Chapter 22 - Nyx #2
“You think paperwork keeps me,” I said. “You think a legal structure is a cage I will respect just because you built it.”
“You will,” Elijah said, and desperation threaded through his certainty.
“No.” I shook my head once. “You are afraid.”
His counting unraveled completely, spilling out in uneven bursts. “One hundred seventeen. One hundred nineteen. One hundred twenty-one.”
“You cannot stand boxes,” I continued, voice calm and precise. “You cannot stand confinement. You cannot stand being sealed in. And yet you built one around me and expected gratitude.”
Silence followed, heavy and unstable, charged with shifting power and unspoken calculation. I could feel the pack recalibrating in real time, each man reassessing where he stood and what Elijah had taken from them by acting alone.
The bond carried those reactions to me in muted echoes, and instead of overwhelming me, they clarified my resolve.
I felt the bond stretch and respond, alive in a way it had never been before. So I used it.
I leaned into the connection deliberately and tested the limits with a precision that surprised even me. The bond was not just a tether. It was a conduit.
Toward Jabari, I sent fear without submission, the sharp edge of vulnerability that triggered protectiveness instead of dominance.
Toward Kairo, I sent confusion and hurt, the ache of being excluded and the sting of learning something too late.
Toward Malachi, I offered calculation and restraint, the quiet implication that Elijah had acted alone and compromised the hierarchy he was sworn to uphold.
The room fractured under the weight of it.
“You went behind us,” Jabari growled.
“You didn’t tell me,” Kairo said, words tight and wounded.
Malachi’s gaze cut to him first, sharp, the look that checked for damage you could not see. His hand brushed Kairo’s shoulder once, brief and grounding, before he turned his attention back to Elijah.
“Not you,” Malachi said, voice low. “Him.” He let the room register that distinction, then lifted his chin at Elijah. “You overstepped.”
Elijah went sickly.
While they argued, voices rising and power shifting in ways that felt almost physical, I did not move toward the door. I let the room heat until it had nowhere else to go, because if Elijah had wanted control, then I was going to make him choke on it.
I leaned into the bond again, not to soothe, but to sharpen. It carried their instincts and I tugged just enough to make it hurt.
“Y’all done?” I asked, and my voice surprised me. It came out even, almost bored.
They stilled.
Kairo’s eyes were the first to meet mine. Something in him tightened, guilt flashing across his face too fast to be a mask.
“Elijah,” Malachi said, quiet as a blade. “Tell me what else you did.”
Elijah’s throat worked. The counting started again, but it was ragged now, a man trying to stitch himself together with numbers. “One hundred twenty-three. One hundred twenty-five.”
“Stop counting,” I said. “Answer.”
Elijah’s gaze snapped to me. His pupils were blown wide, his scent sharp with stress, and under it sat that specific fear men carried when they realized they had miscalculated a woman.
“You were going to disappear,” he said. “You were going to vanish, and I needed to remove options.”
“You took my choice,” I corrected. “That is not stability. That is panic with a prettier name.”
Jabari shifted his weight, shoulders squaring. His voice stayed polite, but the threat in it turned the air cold. “Now hold on. We not doing this like she some damn asset line on a ledger. You did this without us. You did this without him.”
My lungs eased a fraction, surprise blooming warm in my chest. Jabari’s politeness could be a knife, but right now he was using it to draw a line for me, not at me.
Kairo exhaled hard. “This is not what we agreed to. None of it.”
Elijah’s jaw flexed. “You do not understand what is coming.”
“I understand enough,” I said. “You’re trying to keep me from finding something. Or someone.”
The words hit Kairo like a fist.
Malachi’s attention cut to me fully then. His calm did not change, but the room did. “Who?”
Elijah’s head turned with the sharpness of a tracking dog. “Who?” he echoed, and the way he said it made my skin crawl. “You have been running numbers in your head since Meridian took you. You have been weighing exits and risks and contingencies. You do not do that for yourself.”
Silence expanded.
My omega rose, hot and furious. The bond did not soothe it. It agreed with it.
“My sister,” I said.
Kairo didn’t flinch. He already knew. Elijah’s expression didn’t change either, which told me he’d filed her name the same way he filed every threat: as a problem to solve.
Jabari went still, surprise cutting through his polite menace. Malachi’s gaze sharpened, the calm turning into focus.
I didn’t waste energy pretending any of this was fine.
“I told you,” I said to him. “I told you her name. I told you she was missing.”
His throat bobbed. “I know.”
“Then why are they hearing it from me right now?” I asked, keeping my voice calm because calm cut deeper. “Why did you let me stand in this room alone with it?”
Kairo’s eyes flashed, but he pulled it back fast. “Because you told us not to let the Council smell her,” he said, voice low and careful.
“You didn’t want her name floating around Meridian’s channels until you had proof and a direction.
I kept the new pieces close. The doctor. The timing. The pattern.”
“I asked you not to get her killed,” I corrected. “I did not ask you to hide her from them.”
Jabari’s gaze snapped to Kairo. “You been sitting on that?”
