38. Love requires sacrifice.
Chapter thirty-eight
Love requires sacrifice...
Nick
A phantom sound hit him first—the soft metallic jingle of a belt buckle, Owen’s belt buckle, from all those times those fingers gripped the back of his neck and forced him to his knees.
The memory tried to drag him down, tried to make his body remember the position, the compliance, the broken gratitude for scraps of approval.
No .
The hunter rose in his mind, but it wasn’t a fractured, angry thing like before.
Owen first , the hunter whispered, and Nick agreed. Fast strikes . Use the space . Stay mobile .
Owen’s mouth curved into that familiar predatory smile from the hospital.“There’s my boy. I was wondering when you’d—”
Nick moved, backing up towards the living room as Owen stepped toward him.
He grabbed the coffee table’s edge and flipped it toward Owen in one fluid motion, sending loose papers flying. Owen sidestepped, but Nick was already moving again, using the distraction to close distance. His knife—Luka’s knife—appeared in his hand as he drove toward Owen’s center mass.
Owen caught his wrist, twisting hard. Nick let the momentum carry him, spinning away before Owen could complete a joint lock. The apartment was too small for proper evasion, but it also meant Owen was just as constrained.
“Still fast, I see,”Owen mused, circling.“But you’re fighting the wrong battle, Nick. You know how this ends. You know what you are.”
Nick stayed silent. Words were Owen’s backup weapons—psychological pressure designed to crack his resolve. Instead, Nick feinted left, then dove right, coming up with a ceramic shard from his shattered coffee mug. He slashed across Owen’s forearm, opening a line of red through the sleeve.
The predatory confidence in Owen’s features faltered.“Not talking? That’s new.”
Behind Owen, chaos erupted. Luka moved like liquid violence through the operatives positioned by the windows.
Nick caught glimpses in his peripheral vision—a man’s scream cutting offabruptly, the wet sound of something tearing.
One operative stumbled backward, clutching where his jaw used to be, blood streaming between his fingers.
“Jesus Christ!”another operative shouted over the carnage.“Owen, just use the trigger phrase and end this! Call him a good—”
Luka’s hand closed around the man’s throat, cutting off his words with a sickening crunch.
Two operatives broke off from window duty, moving to flank Nick. Owen’s predatory confidence returned, his features settling into vicious triumph.
“Three on one, Nick. Just like old times, but you’re overdressed.”
The first operative moved from Nick’s left, tactical knife leading. Nick grabbed the lamp from the side table and swung it like a club, the ceramic base connecting with the man’s temple. The operative dropped, but the second was already coming from the right.
Nick spun, driving his elbow into the second operative’s solar plexus, then brought his knee up as the man doubled over. The satisfying crunch of cartilage told him he’d broken the man’s nose, but it wasn’t enough to drop him.
Owen used the distraction to close in, landing a brutal kidney punch that sent fire through Nick’s side. Nick gasped, stumbling forward, and Owen followed up with a knee toward his ribs.
Nick twisted away from the worst of it, but the blow still connected, driving the air from his lungs. He rolled with the impact, coming up near the kitchen counter where one of Luka’s tea mugs sat abandoned.
The operative with the broken nose was shaking his head clear, reaching for his sidearm. Nick grabbed the ceramic mug and hurled it with deadly accuracy. It caught the man square in the forehead, and he went down hard, skull cracking against the hardwood.
Owen’s vicious triumph shifted to irritation.“You always were too clever for your own good.”
Nick wiped blood from his split lip, knife still ready in his hand.
Around them, Luka’s savage efficiency had reduced the window team to broken bodies and spreading pools of crimson.
The vampire moved toward them through the carnage, eyes black, fangs extended, looking like every nightmare the Society had ever painted about his kind.
Except he was Nick’s nightmare. Nick’s protector. Nick’s love.
Owen’s hand moved to his belt, but not for the radio. A gun appeared in his grip with practiced speed, muzzle aimed at Nick’s forehead.
“Enough,”Owen said, his voice cutting through the chaos with sharp authority.“Stop resisting, Nicholas. Now .”
The change was immediate. Luka froze mid-step, his predatory advance halting as his eyes fixed on the gun pressed against Nick’s head. In that moment of hesitation, the two remaining operatives moved with coordinated precision, grabbing Luka’s arms from either side.
“Don’t move,”one of them panted through his mask.“One twitch and your boyfriend’s brains paint the wall.”
Luka’s features were a mask ofbarelycontained rage, but he remained still. His dark gaze flicked between the gun at Nick’s temple and Nick’s face, reading the tactical calculation happening behind Nick’s eyes.
Nick felt fury surge through him—pure, clean rage at seeing Luka trapped and threatened.
Every instinct screamed at him to attack, to drive his knife into Owen’s throat and end this.
But the hunter spoke with crystalline clarity: Gun changes everything .
Range weapon . No margin for error . Reassess .
Nick’s eyes found Luka’s across the room. The vampire was shaking his head minutely, his eyes wide with desperate warning: Don’t do it. Don’t give them what they want.
But Nick looked back at Owen’s smug features, that self-satisfied mouth that said he’d won again, that Nick was still the same broken toy he’d always been. The anger that flooded through him was clean and pure and his.
He dropped the knife.
Owen’s eyes tracked the bladeas it clattered to the floor, and Nick used that split second of distraction to drop low and drive forward. His fist connected with Owen’s sideexactlywhere he’d stabbed him at the hospital, driving into the still-healing wound with vicious satisfaction.
