29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gabriel
We have five more facilities to scout. With any luck, I’ll knock over two tonight. Ronan leans on my doorframe, crosses his arms and watches me prepare. "Jax is with Leah. She’s sleeping at least."
I nod, rolling my shoulders and making sure my balaclava is in my pack. "Good. She needs as much rest as she can get."
She’s still locked in her fight-or-flight hypervigilant state. She’s already so fragile and fighting her instincts every damn second. I just want her to trust herself enough to trust us, so she can start to heal.
If she were any other Omega, one untouched by Hardwick’s cruelty, she’d have recognized us as scent-matches and bonded with us already. She’d know beyond doubt that the world couldn’t wedge a single heartbreak between us, but she’s too traumatized to let herself go there.
The glimmers I’ve seen before she snatches herself back keep me strong.
At least there’s hope. Her trauma has twisted knot upon knot inside her, distorting everything into a state of confusion and survival.
We’ve kept up the skin-to-skin contact. One of us is always touching her, but the truth is she’s struggling, and I hate that.
"Did you hear what she said before? She hasn’t been outside in…
" I want to say ‘years’. She hasn’t been outside in years , but the full horror locks the word in my throat.
"She thinks we’re her jailors too. I don’t want that for her.
I want her to turn to us and know if she asks anything of us, we’ll say ‘sure’.
How high? How fast? How much can we get for you? "
His jaw shifts and he looks away for a second, my words landing heavy. "You know healing is never linear. She’s only been with us a handful of days."
"She needs to be able to make a choice about something, brother. She needs agency in her life." Everything was taken from her, including rights to her own body. I work to keep my rage banked, because that is the most basic sovereignty in life. And she didn’t even have that.
An oily undercurrent travels through our pack bond.
None of us like seeing Leah like this. Trying to be tough when she’s suffering so badly.
All of us are beyond worried, bordering on terrified.
I keep replaying images of the cell she was kept in, the gurney we found her tied to, her sinking into that tainted heat consuming her.
"She went back into heat when she thought she saw someone she recognized outside." I shoulder the strap of my pack when I’m sure I have everything I’ll need before I look back to him. "Do you think she did see someone?"
Ronan rubs his sternum, his thumb dragging under his collarbone as his frown deepens. "If she did, then we’re compromised. But how? We’re off grid, and on constant surveillance."
And we’re very good at our job. None of us have seen anything out of the ordinary in any of the cameras we have set up and Jax saw nothing when he went to investigate, but fear nips at me, gnawing my gut. "Something set her off badly enough to send her spiraling into another heat spike."
"We could move to another safe house, but that might be even more detrimental. She hasn’t said a word about the couches we put together. If she really didn’t like it, she would have been out of there within seconds," Ronan says.
She’s fought us, but she’s also allowing us to take care of her in the nest. Touch her. Scent us. That’s something. Ronan is right. Taking her to another unfamiliar environment could set her back.
"The weather report says it’ll be sunny tomorrow. We should take her into the garden, have a picnic. Do something fucking normal. Something enjoyable," I say.
The building complex’s garden sits right at the center of our building, open to the sky but boxed in on three sides by the U-shape of the apartments.
It’s ground level, with a patch of grass bordered by low hedges and a few small trees planted years ago.
There are a couple of raised flower beds and a picnic table under the biggest tree.
It isn’t fancy, but it’s quiet, shielded from the street, and is perfect for our purposes.
We’ll have to be vigilant with that open side, but she should be safe enough here.
It’s the best kind of haven we can offer.
Ronan chews my suggestion over. There’s a long beat where the silence is full and heavy with everything we haven’t done right. "We’ll be careful. If she shows any signs of her heat returning, we’ll bring her back inside. But… it might be exactly wh at she needs."
The tightness in my chest loosens a fraction. She deserves something more than four walls and more bars. Even if it’s only for a few hours. And then when this is all over, I’ll buy her a park of her own and she can go outside and do whatever the fuck she wants whenever the fuck she wants to do it.
