Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
Jez
THE FANCY LOUBOUTIN heels I was wearing suddenly seemed a lot less desirable, when I was trying to catch up to a tall alpha with a long stride and a chip on his shoulder.
“Heath!” I called. I didn’t want to make a scene, but I also didn’t want to break an ankle trying to speed-walk across a polished marble floor.
Heath either didn’t hear me—possible, given the ambient noise from the guests and the sound system—or didn’t acknowledge me.
I gritted my teeth and sped up my steps, feeling vaguely ridiculous with the way the mermaid gown shortened my stride.
Even if I took the shoes off, running was out of the question.
The red-haired form disappeared from view, blocked by other bodies.
He’d been heading toward the building’s main entrance, though, so that’s where I went, as well.
It was only when I pushed through the glass double doors and into the rapidly cooling night air that I caught sight of him again.
He hadn’t gone far; just to the end of the wide awning that spanned most of building’s frontage.
His presence in my mind felt like a pot about to boil over. As I slowed down and approached him, he hunched over and lifted a glowing flame to his face. A moment later, a puff of smoke emerged from his lips, pale gray under the streetlights.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I greeted, wrinkling my nose.
He took another drag and lowered the cigarette. The glowing tip shook faintly in his grasp as he blew out another cloud.
“I don’t,” he growled. “I quit at the same time I stopped drinking.”
His frustration vibrated through the bond.
“I came out to make sure you were okay,” I said. “Tony was going to follow you, but he’s enjoying the party, so I told him I’d do it. Should I have let him come instead?”
“I don’t want to talk.” Heath stubbed the cigarette out against the stone block wall with an angry gesture. “I want to be somewhere that skinny little arsehole Paolo isn’t.”
I turned and leaned against the wall a short distance away from him, blowing out a breath through my pursed lips. An artfully arranged platinum curl bounced against my cheek. “I’m not thrilled about being in the same building with him, either.”
A silence fell between us that wasn’t comfortable, exactly... but neither of us felt the need to rush and fill it.
“Knox says he’s going to deal with it,” I said eventually. “Legally, I mean. Do you think that’ll work?”
Heath let his head fall back against the stone. “When Knox says he’s doing something, it usually gets done. But if we’re talking about the legal system, I wouldn’t bank on it getting done fast.”
I thought about that for a moment and nodded. “But they’ll end up in prison at some point.”
Heath shrugged a shoulder, noncommittal.
“Are the Vozzinas the ones behind trafficking all the omegas around here?” I asked. “I mean, not just the ones who were being held at the silos... but the ones that were in your house the night Gage took me there?”
Heath lifted his head, but only so he could thump it gently against the wall a couple of times.
“Can we prove that in a court of law? No,” he said. “But... yeah, probably.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to push down old memories that had begun to rise. “Maybe Knox has got something on them now,” I said. “Something that you didn’t have before.”
“I sure as hell hope he does,” Heath said.
“Me, too,” I agreed. Then, I hesitated before continuing. “Look, this probably isn’t the time. Or the place. But... about what Gage said. About me not wanting the surgery, I mean. I know it’s not fair to ask you to have a bond that you didn’t ask for—”
Heath drew breath to say something, only to be cut off as the sky above us exploded. Orange fire lit the top of the old hotel, and half a second later, a blast of hot wind ripped downward. The heavy canvas awning tore like tissue paper.
“Fucking... fuck!” Heath shouted, grabbing me and wrapping his body around mine.
The sidewalk rumbled beneath our feet. Or... no. Not the sidewalk. The building. Panicked screams pierced through the night air.
“What’s happening?” I cried, clinging to Heath’s tuxedo lapels.
In the next instant, crippling pain ripped through the mating bond. Not Heath. Gage. My knees buckled, until Heath’s grip was the only thing keeping me upright. The shrill screams sounded closer now, for some reason—echoing inside my head.
Oh. Right. Those screams were coming from me.
The punishing blows kept coming, battering a body that might as well have been my own. Heath was reeling, too. He staggered sideways, his shoulder hitting the wall of the shaking building.
“Jez!” His rough voice sounded far away, the tone oddly flattened. “I think the building’s coming down! We have to get away from it!”
Past the agonizing pain of someone else’s injuries, I could feel his stabbing guilt over the idea of moving farther away from our pack. But the strong arms holding me tugged me sideways, and then we were stumbling like drunkards toward the street.
“No!” I set my feet, digging stiletto heels into the concrete, and nearly sent both of us tumbling to the ground. The shriek of my alpha’s damaged bones and muscles made another scream lodge in my throat, but I rooted myself in place and refused to budge.
“Jez—” Heath said again, tugging at me.
“Our pack is in there!” I yelled, directly in his face.
In the distance, sirens wailed.
His hands clenched convulsively around my shoulders. “We can’t get to them! That bomb brought the roof down—it’ll take search dogs and specialized equipment to find anyone buried under the rubble!”
My lips curled back in an ugly snarl. Inside my mind, an invisible, silken rope tugged me inescapably toward the destruction. “I can find them! I can find Gage!”
“What?” Heath’s mouth worked silently for a moment. “Jez... no! That’s not how mating bonds work!”
I grabbed his forearms, my newly manicured nails digging into the fabric of his jacket. “I can find him!”
Still, he hesitated.
“Tony’s in there, too!” I shouted. “Goddamn it! If you won’t help, then let go of me!”
Heath’s hands released their grip as though I’d suddenly become red hot. I swayed, and would have gone down if not for my clasp on his forearms. He steadied me.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, his face deathly pale. “You’ll have to lead the way. I can only feel that Gage is hurt. Not where he is.”
We were still under one end of the damaged awning.
It hadn’t come down on top of us, but getting back to the front doors required shoving through a section that had torn and fallen, draping across the sidewalk like a tent.
Part of it was on fire. Heath once again covered me with his body, hissing in discomfort as we pushed past the smoky heat.
The power was out. Heath pulled out his phone one-handed and turned on the flashlight. One of the glass doors had shattered, while the other had blown half off its hinges. There was a gap large enough for me to slip through, broken glass crunching under my heels.
Heath cursed and struggled, forcing his larger body through the narrow space.
The mental rope pulling me deeper into the building wavered in and out of focus, its ends fraying.
Only Heath’s hand around my wrist kept me from stumbling blindly forward into the darkness before he’d managed to get inside with me.
With a final grunt of effort, he squeezed through.
The flashlight panned across the floor, playing over people in expensive evening wear groaning and pushing to their feet.
Clouds of gray dust billowed in the beam of light, coating the figures and making them look like ghosts.
I coughed convulsively, covering my nose and mouth with my hand.
“Everyone get outside!” Heath bellowed. “Help the injured and get away from the building! Police and fire rescue are coming!”
More phone flashlights flickered on, crisscrossing the grand entryway with yellow beams. People started staggering toward the broken doors, some of them pausing to help lift others who hadn’t yet risen.
Heath and I pushed against the slow tide of bodies, heading toward the very place that everyone else was fleeing.
The wall separating the reception area from the huge, high-ceilinged banquet area had a massive crack in it.
The arched double-doorway looked like a photograph someone had torn in half and tried to glue back together, the edges no longer meeting up.
Beyond, the sound of screams and groans of pain echoed eerily.
Heath lifted his phone’s flashlight, shining it past the fractured doorway... and illuminating a scene straight from the depths of hell itself.