Chapter 12 Malachi #2
By the time he reached the training floor, he had stopped pretending the bond did not bother him.
Jabari noticed the shift before anyone else did, the way he always did when instincts were involved.
His shoulders lifted slightly as he stepped onto the mat, his chest expanding as he drew in a deeper breath through his nose. His nostrils flared once, then again, the movement sharp and involuntary.
The change in him was immediate.
Men near the racks moved aside without being asked. One of the guards who had been running drills slowed and stepped out of Jabari’s path entirely.
Jabari did not acknowledge any of them.
He crossed the room in long strides and stopped beside the heavy bag, wrapping his hands with quick, efficient motions. The tape pulled tight across his knuckles as he worked, his jaw set hard enough that the muscles jumped beneath his beard.
A guard said something to him in passing.
Jabari snapped a reply that sent the man moving faster.
Then he started hitting the bag.
Hard.
Each strike landed with a heavy thud that carried across the room. The chain above the bag rattled with the force of it, metal clicking softly each time it swung back toward him.
Sweat darkened the fabric of his shirt within minutes.
He did not slow down.
He drove his body through the drills harder than necessary, punches sharp and precise but fueled by something that had nothing to do with training. His breathing deepened as he worked, shoulders rolling forward with each blow, the rhythm growing rougher the longer he continued.
He was angry.
Angry the bond had not been his.
Angry that something had happened inside his territory without his consent.
And angry that I had not yet given him permission to do anything about it.
He cornered me outside the operations stairwell before midday, his dreadlocks pulled back off his face.
The hallway lights caught along the clean parts in his hair and the line of his beard. His eyes were sharp when he looked at me, bright with the kind of hunger that had nothing to do with food.
He tried to keep it buried.
Jabari had never been particularly good at keeping heat contained.
“Sir,” he said.
The word came out respectful enough, but the way he leaned one shoulder against the wall told a different story.
“You ain’t about to let that man walk around thinkin’ he got any claim to her.”
It wasn’t a question.
It was a challenge wrapped in manners, the kind Southern men used right before they did something unforgivable.
“Elijah does not get access,” I replied.
I did not move, and I did not give him the reaction he was hoping to pull out of me.
“If you require further explanation, you may write your concerns down and argue with the paper.”
Jabari’s smile stayed exactly where it was.
Genteel.
Wrong.
“That ain’t what I asked,” he said.
His voice stayed easy, but his shoulders had gone tighter beneath his shirt.
“She here. She under this roof. That makes her ours.”
His gaze held mine steadily.
“If there’s a bond in play, it damn sure shouldn’t belong to some beta who lost his mind.”
He shifted his weight off the wall as he said it, standing straighter now, his chest expanding slightly the way men did when their instincts pushed them forward.
I did not move.
I did not raise my voice.
“You are not entitled to anything that destabilizes my pack,” I said.
“Not her. Not this situation. Not even your own appetite.”
Jabari’s nostrils flared once.
The smile didn’t leave his mouth, but it thinned.
He didn’t step back.
He simply adjusted.
That was the closest thing Jabari offered to obedience.
“You will stand down,” I continued.
“You will not threaten her. You will not test her. And you will not make her bleed simply to soothe your pride.”
“And if I do?” he asked.
The smile he gave me could have passed in a polite conversation.
Anyone watching from the hallway would have thought the exchange harmless.
It wasn’t.
The look in his eyes promised he would find another way to get what he wanted if he believed the opportunity existed.
“Then I will break you,” I replied.
My voice stayed level.
Certain.
“And you will spend the rest of your life remembering why you obeyed me.”
For a moment Jabari looked like he might push again.
The words he wanted to say sat visible behind his teeth.
He swallowed them instead. He nodded once, sharp and resentful, then turned away and walked down the corridor. The politeness he wore like armor had cracked.
Instinct showed through the fractures.
Kairo masked the shift differently, and I registered it immediately. He had always been easier to read than he believed.
He moved quieter and slower, his usual charm dialed down to something watchful and restrained, the way boys did when they thought observation passed for wisdom.
