Chapter 8 Jabari #2
He wasn’t hurt. Wasn’t shaken. But the look on his face sat wrong.
Guilt clung to him plain as sweat, and his scent carried a sharp uneven edge like restraint had started fraying loose.
His jaw was locked tight, and he kept his eyes sliding away from mine like looking straight at me might make him say something he didn’t want said.
Every instinct in my body went hot.
“What you do,” I said.
“Nothing,” he answered right away. Too damn fast. “I just watched.”
Elijah brushed past him without slowing. “Then why do you look like that?”
“Because she’s struggling,” Kairo snapped. “And because this whole setup is stupid.”
That was enough.
We moved.
Elijah first. Kairo already halfway turned.
I stepped in last.
Nyx was still on the bed. Wrists cuffed overhead. Chest rising and falling fast but controlled. Her head turned toward us the second we came through the door, eyes sharp and furious, tracking every one of us like she was already mapping the room.
No tears.
No panic.
Just calculation.
Her gaze caught the bowl on the side table.
It flickered there quick as a blink, then vanished again.
She pretended she didn’t care.
Elijah slowed first, same way he always did.
“Do you require assistance?” he asked, voice even. “Water? A shower?”
Her eyes moved to the restraints, then back to him.
“I need to be clean,” she said. “And I need space.”
Those words landed heavier than any plea would’ve.
They weren’t soft.
They were a line.
Kairo moved first.
He stepped up to the bed and unlocked the cuffs quick and clean, no ceremony to it. Careful too, like he knew better than to linger. Metal clicked open one restraint at a time.
Nyx didn’t thank him.
Didn’t relax.
She rolled her shoulders slow as the blood came back into her arms, and her eyes never left Kairo’s face.
“I got her,” Kairo said.
Wasn’t a question.
Elijah hesitated a second, then gave a short nod. “I will remain outside.”
The washroom sat built into the containment suite. Narrow tiled space off the main room, made for decontamination instead of comfort. In any other situation it might’ve felt like overkill.
But nothing about this situation was normal.
Our instincts were already running hot. Pack wiring didn’t care about politics or containment protocols. We were built to care for the omega even when the same walls kept her trapped.
Kairo guided her down the short corridor between the steel walls, one hand hovering behind her back without touching.
Nyx walked stiff.
Shoulders squared.
Head high.
Still fighting for every inch of control she could hold.
He pushed the washroom door open.
The air rolling out was cool and sterile at first, decontamination clean, until the water kicked on and the heat started building behind the tile.
The door shut again.
Kairo let out a breath right after.
Relief came off him sharp and sudden, too sharp for a man who said he’d done nothing wrong. He scrubbed a hand down his face and started pacing a short line in the corridor.
He wasn’t pacing because he was nervous.
Kairo Cross didn’t get nervous.
He was pacing because the pressure in the hall kept building, slow and steady, the kind of tension that sat under a man’s ribs and pushed outward. Bond pressure. Thick in the air now, spreading through the corridor in quiet waves that none of us could pretend we didn’t feel.
“This is exactly why we shouldn’t be doing this half-measure shit,” Kairo muttered under his breath, dragging a hand through his hair hard enough to pull the braids loose at the temples. “You can feel her. Don’t act like you can’t. Every alpha in this building can.”
His eyes snapped toward Elijah.
“She needs a bond. Simple as that. With or without Malachi’s blessing, this ends the same way.”
He paced again, shoulders tight with restless energy, then stopped and looked back.
“While she’s in there we need a plan that ain’t just containment and prayers. Who signed her intake? Who touched her file? Who had access to her suppression schedule?”
Elijah’s jaw tightened slightly.
“You think this was internal.”
“I think an omega doesn’t end up in a containment suite unless somebody greased the system,” Kairo said, the easy humor gone out of his voice now, replaced by something sharp and focused. “And if somebody greased it once, they’ll do it again.”
Elijah shot him a warning look.
“Watch your mouth.”
“I am watching the problem,” Kairo snapped. “An unbonded omega under this roof is a liability. Every alpha in this building feels it. You think waiting makes that better?”
Heat flared through me before I even realized I had turned toward him.
My vision edged red.
“Don’t finish that thought,” I said quietly.
Kairo didn’t move.
Didn’t step back.
He rarely did.
