3. Jax
Chapter 3
Jax
T he night air hits me as we exit the gala, my hand still gripping Ren’s arm. Not to restrain him anymore. That moment’s passed. But because I need the anchor. Need something solid while the world tilts beneath my feet.
Hailey. Taken.
Finn. Bleeding.
And everything we’ve built is threatening to crumble.
All the networking tonight doesn’t mean shit if we don’t have our omegas. It all means nothing without them.
I scan the dark driveway, looking for any sign of Stone. Our SUV sits waiting at the curb, engine running, Stone behind the wheel. My heart leaps for one desperate second—maybe he found her, maybe she’s inside—but when we open the door, the vehicle is empty.
No Hailey.
My heart plummets. I stand frozen, staring at the vacant leather seats as if my gaze might conjure her there.
“Stone?” My voice comes out like gravel.
He doesn’t answer. Just grips the steering wheel tighter, jaw ticking with barely suppressed rage. The silence is answer enough.
They have her. Stone didn’t find her.
Ren slides into the backseat without a word, his movements fluid but tightly controlled. I follow, pulling the door closed behind me with a soft thud that feels deafening in the silence.
The moment the door latches, Stone punches the gas. The SUV lurches forward, tires squealing against asphalt as we peel away from the gala. No one speaks. What is there to say? Every second ticking by is another second Hailey is in their hands.
The Academy’s hands.
Widow’s hands.
Veyra Heath’s hands.
I can’t fucking believe it. I don’t want to. But I heard it from Finn’s own mouth. Can’t ignore the truth when it slaps me in the face.
Veyra Heath. An omega trafficker.
We reach a red light, and Stone brakes hard enough to jolt us all forward. The silence stretches, taut as a wire about to snap, until Stone breaks it.
“Where to?” His voice is low, but violence runs beneath it like an underground river. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak like this before. “Hospital…” His gaze shifts to the rearview mirror, finding Ren’s reflection. “Or somewhere else…Ren?”
The unspoken question hangs between us. Stone isn’t just asking about our destination; he’s asking how far we’re willing to go.
Ren’s jaw ticks once. Twice. His expression hardens into something I’ve only glimpsed before—something cold and calculating that has nothing to do with the Ren I thought I knew.
“Downtown.”
One word. Heavy with implication.
Neither Stone nor I question it. The light turns green, and Stone accelerates smoothly, heading toward the heart of the city.
In these last few weeks, it’s like Ren is someone else. The cabin in the woods. How he disposed of the evidence of the break-in at our house. Things he’d let slip sometimes. Things that didn’t make any sense…or maybe I didn’t want them to.
I thought I’d want to question it more, demand answers, but in this moment, I don’t fucking care. All I want is Hailey and Finn back. Our pack whole again.
“We should split up,” I say into the silence, thinking aloud as Stone navigates through the late-night traffic. “Those warehouses I’ve been trying to get info on—maybe we should each take part of the list, hit them all. Try to find where they’ve taken her.”
Stone nods, probably already mentally dividing the list. “I can start with the ones near the docks. Someone at that gala?—”
“It was Heath.” I cut him off, watching as the words settle, watching as Stone’s gaze locks with mine in the rearview, the road before us forgotten. Someone honks and his gaze flashes back to the road, but in his eyes, his shock turns into slow rage.
“Fuck,” he finally breathes. “FUCK.”
Fuck indeed. “I’ll take midtown,” I continue. “There’s a cluster of abandoned properties that?—”
“No.”
Ren’s voice cuts through our planning. Just that single word, but delivered with such absolute certainty that both Stone and I fall silent.
“You won’t find her at any of those places.”
The surety in his tone puts me on edge. How the hell does he know? “If not there, then where, Ren?”
His jaw ticks again, and it’s evident there’s a lot he wants to say but can’t. Just like before. Just like all those other times it felt like he was keeping us in the dark.
Well, not anymore.
“I think it’s fucking time now,” I say, twisting in my seat to face him fully, “that you tell us everything.”
The silence that follows is thick enough to choke on. Stone’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror again, watching Ren. Waiting.