Ronan clamps his hand on my shoulder. "Good luck, brother," he says.
"I just hope I find where the bitch has holed up," I say.
Ronan’s chest vibrates with a visceral, animal edge that’s nothing like the sound he gives our Omega.
I move through the living room on my way to the front door.
Leah is tangled with Jax, both of them half-buried under a tumble of throw rugs and clothing, Jax’s arm a heavy band around her waist. Her face is turned into his chest, mouth slack, breath slow and deep.
Jax’s cheek rests on her hair, but his eyes slit open as he senses me pass.
I drag in a lungful of her perfume like the junkie I am for her. It’s so pure. So fresh. So alive and sweet it’s stepping into a spring garden after rain, rosebuds just beginning to open. It’s so real I hear bees buzzing around each blossom.
I stare at the scene, taking it in and committing it to memory while I’m out. There’s a quality bakery near here. I’ll stop by when I’m finished. I’ll bring home something flaky and sweet, with the kind of sugar that sticks to lips.
I can’t wait to spoil her with a round of firsts. The kind of firsts that should never have been taken away from her. I’ll go out of my way to give them all to her, starting with pastry, fresh air and sunshine. I’ll do what it takes to heal wounds that have scarred too deep.
I slip out the door, my steps silent as I make my way down to our SUV.
The night is still, cold and quiet. I pull out into the street and drive toward my destination, the city’s bones visible only in slices of sodium-orange streetlight.
The roads are empty, the world in that liminal hush between last call and first alarm.
I drive with one hand on the wheel, city lights flickering across my knuckles as I head to the industrial district.
The train yard I’m aiming for sits on the city’s old artery.
A stretch of derelict concrete and iron bones that’s been forgotten no doubt due to Hardwick’s machinations, and framed by tall cyclone fencing crusted in rust and graffiti.
The empty station rises out of the ground.
I take in the arches of blackened girders, glass long since smashed out, the ticket hall gutted and open to the night.
Old metal tracks split the earth, disappearing beneath weeds and oily puddles, tangling through the yard in a silent labyrinth.
It looks like no one has been here for a long time, but this is the hour when nothing should move, and that’s the best time to see if something does.
I cut my headlights two blocks out and drive the rest of the way with the engine barely idling.
I park behind a rotted boxcar, the vehicle hidden in its shadow.
I kill the engine, wait one minute, then another.
Nothing. No lights flicker from the building, no hint of a watcher in the windows.
The only movement is the wind, and an empty can skips across broken concrete.
I step out, and the cold air sharpens my senses, the taste of iron and diesel on the back of my tongue.
I keep my posture loose, one hand resting on my sidearm, the other trailing a light along the seams of my jacket.
I slip around the edges of the boxcar and cross the lot, my breath trailing silver.
The station is even more desolate up close.
I scope out the entrance, stepping over glass and a nest of tangled wires.
My footsteps echo in the cavernous main hall.
Rat droppings. Scraps of paper. Old vending machines gutted for copper.
I move carefully, scanning for any sign of recent entry, fresh footprints, cigarette butts, the glint of a camera lens half-buried behind grime.
Nothing.
I work my way from one platform to the next, eyes in every shadow, ears tuned for the scuff of a boot or a whisper of movement.
The space is empty. No heat signatures, no food wrappers newer than months, no disturbance to the dust on the benches.
Just a lot of old echoes and the slow, steady hum of my own breathing.
I turn back toward the SUV, heart racing, the old station folding up behind me as I call this a dead lead and head out.
I tell myself I can push a little farther.
If I don’t, sleep will be useless anyway.
I glance at my watch: four a.m. The city is beginning to stir, the first commuters building into a trickle of headlights along the arterial roads, but the weight in my chest refuses to lift .
