Why not? We've got the body count."
"Because I am trying to get you out of this building and you are treating it like a fucking video game—"
“So you admit you're being protective of me?”
"Move."
I move, grinning.
When he reaches the service exit the guards were blocking, he pushes down on the bar handle, but it's locked. He lets out a frustrated snarl and slams his shoulder against the door, hard enough to make him stagger.
"Shit," I mutter, leaning in. "It's welded shut."
"I kicked a door in," Rex says, stepping back and planting his foot. "I'll do it again."
"A welded one?" I ask him.
His eye flicks to me. The one I can see, anyway. He's still managing to keep himself at angles where I can't see the scarred side when I'm not actively making up for his blind spot.
"Look," I press, pointing to a thick rope of melted steel lining the entire border of the door. "We're not getting through this. However you got into the opera house, that asshole prepared this section."
"Let me try."
"And drain the rest of your energy? Who's gonna be my hero then?"
Rex rolls his eyes. "Are you seriously playing the fucking damsel-in-distress card because you're worried about me?"
I give him my most innocent smile. "Maybe?"
But the smile immediately dies as a bolt of white-hot pain shoots through the scar on my neck.
I stumble.
Rex catches me before I hit the wall, his arm banding around my waist, and the contact sends another wave of agony radiating from the scar outward through my entire nervous system.
It's like someone pressed a branding iron to my throat.
The crescent-shaped tissue throbs in time with my pulse, each beat sharper than the last.
"Bells—"
"I'm fine," I gasp.
I'm not fine.
The incomplete mark is fucking screaming.