Ren stares back at me, his expression unreadable. Then he looks away, out the window at the city lights streaking past.
“It’s not that simple,” he says finally.
“Bullshit.” My voice rises despite my efforts to keep it level. But for too long, I’ve been walking on eggshells, trying to keep this pack from fracturing completely. Always caught between not knowing what to do and not doing enough. “Our omega is out there, Ren. Finn is in the hospital. And you’re still playing your fucking games, still keeping secrets .”
“They’re not games,” he says, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. “And they’re not just my secrets.”
“Then whose are they?” Stone asks quietly from the driver’s seat.
Ren runs a hand through his hair, leaving it more disheveled than before. For a moment, in the shifting shadows as we pass beneath streetlights, he looks haunted.
“My family’s,” he says finally. “My parents’.”
“Your parents?” I repeat, struggling to keep up. “What do they have to do with Hailey being taken? With the Academy?”
Ren’s laugh is hollow, devoid of humor. “Everything.”
The SUV fills with silence again as we process this. I know bits and pieces of Ren’s family history—old money, powerful connections, traditional values that Ren rejected when he left home. But there’s clearly more. Much more.
“Explain,” Stone says. His tone leaves no room for evasion.
Ren’s gaze shifts between us, measuring, calculating. Then he sighs. His shoulders slump. And suddenly, I see a side of him we rarely see anymore. The alpha behind the mask. The Ren that would let his feelings bleed before immortalizing them on canvas. The Ren I knew when we first formed this pack.
Back then, his rebellion from his parents had been all sharp edges and scorched earth. He’d burned through money, connections, even a few bones in fight rings. But then…something worse happened. Something that made him go scarily quiet. Stopped mentioning them entirely. Just showed up one day with fresh scars and Finn in tow, like he’d traded his past for a future all of us dreamed of.
“My family isn’t just rich,” he begins. “They’re not just powerful. They’re…architects. Of a system designed to control omegas. To train them. To break them.” His voice catches on the last word. “The Academy isn’t just some rogue operation. It’s part of a network. A network my parents helped build.”
What?
That…doesn’t make sense. I stare at him, struggling to reconcile what I know of Ren— our Ren, who treats Finn with such reverence, who would tear apart anyone who harmed him—with what he’s describing.
“You’re saying your parents are involved in…” I can’t even finish the sentence, the horror of it sticking in my throat.
“Omega trafficking,” Ren finishes for me, his voice flat. “Among other things. They call it ‘training.’ Stripping away anything that might make them resist their masters.”
The car swerves slightly before Stone regains control. “Jesus Christ, Ren.”
“I didn’t know,” Ren continues, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. “Not for a long time. They kept that part of their lives separate from me. Until I started asking questions.” A breath shudders from his chest. “Until I found that basement…”
His laugh is bitter this time, sharp enough to cut. “I wasn’t ready. I was never going to be ready for that.”
Silence fills the vehicle. Hard and heavy.
I want to say that he’s lying, but behind Ren’s eyes are ghosts, demons he’s not even bothering to hide.
This isn’t a lie. This is raw, hard truth.
“What was in the basement, Ren?”
He keeps staring ahead before his throat moves.
“ What was in the basement, Ren ,” I say it again and it hardly comes out as a question.
His gaze drops. He looks battered. Tortured. Bruised.
“Omegas.” His voice is so small I almost don’t hear it. “When I found them, there were only six there, but it was clear there had been more.”
Ice is in my veins. The vehicle itself feels like it’s suddenly in the Arctic. “You’re telling me,” I speak slowly, “your parents run?—”
Ren turns to me, his eyes blazing with a fury that matches my own. “My parents aren’t involved anymore. Not after what I did.”
The cold certainty in his voice stops me short. “What did you do?”
Something shifts in Ren’s expression—something dark and satisfied and broken all at once.
“Three years ago, I found their operation.” His fingers dig into his knees. “Burned their client lists. Sabotaged their supply routes. Got nineteen omegas to safe houses before they noticed.”