The next target is smaller. Nothing but a low roofline, the kind of squat, nondescript building you could pass a thousand times and never notice.
Pale brick stained with rain, one security light buzzing above a steel door, windows blocked out with spray paint and cardboard.
The kind of place meant to be invisible.
There’s a chain-link fence, half-collapsed, trash pressed into the gaps where the wind herds it like shame.
I park a street over. The weight of the gun at my hip feels heavier now, and I’m so keyed up I flinch at the snap of my own glove as I tighten it.
Every sense is jacked, the city’s ordinary morning static overlaying my paranoia: the rattle of a bus down the block, the scrape of branches, the hollow echo of my boots on concrete.
I slip in the side gate, surveying my surroundings.
The building screams neglect. Puddles of stagnant water pool at the entrance, and the stink of old piss and mold creeps straight into my nose.
Paint peels from the doorframe. I sweep my flashlight in quick, shallow arcs, the beam slicing through broken shelving, crumpled newspaper, a nest of cables twisting out from the wall like veins.
I pause, head cocked, heart rabbiting in my chest. A soft sound followed by a wet cough, a shuffle, the whisper of cardboard dragging over rough concrete spikes through my nerves.
I round a corner, adrenaline pounding in my temples, and find a makeshift shelter crouched against the far wall.
Several flattened boxes, a child’s pink blanket, the faint slosh of a bottle rolling as its owner stirs.
Hunched inside, a bundled figure, clutching their knees, blinks at me with the animal wariness of someone who’s spent too long being seen by the wrong kind of people.
It’s not Hardwick or her dogs. Just another casualty the city spat out.
I holster my gun, hands up, showing empty palms as I approach.
He squints up at me, jaw working as if he’s deciding whether to bolt or to attack.
His eyes are glazed and bloodshot. I’m not sure what type of conversation the man is capable of.
"You ain’t the cops," he croaks. "Those fuckers like to come and kick me out of my home. How would they like it? "
"I guess they wouldn’t like it a whole lot." I crouch down. "I’m just checking the building. You see anyone around here?"
He rubs at his face, the dirt ground in deep, and settles back into his cardboard shelter.
"Don’t see much ‘cept shadows. Sometimes guys come run the fence, but not tonight.
Just me and the rats." He draws his knees up tighter.
"Might’ve heard a car around midnight but could be the street over.
Wind carries everything strange in this place. "
I study him, scanning for lies, but the only scent that comes to me is old sweat, city rot, and a faint thread of something sweet . For a moment, my heart jumps. I stand, nostrils flaring as I drag in the air.
He catches my sniff and grins, toothless. "Smell the sweet on the breeze, don’t you? Sometimes they throw out a batch they can’t sell, and I go and get it out. Nothing wrong with it either."
"They?" I ask.
The man flicks his chin in the direction of an industrial building.
"The cookie factory. Belmonts." A sly look cuts across his face, eyes glimmering in the gloom. "Don’t you think about goin’ there. That’s my secret.
And it don’t happen all the time. Sometimes they cook but don’t throw it out.
There’s nothin’ in their trash when I go look.
" He taps the side of his nose. "That’s when they pack it up and sell it.
Against the law, but they do it anyways. "
Belmonts. I know the place. Half the city does. Hope drains away, leaving behind only grit and fatigue. This is nothing but another dead end.
I thank the man, pressing some bills from my wallet into his dirt-caked palm.
He clutches them tight, shoving them deep into an inner pocket, his eyes wary but grateful.
"You stay safe, Alpha," he rasps, retreating into the sagging cardboard, already half-vanishing back into the world’s uncaring margins.
I stare at the tips of his beaten boots, thinking how strange it is that a Beta calls me Alpha, before I lift my attention to the gray at the edge of the horizon.
I head back to the SUV, disheartened that I didn’t find any trace of Hardwick. We only have three more locations, and I’m fighting the growing, gnawing dread that she’s already gone, never to be found again.