3. Motley
CHAPTER 3
MOTLEY
I slam my fist into the punching bag again, harder this time. The impact sends a violent shudder through the chains, rattling them like bones. Bones, cracking bones. I love that sound. The skin on my knuckles is split wide open, fresh blood smearing across the black leather. I don’t care. I need the pain, need the burn in my muscles, need something to keep me from snapping the fuck in half.
Three days. Three motherfucking days of nothing.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
The bag swings wildly as I deliver another brutal combination. Left jab. Right cross. Left hook that makes the rig groan in protest.
"Where the fuck are you, Harlequin?" I growl, the nickname I've given her feeling right on my tongue even though I've never met her. Charlotte. My Charlotte. Our Charlotte. Yes, damn right, I've claimed her already, and when she's ready, she'll be the Bonnie to this crazy ass Clyde.
Blood smears across the black leather of the bag, but I don't slow down. Can't slow down. If I do, I'll start thinking too much, and then I'll really lose my shit. Better to bleed it out here than tear through the pack house hunting for answers that aren't there.
A savage snarl tears from my throat, and Ilose it . I unleash everything—fists flying in a blur, my vision tunnelling, the whole damn world narrowing to the need tobreak something . The rig shudders with every brutal impact, the force of my fury bleeding out of me in fists and gritted teeth and blood-slicked knuckles.
The gym smells like sweat, leather, and iron—from both the weights and my blood. The familiar scents ground me, remind me of the discipline I learned in the military. Focus the chaos, Motley. Channel it. Use it.
But fuck me if that's easy when all I want to know is what she smells like. Will it be the sweet intoxicating scent of honey, cinnamon, or cotton candy? Geez, I'm tripping on an Omega I've only seen a picture of. What’s going to happen when I actually rescue the woman? Bust a nut in my tactical gear, that's what I'll do. An Omega Rights Activist with a spine of steel and a body made for sin. I've only seen photos, watched her speeches online, but I know. I fucking know she's ours.
"You're gonna kill that bag," Teagan’s voice slices through the red haze in my head, calm but edged with something sharp.
I don’t turn. “What do you want?” I pant, landing another devastating blow that makes the whole setup creak.
"Information, same as you. But I'm not destroying pack property to get it," he retorts.
I laugh, the sound jagged and humorless. "This isn’t destruction. This is fuckingtherapy . " I throw a final punch that nearly knocks the bag off its hinges, catching it on the rebound, my bloody hands leaving macabre prints. My breathing is wrecked, my pulse a riot in my veins.
"Any news?" I ask, knowing the answer but needing to hear it anyway.
Teagan crosses his arms, unreadable. "Nothing solid. Our contacts in Houston say they’ve found no new leads. Joker hasn’t left his damn monitors. I was just going to check on him when I heard you in herelosing your shit . You need to get that cleaned up," Teagan says, his voice dropping into thatalpha command I usually listen to. Not today.
I lift my chin. "Is that anorder, boss?"
His eyes flicker, dark and dangerous. I might be pushing but fuck it—Iwanta fight. My whole body is vibrating with it, coiled tight with rage and something darker.Let me swing on him. Let me tear something apart.
"Really, Beaux?" His voice is low, warning. "You want to do this?"
I stare him down, my breathing ragged, my fists flexing at my sides. The gym is too fucking small, the walls closing in, my mind screamingGO, GO, GO. I can’t shake it. But I don’t move. Not yet.
Snorting, I stalk past him, my skin itching with the need todo somethingthat isn’t sitting here waiting. I grab a water bottle from the fridge, drain it in one long pull, then crush the plastic in my grip, letting the last drops splatter onto the floor.
"Three days is too long," I grind out. "We should beout there , not sitting on our fucking hands."
Teagan’s expression doesn’t change, but there’s fire banked behind his gaze. "Wewillbe. The second Joker finds something, we move."