Stone’s gaze flicks to Ren in the rearview. “Fuck.”
“But the network was bigger than just them,” Ren continues. “After…After the accident, I went back. Finished it. Every backup record. Every blackmail file. Made sure they couldn’t keep doing it anymore.”
The silence hangs thick until Stone grits out, “So you knew. You knew where Hailey came from, and you said nothing.”
“I didn’t know where Hailey came from.” Ren looks up, his shame raw. “Not exactly where. But I knew she was one of them. The signs were there. The way she flinched from alphas. The subservience. The training. I just...never told you how deep those scars ran.”
“ But you knew these places existed ,” I press, anger rising, sour in my throat. “You knew what they did to omegas, and you kept it to yourself.”
His throat moves. He doesn’t meet my gaze. Then the real confession comes, barely audible:
“I kept them from taking Finn, too.”
The words land like a gut punch. Stone slams the brakes at a red light, the tires screeching.
The air in the SUV goes cold, so cold I can almost see my breath. The light goes green, some POS honks, but Stone’s hands freeze on the wheel, and I feel like someone just walked over my grave.
“ What the hell does that mean ?” I don’t even fucking care about holding back my alpha command. “Kept them from taking Finn?”
Ren doesn’t answer immediately. He looks down at his hands—hands that I’ve seen gentle with Finn, steady with a paintbrush, and strong when we need them. They’re trembling now.
“The gala where I met Finn,” he finally says, each word dragged out as if it physically pains him. “It wasn’t…it wasn’t a coincidence. None of it was.”
“Explain.” Stone’s voice is ice and shadows.
“That charity event,” Ren says, “it was a farce. There were alphas there, high-profile people, snakes pretending to be there for the charity. They were only there to scout omegas like Finn, who didn’t have money or connections.”
My stomach twists as I begin to understand what he’s saying. Our Finn. I almost choke on my tongue. “They were hunting.”
Ren nods once, sharply. “My parents had been scouting Finn. They’d set their sights on him.” His voice breaks slightly. “But I had too. The moment I saw him, I knew—knew he was mine. Ours . And I couldn’t let them take him.” He releases a shuddering breath. “The accident that killed Amaya…it wasn’t…” He swallows hard and turns to look out the window. Traffic moves around us, cars honking, a few brave betas glaring. None of us move in our seats.
From where I sit, I see the tears. Unshed tears brimming in Ren’s eyes as he stares out that window, telling us all this. Telling us that everything we knew about him and his family was…a lie.
“That night when I killed our omega.” He swallows again. “I was trying to get away from them.”
The implications of what Ren is saying wash over me in waves of horror. The accident. Ren’s protectiveness. His secretiveness. The way he sometimes looks over his shoulder even in our own home.
None of us speak for long minutes. The only sound is the hum of the engine and the distant wail of a siren somewhere in the city. I’m reeling, trying to reconcile the Ren I thought I knew with this man who’s been carrying such terrible secrets.
“All this time,” Stone finally says, his voice unnaturally calm, “you’ve been protecting us from your own family?”
Ren doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. The truth is written in the haunted look in his eyes, in the way his shoulders bend beneath an invisible weight.
Fuck.
Fuck!
The rage under my skin struggles with my logical mind. I want to tear into something. Rip it apart. What kind of fucking pack lead am I when my third has had to carry this weight on his shoulders all alone? What kind of fucking leader am I to have thought that fixing the bond with our omega was the single thing we needed to fix us all?
I stare at Ren, horror at what he’s just admitted, disgust at the facts, and pain for the fact he’s been hurting all this time all swirling in my gut. I want to punch something, but maybe punching something isn’t what is needed right now.
“You could have told us.”
Something snaps in him then. The careful control he’s maintained shatters, and his eyes blaze with a mixture of rage and raw pain.
