Chapter 13 Jabari #2
The impact cracked through the concrete, sharp enough to ring, and I heard Nyx gasp. That sound snapped something loose and something shut at the same time.
I seized her by the arm and hauled her back against me, my grip turning iron-hard as my alpha surged outward. I shoved her aside and behind me, putting my body between hers and the soldier before I stepped forward alone.
“She’s mine,” I said.
The words became a roar I could not take back, and the declaration echoed down the hall, brutal and absolute. It did not ask permission.
Nyx froze, fear spiking sharp and immediate as my dominance flooded the space, and I felt the tremor run through her body. She did not look away.
The soldier tried to crawl, nails scraping concrete as he pulled for air that would not come, and I ended it.
My forearm locked across his throat, there was a hard twist, a wet crack, and then the weight went slack in my hands. He dropped to the floor.
Nyx watched the entire thing with eyes wide and dark, fixed on me as the body hit. She did not scream and she did not run.
She stood there and took it in, every breath shallow, every instinct pulled tight now that the truth of what she’d just watched had settled over her. Her scent lifted between us, peaches and cream, and it didn’t drift through the hallway the way a normal smell would.
It rolled over me slow and heavy.
The cream softened it some, almost sweet, almost gentle, and then the bruised edge of her fear cut through and turned it sharp again.
I dragged it in anyway.
My body didn’t wait on my permission for that.
The smell settled behind my ribs and pushed there, steady pressure building in my chest until my hands started running hot and the hallway narrowed down to the space where she stood.
Something in me shifted then.
Not loud.
Just quiet and dangerous.
Her pupils were blown wide, arms trembling just enough she couldn’t quite hide it. Her body reacted the way omegas did when dominance hit the room, traitorous instinct kicking in whether she wanted it to or not.
Didn’t mean she asked for it.
Didn’t mean she wanted it.
My alpha didn’t care about that part.
I hated that.
I stood between her and the body on the floor, chest rising hard while the anger inside me burned itself down. My alpha paced under my skin like something that had been waiting all damn day to get out, heat and threat pouring off me whether I meant to show it or not.
When I looked at her, she stepped back.
Just one step.
Small.
Careful.
But I saw it.
Fear hit the air sharp and clean, cutting right through the peaches in her scent, and the taste of it sat bitter on the back of my tongue.
Still didn’t stop her smell from filling the corridor.
Didn’t stop my body from reacting either.
I reached for her before I thought about it, meaning to pull her behind me where she belonged, meaning to put my size between her and everything else in that hallway.
She flinched when my hand came close.
Blood still smeared across my knuckles.
That recoil should’ve brought me back to myself.
Should’ve told me plain enough to give the girl space.
It didn’t.
Her eyes met mine and stayed there.
Not because she wasn’t scared.
Because she was deciding something.
I knew that look.
That quick calculation people made when they had to decide if the big man standing in front of them was about to protect them… or break them next.
I hated that Meridian had taught her to make that call about me.
And I hated that the first thing my instincts wanted to do was take control of the whole damn hallway.
“Eyes on me, darlin’,” I said.
My voice stayed low, slow, that easy Southern politeness that fooled people until they heard the edge underneath it.
I hooked my fingers under her elbow and turned her toward me.
Nyx sucked in a breath when I touched her.
But she didn’t fight the movement.
That was worse.
Calculation instead of surrender.
The dead man at my feet twitched once, a small reflex that ran through his shoulders and down his arm before the motion bled out of him completely.
Then he went still. The corridor lights flickered overhead, old fluorescent tubes stuttering as they struggled to stay lit, and the uneven flashes strobed across his face.
Every pulse of light showed me something new.
Slack mouth.
Eyes still wide.
Skin already losing color.
And the smell.
I caught that medicinal bitterness again, sharper now that the heat of fear had drained out of him. It sat underneath the copper of blood and the stale concrete of the hallway, wrong enough to make the back of my throat tighten.
He hadn’t been brave.
He’d been pushed.
I crouched beside him and caught his chin between two fingers, turning his face up toward the flickering light. The movement wasn’t gentle. His head rolled easily now that the tension had gone out of his muscles, jaw hanging open just enough that the corridor air moved across his teeth.
The smell hit harder up close.
Bitter.
Chemical.