I flex my hands, staring at my ruined knuckles, at the blood drying in the creases of my fingers.Soon, I remind myself.Soon. I’m going to tear them apart, not only for her, but every single person they’ve taken.
"Well, would you look at this shitshow," Moses says as he steps into the gym, eyeing the bloodbath I've created like it's just another Tuesday. For us, I guess it fucking is.
I wipe sweat from my brow, probably smearing blood across my forehead in the process. "You here to lecture me too, Deacon? Trigger’s already got that covered."
Moses just shakes his head. The calm motherfucker never rises to my bait. It's annoying as fuck and one of the reasons I love him. "Joker's been up for seventy-two hours straight. Man's running on energy drinks and obsession. Eyes are bloodshot to hell, but he says he's onto something."
"Onto something?" I perk up like a dog hearing a treat bag. "What kind of something?"
"The kind where he's mumbling to himself and typing so fast his keyboard might catch fire," Moses says. "But he won't take a break. Not even for me."
Teagan's already heading for the door. "Let's go."
We follow him out, my bloody knuckles forgotten as adrenaline surges through me again.Finally, some fucking movement. I trail behind them through our ridiculous penthouse—fifty-story drop to the concrete below, Central Park spread out like some rich person's backyard. Sometimes I stand on our terrace and think about how easy it would be to just step off. Not because I want to die, but because I want to know what it feels like to fall. That's the kind of fucked-up shit that rattles around in my brain when I'm idle.
"I hate this fucking place when we're trapped in it," I mutter as we cut through the living room. "All this fancy-ass shit just sitting here looking pretty." I gesture at the sleek modern furniture that probably costs more than most people make in a year. "This couch has seen more of our asses than action lately." We pass by the east-facing windows, and I catch a glimpse of the city sprawled below us like a circuit board. "Fifty windows in this joint, and not one of them showing me what I need to see."
Moses gives me a sidelong glance as we head down the hallway toward Joker's tech dungeon. "And what's that?"
"Charlotte, safe. Or a trail of breadcrumbs leading to whoever took her so I can carve them into tiny fucking pieces."
The hallway stretches ahead, lined with our bedrooms that none of us have properly slept in lately. Mine's the one with the door that's got three dents from the times I've punched it instead of one of my packmates. Pack discipline, they call it. I call it not getting my ass handed to me by Teagan.
We pass by the weapons vault—reinforced steel door, biometric locks, enough firepower inside to start a small war or end one. My fingers itch every time I walk by it. Inside that room is the solution to so many problems: bullets, blades, and bombs.
"That pool hasn't seen action in weeks either," I nod toward the glass doors leading to our terrace as we pass. The lap pool gleams turquoise in the afternoon sun, pristine and untouched. "Rich people shit. Who needs a pool fifty floors up? One good storm and half the water ends up raining down on the peasants below."
We round the corner to the rear of the penthouse where Joker's set up his command center. I call it his tech dungeon because it's where he goes to torture information out of machines. The air gets cooler as we approach, the hum of servers and cooling fans grows louder.
There better be something . If I have to sit through another dead-end theory, I’m gonna lose what’s left of my patience. I need atarget. A location. A fucking reason to pull the trigger on something,someone.
"I swear if he's been staring at the same fucking screen for three days and hasn't found anything." I let the threat hang there, empty as we all know it is. If Joker says he's onto something, he is. Man's brain works differently than ours, all genius and no filter.
Teagan pushes open the door, and the blue glow from a dozen monitors washes over us. The room smells like stale energy drinks, body odor, and desperation. In the center of it all is Josiah, hunched over his keyboard like a man possessed.
"Show time," I mutter, cracking my bloody knuckles. "Let's see what our little Joker's been cooking up."
Joker looks like he's crawled out of a fucking grave. His eyes, bloodshot and wild, blink rapidly at the light coming in from the hallway like he's forgotten the sun exists. The blue glow from his twelve monitors casts an eerie pallor on his brown skin, making him look sickly and translucent. Wrappers from protein bars and empty cans of energy drinks create a perimeter around his workstation like some kind of fucked-up ritual circle.