“You already halfway gone,” he said, voice lower now, urgent instead of mocking. “If it ain’t you, it’ll be somebody else. We either control this situation or we wait for chaos to do it for us.”
Elijah stepped between us before the distance could close.
His scent sharpened, restraint stretched tight but still holding.
“Enough,” he said. “This is Malachi’s call.”
“For now,” Kairo muttered.
I hated every second of it.
Hated that my body reacted just thinking about her bare skin under that water.
Hated that the moment the shower started running, her scent changed again.
I paced the hallway, boots striking the concrete harder now, fists clenching and unclenching while I tried to outrun the way her scent shifted in the air.
Water stripped restraint.
Bare skin made everything louder.
The sweetness thickened in the corridor, warmer now, fuller, curling straight into my chest whether I wanted it there or not.
My alpha surged hard against my ribs.
Demanding direction.
Demanding release.
I couldn’t see what was happening behind that door.
Didn’t need to.
I could smell her instead.
The sweetness crowded my head, thick and warm, sliding straight past thought and into the body.
My alpha surged hard enough to make my spine lock.
Blood went heavy and hot, pressure dragging low, my dick tightening in a way that had nothing to do with want and everything to do with instinct demanding claim.
I clenched my fists and forced my weight forward, fighting the urge to turn, to step closer, to do something irreversible just to make the pull stop. Behind me, Elijah shifted.
His breathing changed, slower at first, then uneven. His scent sharpened, restraint thinning the way glass thinned before it broke.
“Stay focused,” I growled without looking back.
He did not answer. The silence was worse than agreement.
The crash came without warning.
Metal struck tile hard enough to rattle the door in its frame. Something heavy slammed into the wall. Nyx’s scream tore through the corridor, sharp and panicked, the sound of someone realizing they were trapped.
I heard her scream again. “No!”
The tone was wrong. Too strained, too desperate, too small for a woman who’d been holding herself together.
The door flew open as Elijah bolted inside, control already slipping. I was on his heels a heartbeat later, shoulder catching the frame as I forced my way in behind him.
The bathroom was chaos. Water ran hard into the drain, splashing across tile, turning the floor slick. Nyx was soaked, bare feet sliding as she tried to push past Elijah, movements frantic and uncoordinated, panic taking over the parts of her that had been calculating.
Kairo stood half turned, hands up. His face was tight with frustration and something sharper, self blame, because he had been the one to bring her in here.
Nyx was shouting now, words tumbling over each other, voice breaking as her fear finally found a way out.
“You can’t keep me here,” she screamed. “Let me go. I want to leave. Get out of my way.”
Her scent detonated in the small space. Fear, heat, desperation.
Peaches turned sharp and overripe, cream thickened until the air felt syrupy and impossible to breathe through. It hit Elijah full in the chest.
He reached for her to restrain her, not gently and not carefully, hands locking around her arms as dominance surged unchecked.
Elijah told himself it was containment, told himself it was procedure, but his beta did not care about procedure.
It cared that she was in front of him, wet and shaking, broadcasting need and terror in the same breath.
“Stop,” I barked, already moving, because I heard the change in his breathing and I knew what came after.
Too late.
She fought him, twisting, shoving, trying to break free, and the contact only made it worse. Her omega flared hard, biology screaming for release and safety all at once, and the room filled with the brutal truth of it.
Elijah’s restraint shattered.
Not in rage. Not in cruelty.
In instinct.
His breath went ragged. His eyes went dark. Dominance crushed the room as he yanked her in. Nyx jerked her head away, teeth bared, and her hands shoved at his chest with everything she had.
“No,” I roared.
His mouth dropped to her shoulder.
Nyx tried to wrench away, but the wet tile stole traction and Elijah’s grip was iron. His jaw flexed.
Then he bit.
The sound hit me first, wet and wrong, the sound that belonged to slaughter, not to anything a pack was supposed to be. Blood beaded immediately, bright against her skin, and Nyx’s scream went high and raw as her body betrayed her, heat spiking as the bond slammed into place.
I saw it, and something in me split clean down the middle. Not my control. My civility.
Bonding was supposed to be a choice, even for fated mates, because nature did not build a bond to be forced. It was consent and acceptance, a matching of instinct and heart, and what I watched Elijah do was none of that. He took a sacred mechanism and used it.