He was careful in my presence in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with knowing exactly who stood in front of him.
Kairo was my son, and youth clung to him no matter how competent he tried to appear.
He met me near dusk outside the executive elevator, braids neat and close to his scalp, carrying a slim folder and a cup of coffee held out without ceremony. Not an offering to a boss, but a reflex.
I took it without comment. His shoulders eased by a fraction anyway.
“You tightened the perimeter,” he said.
“I tightened the pack,” I replied, and I did not slow my steps. “This is what leadership looks like when it is done correctly.”
Kairo kept pace for half a stride longer than I allowed. His gaze stayed steady, earnest, too eager to be useful.
“She is still working,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered.
“She has not slept,” he added, pressing where he should not have.
“She will sleep when she has permission to,” I said. I let the words land harder than necessary, a reminder disguised as instruction. “Until then, she works, and you learn the difference between concern and control.”
Kairo’s mouth tightened. He did not like the answer, and that was precisely the point. Liking decisions was not his role.
“Jabari is spiraling,” he said. “He is going to take it out on someone.”
“I know,” I replied.
“And Elijah,” Kairo began, then stopped, as if even saying the name might draw him into territory he was not ready to stand in.
“I handled Elijah,” I said, and this time I stopped walking long enough to look at him. “You are not his keeper, and you are not mine. You will learn when to speak and when to listen, or this pack will teach you lessons you will not enjoy.”
Kairo nodded once, chastened, the boy bleeding through the man he was still becoming.
He stepped back and let me pass. That was his nature. Proximity without authority. Concern without command.
Nyx Brooks was the axis, everything was bending around, and the awareness settled into me with uncomfortable clarity.
I watched her from behind glass on the operations level as she worked through NorthStar Freight Solutions and the subsidiaries threaded beneath it.
She did not rush or fidget or perform distress for the cameras.
Her omega instincts pressed against the edges of her control, flaring and settling as she disciplined them into stillness.
She was a forensic accountant by trade, but her genuine talent was pattern recognition.
That understanding made her dangerous. It also made her necessary.
Meridian the enterprise did not pause for pack drama, not the companies, not the fronts, and not the paper that kept all of it looking clean.
Containers cleared customs late. Supply chains threatened to ripple.
Contractors tested boundaries. Buyers arrived believing they had leverage, and they were wrong.
I held the daily briefing in the war room at noon, the same time every day, because consistency was control made visible. Jabari arrived late on purpose. Kairo arrived early. The rest of the pack filled in around them.
Nyx did not attend yet, and I watched the space where she would eventually sit. The chair was a symbol, and symbols mattered in syndicates. I did not need to imagine the shape of the conflict that would bloom once she was in that seat with men who believed omegas existed to be possessed.
Afterward, I walked the halls with my phone to my ear, issuing calm instructions about invoices, holds, and releases while my instincts tracked the scent of an omega two levels below.
It moved through Meridian Tower, sweet at the surface and edged with fatigue underneath, and my body responded before my mind granted permission.
Mates were weaknesses. That belief had kept me alive, and it had kept me clean of the confusion that ruined men who should have known better.
It did not stop my body from recognizing her, and it did not stop the pack from reacting to the fact that I did. I could feel it in the way guards held their breaths when I passed, in the way men’s gazes tracked the corridor that led down toward her.
That was the problem. A pack did not need words to notice when an alpha started orienting around an omega, and noticing always came before testing.
The forced bond had already destabilized the pack, and leaving Nyx at the perimeter would fracture it further.
None of those outcomes served Pack Meridian.
So I tightened control. Control was the only language the pack understood when instinct started lying.
On the second night, I brought her into a smaller conference room next to the war room and laid out her directives. She listened, answered precisely, and did not soften when I told her what survival inside Meridian Tower required.
She also did not eat, and that mattered more than pride wanted it to.
I noticed it the way I noticed everything that could become a weakness, the hollowness at the edges of her scent, the way her hands trembled once before she clenched them into stillness, the faint lag when she stood as if her body needed an extra second to remember it was supposed to obey.