8. Jax
Chapter 8
Jax
T he hospital lights are too bright.
They stab into my skull like hot needles, making my swollen eyes water. I blink against the pain, my breath coming in ragged pulls through my split lip. Blood has dried stiff on my shirt—some mine, most not. My knuckles are raw, my right arm hanging at an awkward angle where a beta stabbed me before I snapped his fucking neck.
The nurse at the reception desk looks up, her smile dying when she sees me. Her hand creeps toward the panic button. Smart woman.
“Finn Ironwood,” I rasp. “Which room?”
Her throat bobs. “Are you—do you need medical attention?”
“Which. Room.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t?—”
“I’m his alpha.”
Her fingers twitch toward the button again.
A shadow looms behind me—a familiar presence, a scent like burnt cedar and rage. Stone.
“It’s okay,” he rumbles. “He’s pack.”
The nurse hesitates, but Stone’s sheer size is argument enough. Her hand moves away from the button.
Stone doesn’t speak as he leads me down the hall, but I feel the questions boiling under his skin. The moment we’re around the corner, he slams me against the wall, his forearm pressing into my windpipe.
“Where the fuck is Ren?”
I bare my bloodied teeth. “Get off me before I break your arm.”
He doesn’t move. “Where. Is. He.”
“ Widow has him .”
Stone’s pupils dilate, his breath coming faster. “And Hailey?”
I swallow hard. “Gone.”
The pressure on my throat vanishes. Stone staggers back like I’ve shot him.
I push past him, peering into each room until I find the right one. The door whispers open.
Finn sits up so fast the heart monitor screeches in protest. His face is deathly pale, his gray eyes bruised-looking with exhaustion. The scent of his fear—so sour—floods the room.
“Jax.” His voice cracks. “What?—?”
I don’t let him finish. In three strides, I’m at his bedside, my hands framing his face. His skin is fever-hot under my palms.
“How do you feel?” I say, forcing the words past the knot in my throat. He shakes his head, gripping my hands as his wide gaze takes me in.
“Jax…what happened?”
I swallow hard, hearing the door click shut as Stone enters behind me.
“We went after her. We found a facility, but—” My voice breaks. It’s the first time Finn’s ever seen me come undone. “She wasn’t there.”
Finn’s breath hitches. “Ren?—?”
“Had to leave him.” The admission tastes like ash. “They were waiting for us. Two betas in the fucking ducts. Couldn’t—” I squeeze my eyes shut. “Couldn’t get back to him.”
Finn makes a keening sound that tears right through me. His hands fist in my ruined shirt, his entire body trembling. I expect him to collapse. To scream.
Instead, he drags me closer until our foreheads touch. His tears are hot against my skin. “You’re okay.”
The words gut me. Of course, I’m okay.
Finn’s fingers tighten. “We’ll get them back.” Not a question. A vow.
I nod, my nose brushing his. “I know.”
His lips find mine—a desperate, salty kiss that tastes of tears and promises. When he pulls away, his eyes are no longer scared.
They’re furious.
“Tell me everything,” he says.
And I do.
I tell them both everything.
How I’d heard the click of the vent cover sliding shut behind me—Ren’s last act before the world went to hell. The ambush came less than fifty feet in.
Two betas, waiting at a junction where the duct split. They’d known. They’d fucking known someone would try to escape that way.
I killed the first one with a bullet. The second nearly got his hands around my throat before I slammed his head into the vent wall hard enough to dent the metal.
I didn’t stick around to see if he was breathing when I let him drop.
“You could’ve gone back,” Stone growls, his voice raw. He’s been silent this whole time, a storm contained in human skin. Now his control is fraying. “You should’ve— fuck —” His fist slams into the wall, leaving a crater in the drywall.
Finn doesn’t flinch. His fingers tighten around the edge of his blanket, his chest heaving hard. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to.”
I know that. I know. But the words still taste like failure.
“I wanted to,” I say, my voice rough. “But there were too many. They were sweeping the halls, sealing exits. If I’d gone back?—”
“You’d be dead,” Finn finishes. His gaze doesn’t waver. “And then we wouldn’t know anything.”
Stone makes a growl in his throat. He’s not built for this—for standing still while the people he loves are in danger. He needs to move, to fight, to tear something apart with his bare hands.
I need it too.
“We’re getting them back,” I say, the words a vow.
Finn nods, his jaw set. “How?”
I exhale, running through options. “First, we get you out of here. Somewhere safe?—”
“No.”
“Finn, you were hurt?—”
“No.” Finn’s eyes burn with a fire I’ve never seen in him before. “There’s no concussion or anything. I’m fine. And I’m not hiding. Not while they have Ren and Hailey.”
I bite back the instinctive protest—the alpha urge to bundle him away from danger, to keep him safe at any cost. Because he’s right. He’s not some fragile thing to be coddled. We’ve learned that the hard way.
And pack doesn’t leave pack behind.
Stone finally stops pacing. His golden eyes lock onto mine, then Finn’s. “Then we fight.”
It’s not a question.
A slow, dangerous smile curls Finn’s lips. “Damn right we do.”
I look between them—at Stone’s barely leashed fury, at Finn’s quiet, terrifying resolve—and make the only choice I can.
“Then we end this.”
The words settle like a weight in the air. No going back now. No surrender.
Just blood. And vengeance.
And the unshakable certainty that we’ll burn the whole fucking world down to get our people back.
Finn releases a breath, pushing off the blanket as he tries to stand. I reach for him instinctively.
“What do you think we should do?” he asks.
“We know who has her. That rich asshole who hides behind philanthropy. He spoke to us at the gala.” I swallow hard. My gaze shifts to Stone. “And we…we know a pack that might help us get them both back.”