Kairo dragged in a breath, then forced himself to hold Malachi’s stare.
“I knew her name,” he said. “I knew she was missing, and I knew the Council likes to collect leverage more than they like money.” He flicked his eyes back to me, apology threaded through the control.
“So I kept it close until I could confirm what was rumor and what was a trail.”
“That is still you choosing silence,” I said. “And silence gets people swallowed.”
Kairo’s jaw clenched. “I was trying to protect her.”
“You were protecting yourself,” I said.
Malachi’s gaze stayed on me. “The Council.”
That word slammed into the room.
Jabari’s head turned slowly. “Council.”
Malachi’s gaze stayed on me. “Underworld Council?”
My stomach hardened, but I nodded once. “That is what I heard, and it matched what I saw.”
I held Malachi’s gaze, because he understood systems and how they hid teeth behind paperwork. “Fielding’s clinic. The stabilization calendar. The transfer codes that repeat across state lines.”
My voice stayed steady, but my omega tightened under my ribs. “Tatum wasn’t taken by chance. She was trafficked. And somebody has been dosing omegas and moving them.”
Elijah’s face drained of color. His counting disappeared completely.
“You were dosed?” Malachi asked.
“No,” I replied. “But I bet Tatum was and then taken.”
Jabari’s nostrils flared. His voice stayed smooth, but his eyes went sharp. “Who would do that?”
I let the silence answer first, because it would make them fill in the shape themselves. Then–
“Maybe Fielding?”
Kairo’s head snapped up. “The doctor.”
“The one with access,” I said. “The one who gets to touch bodies and call it care. The one who would know how to keep an omega docile without leaving bruises.”
Elijah’s stare went distant for half a second, calculations clicking into place.
“Fielding’s name has been riding our consult traffic,” he said.
“Packets signed under his credential. Requests routed through our compliance queue. He’s been close enough to touch your file without stepping into this building. ”
Malachi’s voice did not rise. It did not have to. “And you allowed it.”
Elijah swallowed. “He had clearance.”
“Clearance comes from you,” Malachi said.
Elijah flinched.
I felt the pack shift again, but this time it was not about me being wife. It was about a breach. It was about a mole inside a syndicate that prided itself on control.
“He’s going to run,” I said. “If he realizes I was never under, he’s going to run. He didn’t catch it at the clinic, but he will when he looks again.”
Elijah’s head twisted to the door, then back. For the first time, his need for control aligned with mine. “We pick him up now,” he said.
Jabari’s lips curved into something that was not a smile. “Yes, sir,” he drawled, polite as Sunday church and just as dangerous. “We go get that doctor before he slips out the back.”
Kairo stepped forward, hands out. “Nyx, listen. We can find her. We will find Tatum.”
I looked at him and felt the bond thrum, warm and possessive, trying to pull me into comfort. I did not let it.
“You do not get to promise me her life,” I said. “You do not get to promise me anything until you admit what Meridian has done to my family.”
Malachi’s gaze cut to Elijah. “If the Council has Tatum, then they are holding leverage over an omega tied to us.”
Elijah’s breath shuddered. “They will come for her,” he said, and his eyes locked on me. “They will come for you.”
“I know,” I answered. “That is why I was leaving. I was going to find my sister before you turned me into a hostage wearing a ring.”
Kairo’s face tightened. Jabari’s jaw clenched. Malachi stayed still, but I felt the decision settle in him.
“We move,” Malachi said. “Now.”
Elijah nodded once, sharp and immediate, and the way he moved after that was all Meridian discipline.
“Dispatch to Fielding’s clinic and his residence.
Lock down his exits, not ours. Pull his credential activity, all endpoints, and every consult packet generated under his name in the last seventy-two hours. ”
His gaze cut to Malachi. “If he’s clean, he’ll be furious and alive. If he’s not, he runs. Either way, we put hands on him before the Council can move him.”
Jabari’s attention flicked to me, and for a brief second the polite menace softened into something older. Possessive, protective, and furious. “You stay put,” he said, gentle enough to sound like care, dangerous enough to be an order. “We come back with answers.”
I took a slow breath through my nose. The bond tightened, pleased by the unity, but I did not let that satisfaction touch my resolve.
“Bring him alive,” I said. “I want him to tell me where my sister is.”
Elijah’s eyes sharpened. “And if he refuses?”
My omega stirred, dark and steady. “Then you will learn what I am capable of when you stop keeping me in a box.”
Silence snapped tight.
Malachi’s gaze held mine for a long beat, and in that look I saw the first true recalibration. Not mercy. Not softness. Strategy.
“Stay in my line of sight,” he said. “If the Council is involved, you are not leaving Meridian unguarded.”
“I am not asking permission,” I replied.
“I am not giving it,” he said.
The bond hummed between us, tense and intimate.
When they moved to leave, the room shifted into motion with them, boots and radios and clipped commands. Elijah reached the door first.
Then he paused and looked back at me.
“Omega Meridian,” he said quietly.
Another claim. Theirs. I was their pack omega.
“Then go,” I said. “Before your doctor disappears.”