“ Told you what, Jax ?” he snarls. “Told you that my family is a bunch of fucking devils wearing suits? Told you that I killed Finn—our omega, our heart—because I was trying to get away from them?” His voice rises with each question, years of pent-up anguish pouring out. “Tell you that my family was the one after our omega? Tell you and put you in danger too? Because let’s face it, Jax, you and Stone wouldn’t let it slip. And if my parents and their associates were okay with potentially putting me, their only son, underneath the wheels of a truck, they sure as hell wouldn’t have blinked twice before coming after you, too. So tell me again how I should have told you! How I should have exposed you all to this clusterfuck that is my life and lose you too !”
The outburst leaves him breathing hard, his mask of control completely gone. In its place is something vulnerable and wounded and terrifyingly raw.
The rage under my skin wars with the truth lodged in my throat. What kind of leader demands trust while being blind to the burdens his pack carries alone? What kind of alpha thinks bonds can be mended with dominance instead of listening?
Ren is looking at me—really looking at me—for the first time since this began. His eyes aren’t defensive anymore, just exhausted. The kind of tired that comes from holding up the sky by yourself for too long.
I exhale, and with it goes the last of my anger. My fingers uncurl from fists I’d apparently made. Before I even know what I’m doing, I slide toward him and pull him into my chest. He stiffens, pushes back against me, but his fight lasts only a few seconds. When he realizes I’m not letting go, his entire body shakes with a sob before he crumples against me.
“Ren,” I say, softer now, “you don’t have to be the strong one all the time. That’s not what we need from you.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. “Then what the hell do you need?” The question cracks open something between us.
What comes out of my mouth surprises even me: “Just you. However broken you think you are.” The words taste like truth. “Not your protection. Not your fucking suffering in silence. You .”
Stone makes a wounded noise from the front. When I glance over, he has the same look I’m sure is reflected in my eyes. We’re fucking broken. But we’re still pack. He places a hand on Ren’s shoulder without a word.
And just like that, I understand—we don’t need to be alphas right now. We just need to remember how to be a pack.
When Ren finally stops shuddering, I let him go. He swallows hard and gives me a little nod.
“Does Finn know?” I ask quietly.
Ren shakes his head. “No. Not about my parents. He knows I was running from something that night, but not what. Or who.”
“And now they have Hailey,” Stone says, turning the SUV onto the main road that leads downtown. “Your parents. Fuck. No wonder you came back so crazed when you visited them last time. That night when you?—”
“When I scared Hailey to death. I swear I didn’t mean to?—”
“We know,” I assure him. “She knows, too. She’s forgiven you.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t understand why. From what I saw when I found those omegas in that basement, she…she shouldn’t have even let me touch her again. She should’ve been too afraid.”
“Yeah…we don’t deserve her. But she’s our scent match. So we better try damn hard to. First thing on the list, finding where the fuck Veyra Heath has taken her.”
“Think you know where they’ve taken her, Ren?” Stone asks from the front.
Ren sighs then straightens, eyes hard. “No, but I have a plan. We’re getting her back.”
I stare at him, this man I thought I knew. My packmate. My brother. A stranger with secrets darker than I could have imagined. An omega trafficking ring ran by the very people at the upper echelons of our society. Looking at it, at the sheer scale of what we’re facing, a cold dread settles in my stomach. But beneath the dread, something else burns. Determination. Rage. The primal drive to protect what’s ours.
“And then?” Stone asks, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror before shifting to Ren.
Ren’s expression transforms, something terribly calm settling over his features. The mask of civilization slipping to reveal the darkness beneath.
“And then,” he says softly, “I finish what I started. I burn it all down. The Academy. The network. My family’s connections. All of it.”
Stone nods once, acceptance and agreement in that simple gesture.
As Ren gives Stone directions, the moment we enter downtown, I can’t help the knot of determination hardening in my gut. The SUV comes to a stop in a back alley in one of the seediest parts of the city. I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing here, but I trust Ren.
“Ready?” he asks, his hand already on the door handle.
I take a deep breath, centering myself. Preparing for whatever comes next. “Ready.”
And as we exit the SUV, moving like shadows toward the delivery entrance of some establishment I don’t know, I realize something that should terrify me but instead fills me with a grim satisfaction.
We’re not just going to rescue Hailey tonight.
We’re going to war.