Something sour sitting on the back of his breath.
There was a smear at the corner of his mouth, faint and chalky, pale against the darker skin around it. I dragged my thumb across it without thinking, instinct moving faster than caution.
The residue clung to my skin.
Cold spread across my thumb almost immediately, a numb tingling that crawled up into the pad of my finger.
Not adrenaline.
Not normal.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.
I wiped my thumb once against my jeans and glanced back at Nyx before anything else could cross my face. She stood a few steps behind me, shoulders tight, eyes fixed on everything happening at my feet. She hadn’t moved since the body dropped.
Good.
That meant she was still thinking.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a latex glove, snapping it over my hand with a sharp pop that echoed faintly down the corridor. The rubber tightened around my fingers as I flexed them once, then I leaned down again.
This time I hooked two gloved fingers into the corner of the dead man’s mouth.
Something caught there.
Thin.
Soft.
I pinched it between my fingers and drew it out slowly. A narrow strip came free from the inside of his cheek, half melted and sticky where saliva had started to break it down.
Drug film.
I folded it into my palm and closed my fist around it.
My comm unit rested against my collarbone, heavy and warm where it pressed into the fabric of my shirt. My thumb hovered over the channel I didn’t touch unless the situation had already gone sideways.
I pressed it anyway.
“Malachi,” I said quietly.
My voice stayed level, the same easy tone I used when nothing at all was wrong.
“Level three. Lower corridor.”
The corridor hummed around us, lights buzzing overhead while the body cooled at my feet.
“Omega present. Guard compromised.”
My gaze flicked once toward Nyx.
“And it smells wrong.”
I didn’t say her name.
Didn’t give the building anything it didn’t already know.
The comm clicked softly as the channel held open. I rolled my shoulders loose and straightened to my full height, forcing my body into a relaxed posture while my pulse tried to climb up into my throat.
I’d learned early how to look harmless when the room turned dangerous.
Even here.
Even now.
I should’ve stayed exactly where I was and waited for Malachi to come down the stairs and take control of the situation.
That would’ve been the smart move.
But behind me Nyx’s scent lifted again.
Peaches.
Restraint.
And something warmer underneath it now.
My alpha felt it immediately.
And it did not care about being smart.
I lifted her without asking, one arm under her thighs and the other at her back, hauling her up against my chest. She made a startled sound and grabbed my shoulders, nails digging into my skin through my shirt.
“Put me down,” she hissed.
“I’m getting you out of this corridor, ma’am,” I said.
I made it sound reasonable even as possession pulsed hot under my ribs, and I kept walking before she could turn the moment into a fight. “You can fight me once you’re not standing beside a body.”
Her eyes flashed, but she did not scream, and she went tight and still in my arms with breath fast enough to sting my ear. I could feel her omega folding inward.
I carried her to her nest because it was the closest controlled space, and because Malachi had ordered her protected. I told myself I obeyed that order even as my instincts warped it into something uglier.
The nest door shut behind us, and the room swallowed the corridor stench. It smelled like her, warm fabric and skin and that bruised-sweet scent that kept making my head go quiet in the worst way.
I set her on the blankets, and Nyx pushed up on her elbows immediately, chin lifted and eyes bright with fury. Fear lived under it too, but she kept her body ready to move.
“You don’t get to touch me,” she said.
“I didn’t touch you like that in the corridor,” I replied.
My mouth twisted because it was technically true, and technical truth was a coward’s shield. “I handled the problem, then I moved you.”
Her laugh came out sharp and disbelieving, and she stared at me. “You killed him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Nyx’s lips curled, not in humor, in disgust that had teeth. “Don’t call me ma’am like you’re a gentleman,” she said. “Not after what you just did.”
I did not apologize, because the apology would make it sound like I had regrets about keeping her alive. “And you’re still breathing. That is the only part I care about right now.”
The words should have been enough, and they should have been the end. Nyx’s scent spiked again, fear and heat tangled together, and slick cut the air.
Her body betrayed her in the same breath her eyes stayed furious, and my alpha surged at the contradiction. I hated myself for noticing, and I hated myself more for stepping closer, anyway.
Nyx scooted back on the nest with palms pressing into the blankets, but there was nowhere to go without climbing over me. Her breath hitched when my shadow fell across her.