36. Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Six
Gabriel
J ax gathers Leah, easing her off Ronan, and presses a kiss to her mouth. Every nerve screams to touch her, to taste reassurance right from her lips, to prove she’s here.
My chest is chaos. I want to pull her away, push Jax aside, fall to my knees, do all three at once. She peels away from Jax, eyes half-lidded, and I draw her in, desperate for her warmth pressed against me before I burn up from the inside out.
I hold her close enough to feel her heart flutter. I check her arms, skim over her ribs. My movements are quick, clumsy, urgent. Like I could piece her back together with nothing but touch. My hands tremble at the angry new scrapes and mottled bruises blooming on her skin.
"You’re okay. You’re okay." My words stutter against her hair, and I don’t know if I’m lying or praying. If the bastard who did this wasn’t dead already, I’d snap his neck twice.
Jax’s jaw is set so tight it might shatter.
He’s got that wide-open ache in his eyes.
Pure relief and guilt fighting it out. Ronan’s fists are slick with blood, his body shuddering with adrenal aftershock; he looks like he might tear the van apart with his bare hands just for a reason to keep moving.
Our pack bond frays at the edges, filled with white-knuckle restraint.
The only reason we can hold it together is because we have our Omega in our arms.
I’m unmade: every thread of me saying c heck her, check her .
Don’t stop until you’re sure she’s safe and whole.
I bury my face in her hair and just breathe, shameless in my relief.
"Leah, say something smart so I know you’re not a ghost. Or say something dumb, I don’t care, I just want to know I didn’t lose my mind back there. "
"I’m here, Alpha," she says in that soft, beautiful voice of hers. "I’m actually hard to kill."
A spark still smolders beneath her frail exterior with the same surge that let her crack that asshole over the head with a spanner and gave us a chance to take this vehicle down.
I laugh but it comes out choked, ragged.
My heart’s a trap, and bonding venom floods my mouth because all I want to do is bite her.
Bond her. Tie her to us so deep that nothing could ever take her away from us again.
I force myself to breathe through the urge, concentrating on each inhale so I don’t drop my teeth right into her skin and change everything with a moment of panic.
"You know, Sunshine, the next time you want to go for a little ride, can we try a ferris wheel first? Perhaps a pony? Something a little less…homicidal." I try for levity, but don’t deny the truth in my words.
My hands shake as I hold her, every fiber in my body screaming: Mine, mine, mine!
Safe now. Just barely. I cup her cheeks, my thumbs tracing her delicate cheekbones, and settle my mouth over hers.
It isn’t gentle, not at first. My gratitude at having her in my arms comes out rough and hungry.
The relief is so sharp it strips me bare.
She opens to me, and I kiss her like she’s the only air left.
Her fingers fist in my shirt, her small body pressed so close I can count every heartbeat shivering through her. She clings to me like she’s holding onto the only thing she trusts won’t vanish. She tastes like salt and terror and the first clean breath after nearly drowning.
I was ready to leave the city in ash for her. Ready to torch the world behind me. If fate had dared to keep her soul from mine, I would have clawed through the afterlife and come back, no matter what it cost. She is everything, the axis of my heart and every reckless oath I’ve ever made.
The sound of engines draw close, shattering the silence. Ronan peers out the caved-in van door.
"More vans heading our way," he bites out. "They haven’t given up."
He bands an arm around Leah’s waist and lifts her like she weighs nothing. "We need to move. Get back into our van!"
He sweeps her out of the door. My boots crunch over shattered glass and scattered tools as I vault through the ruined door after him, Jax close on my heels.
The air outside tastes like metal and smoke. I catch a flash of oncoming vans screaming toward us before I’m bolting after Ronan, rounding the back of our stolen van. They’re still after us. Still coming despite the bodies strewn in our wake.
Our van is half-caved, shotgun-blasted with holes and cracked glass, but thank fuck the engine is still running.
I throw myself behind the wheel, heart detonating, hands slick on the battered rim.
Jax scrambles into shotgun, his fingers white-knuckled on the dash, twisted halfway to watch Leah.
Ronan shoves into the back with our Omega, arms caged around her body like nothing in the universe could pry her loose.
I wrench into reverse, engine roaring, frame shuddering. The van grinds out of the crater with an animal wheeze. I floor it, tires screaming, spinning us in a half-moon arc. Metal groans, the wheel jittering under my grip as I jam it into drive and gun it down the road .