"Jesus Christ, J," I say, stepping into his tech dungeon. "You look like complete shit."
He doesn't even glance my way, just peels his glasses off and rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands, leaving them there for a long moment like he's trying to push some energy back into his skull.
"When's the last time you ate something that wasn't processed garbage?" I ask, nudging an empty can with my boot.
Joker finally looks up, his eyes vacant for a split second before recognition flickers back into them. "Tuesday, I think?" He blinks twice, those rapid-fire blinks that tell me his brain is recalibrating. "What day is it?"
"Friday," Moses answers, his voice gentle in that way he gets when Joker's spiraling into one of his obsessive episodes.
We all know how this works. Joker gets locked onto a problem, and the rest of the world ceases to exist. Food, sleep, basic fucking hygiene—all secondary to whatever puzzle his brain is chewing on. It's what makes him brilliant, but it's also what makes us worry. His neurodivergent brain is both a blessing and a curse. Three days without sleep would make most people useless, but for Joker, it's just another day at the office.
"You smell like a fucking corpse," I mutter, but there's no heat in it. I've seen this before—his hands twitching, the way he keeps arranging and rearranging the items on his desk in perfect symmetry, the compulsive way he types sequences into his computer. He won't stop until he cracks it or collapses. Whichever comes first.
"So, it's Friday," he mumbles, more to himself than to us. "Seventy-six hours, fourteen minutes since my Charlotte Matthews search began."
Teagan steps forward, his posture shifting subtly as he takes in Joker's state. "Moses says you've found something."
Joker's eyes light up, manic energy replacing exhaustion in an instant. "I have. Been following breadcrumbs. Digital ones." His fingers fly over the keyboard, multiple screens changing to show different satellite views, traffic camera footage, delivery schedules. "See these trucks?" He points to a grainy image of three unmarked vehicles. "They're making regular deliveries to the middle of fucking nowhere."
"Supplies," Moses says, leaning in.
"Exactly," Joker nods, his movements jerky and excited. "Food, water, medicine. But there's nothing out there. No building, no compound. Just mountains and scrub."
I move closer, my blood humming with anticipation. "Show me."
His fingers dance across the keyboard, pulling up a satellite view of an area that looks like the ass-end of Arizona or maybe New Mexico. "Watch this footage from six months ago." The timestamp in the corner confirms it's from half a year back. Three trucks move along a dirt road, disappearing behind what looks like a ridge.
"Now look at this," he says, switching to a more recent image. "Same location, different angle I found by hacking a military satellite—don’t ask, I don’t want to get Te in trouble again.” He zooms in keeping his gaze off Teagan’s scolding face, before pointing to what appears to be a rock face. "See it?"
I squint, then it hits me. "Holy shit. That's a fucking door."
Joker's grin is manic. "Bingo. It's built into the rock face. Completely hidden unless you're looking for it."
"They're underground," Teagan says, his voice dropping an octave lower.
"Like fucking mole people," I say, my heart rate kicking up. "You think that's where they're holding her?"
Joker nods rapidly. "I tracked the supply chain. These deliveries increased three months ago, coinciding with the rise in missing Omegas. More food, more medical supplies?—"
"For new captives," Moses says darkly .
"I cross-referenced with missing persons reports across neighboring states," Joker continues, flicking through a series of photos—all women, all Omegas. "Thirty in the last month alone. All gone without a trace."
"Underground," Teagan murmurs.
"Literally and figuratively," Joker says with that nervous laugh he gets when he's overtired. "I've found them. I've fucking found them."
I feel a dark smile spreading across my face. Finally, a target. Finally, something to destroy.
"Coordinates?" Teagan asks.
Joker taps a few more keys, and a string of numbers appears on the main screen.
"Pack your shit," Teagan says, already turning toward the door. "We're going hunting."
He doesn’t have to tell me twice.