Nick slammed into Owen, taking them both to the ground as the gunshot rang through the apartment. Behind him, he heard a wet, gurgling sound from where Luka had been, but he couldn’t look, couldn’t think about anything except getting the gun away from Owen.
Owen’s elbow came up toward his face. Nick blocked with his handless forearm, hissing as bone met bone, then drove his elbow down into Owen’s injured side again.
“Enough!” Owen snarled.
A strange pneumatic sound cut through the ringing in his ears— fwump —followed by a loud thud that he felt through the floorboards.
Hands grabbed him from behind, hauling him away from Owen with brutal efficiency. The operative he’d hit with the tea mug—bloodied but very much alive—held Nick in an arm lock.
“Stop fucking fighting!”the man barked in his ear.
Nick kept strugglinganyway, thrashing against the grip as Owen staggered to his feet, breathless and glaring.
The operative’s grip tightened, holding Nick still as Owen stepped forward and drove his fist into Nick’s stomach.
Air exploded from Nick’s lungs, doubling him over as much as the restraint allowed.
Owen spat blood onto the floor, then grabbed a handful of Nick’s hair and jerked his head up as he cocked his other arm back.
The punch to his face made stars explode behind Nick’s eyes.
“That’s for the hospital,”Owen panted, cracking his knuckles.“And this—”
He stepped aside, allowing Nick to see what had caused the pneumatic sound.
Another fwump echoed through the apartment.
Luka lay face-down on the hardwood, one arm outstretched, his fingers twitching.
The last Society operative stood over him, holding what looked like a pneumatic nail gun—the kind used for construction, but modified withlonger, thicker nails.
Two long steel spikes protruded from Luka’s spine along his neck, driven deep enough to sever the nerve pathways controlling his movement.
“No!”Nick shouted, struggling against his captor with renewed desperation.“Get away from him! GET AWAY FROM HIM!”
The operative with the nail gun looked up at Owen.“How many more you want me to put in him, boss?”
Owen studied Nick’s desperate expression with calculating cruelty.“That depends on Nick here.”He turned back to his captive with a businesslike tone.“Shaw still wants you back, you know. My orders are strict recovery this time. This can be easy, or it can be very, very hard.”
“Go fuck yourself,”Nick snarled, struggling against the operative’s grip.“I’m going to kill you.”
Owen shrugged with casual indifference.“Kill it.”
The nail gun operator raised his weapon toward Luka’s prone form.
“No!” Nick’s breath came in sharp gasps as he searchedfranticallyfor options, for some way to save them both. “Stop! Wait!”
The operative paused, nail gun still aimed at Luka’s back.
Nick felt the familiar sensation of walls closing in, the dread of no escape rising in his throat. He tried to pull free again, earning another brutal punch from Owen that left him gasping and tasting blood.
“I’ll go with you,”Nick said between ragged breaths.“Just leave Luka alone. Let him live.”
Owen shook his head with mock sympathy.“Oh, so he can have time to recover and hunt us down? Hell no.”
Time slowed. In that suspended moment, the submissive peered out from its hiding place in Nick’s psyche. I can help, it whispered, not hinder. But we have to play along.
Saving Luka means getting those nails out of his spine. That means stopping Shaw.
It’s going to hurt. But only for a little.
There has to be another way…
There was never any other way to do this except finding a way to get close to Shaw.
And we know how to get close to Shaw.
“I’ll gowillingly,”Nick shouted, his voice cracking.“I’ll be a—”
His throat seized around the phrase. He didn’t want to say it. The phantom jingle of Owen’s belt buckle echoed in his memory, and his mind wanted to retreat, to hide from what he was about to do.
The submissive spoke with unexpected strength: You have to stay present. You can’t hide. I’m only here to help you get to the next part. We love Luka. Love requires sacrifice.
Nick knew it was right. And the fact that the hunter was in agreement told him everything he needed to know; he could use what they expected him to be against them.
He looked at Luka, still twitchinghelplessly, fear and sadness in his wonderful inhuman eyes. Nick whistled a simple, mournful C—their safety signal, but softer now, like a promise.
“It’ll be okay,”he whispered.
Nick steeled himself and met Owen’s gaze.“Bring him with us like that. I’ll gowillinglyif you promise not to hurt him until I talk to Shaw.”
Owen’s eyebrows rose with amused interest. He pulled out his phone and dialed.“Shaw? Yeah, it’s Owen. Nicholas said he’ll come back if we bring the silent monster with us. Yes, it’s subdued.”He listened for a moment, then hung up and motioned for the operative to release Nick.
“Shaw accepts this proposal,”Owen said,“as long as I have confidence that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain.”He grabbed Nick’s face with rough fingers, getting too close.“I am not very confident right now.”
Nick forced himself not to flinch away. I’m trusting you, he told the submissive. His arms moved behind his back of their own accord, and he grasped his opposite elbow in the mission report posture that had been drilled into him through pain and repetition.
“I promise you, I’ll behave,”he said, tears gathering in his eyes as he stared past Owen to Luka’s prone form.“Just don’t hurt Luka. I’ll behave. I-I’ll be—”
“A good boy,”Owen finished with disgusted delight.
The submissive locked into place, lowering Nick’s gaze to the floor, making his knees weak until he sank toward the ground. His fear spiked as Owen stepped closer, holding out one hand like he was testing apotentiallydangerous animal.
Owen’s fingers slid through his hair with the proprietary touch of someone admiring a pet, Nick’s entire nervous system screamed at him to run, to dissociate, to flee into the safety of unconsciousness.
“There we go,” Owen murmured. “Good boy.”
You can’t run.
You have to stay present.
For Luka.