I drive like a goddamn demon. My knuckles throb, sweat stinging my palms as I pitch us around corners, the battered van fishtailing so hard Jax has to brace himself. Ronan braces around Leah, absorbing the shock.
"We can’t keep driving like this. We need somewhere safe. The safehouse is blown and I don’t trust any of our others aren’t just as compromised now," Jax says.
Ronan’s voice is a low, volcanic rumble. "Our security is top of the fucking range, Jax. Top of the range. So how did they find us?"
My jaw aches as I slam the van through another red light, raking us barely ahead of the pack behind, buying us precious seconds to get ahead. "There’s only one place they wouldn’t dare tread with Omega trafficking. We need to get to Pinnacle Therapeutics."
Leah’s gasp is sharp, sudden bitterness rippling off her, biting into the back of my throat but there’s no time to ask why because somehow the bastards are gaining on us again.
The lead van taps our back bumper. The impact knocks my teeth together as the wheel jerks in my grip. "Hold on."
I swing us across the opposite lane, van lurching over the curb. Horns blast as I thread through oncoming traffic. Cars screech to a stop, veering sideways, tires smoking. I’m causing traffic chaos, but I keep my foot smashed to the floor, weaving us through chaos.
I slip left through a gap and shoot down a side street. The back end fishtails, van howling, but we burst out onto another avenue, swallowed up in more traffic. Nothing follows through the alley. I’ve lost them but I don’t let up for a second.
Ronan jerks his phone from his pocket and stabs the screen, jaw bunched so tight I swear I hear bone creak. Adrian picks up before the first ring is finished.
"Hardwick fucking found us and we’re coming in hot. Leah’s with us. We’re bringing her into Pinnacle." He doesn’t let Adrian respond. Just hangs up, tosses his phone onto his seat and wraps his body around our Omega.
The city blurs as I drive as fast as the ruined van allows.
I only hope it makes the distance, but if it doesn’t, I’m more than capable of commandeering another vehicle.
I don’t care what sort of crazy motherfucker I look like.
Crazy gets results. I run lights and slice corners in a volley of horns.
Jax yells directions and curses but he holds Leah’s gaze in the rearview.
"I…have to tell you something." There’s warning in Leah’s voice.
I don’t hear the rest because a familiar black van cuts across our path. My heart spikes as I swerve hard right, the tires shrieking as we careen up onto a curb, bouncing so hard every bone in my body clatters.
"How the fuck are they finding us?" Ronan bellows, voice an unfiltered slash.
The black van surges alongside, trying to box us in. I brake, cut wheels, drop behind, then gun it and surge left. I take us down another side street, a mirror shattering against a light pole, but the asshats are somehow still following us.
"Hold tight," Jax bellows and rolls down his window, his gun steady in his hand. He leans out and sets off two clean shots. Their tires blow out in perfect twin shrieks. The black van fishtails, veers, and slams into a parked car.
I take the next corner on two wheels and rocket straight into Pinnacle’s front courtyard. The world contracts to pale stone, reflecting pools, sterile perfection. There’s only the grind of the brakes as I wrench to a stop, the van shuddering just inches from glossy windows.
We spill out, Ronan hauling Leah, Jax flanking them, all of us taut, wild-eyed, blood and street on our clothes and hands.
We barrel through the automatic doors into clean marble, so bright it’s obscene after the violence we left behind. Ronan barks for Adrian, voice echoing like a weapon.
I glance back as the doors sweep shut, catch a blur of three black vans peeling away and disappearing into traffic.
Leah’s clinging to Ronan, so tight her knuckles are white, her gaze darting across the foyer like every corner hides a threat.
Her scent’s sharp and bitter. Trauma bleeds through every pore.
"Someone get me Adrian Blackwood!" Ronan barks and the few people in the foyer freeze at the dominance in his tone .
Leah’s shaking gets worse. She makes soft, helpless sounds, panic ratcheting up by the second. My own nerves are shredded but she’s not just scared, she’s almost... feral.
Then there’s sudden motion as Adrian, Cole, Zane, Asher, Soren, and Phoenix burst through the side doors, all muscle and authority, bringing the sterile lobby to heel under their hands. They part and two smaller figures dart forward. Mira and Emma.
Mira freezes the moment she lays eyes on Leah. She takes a hesitant, halting step forward. Tears well so fast they spill, trailing wet streaks over her cheeks. Her eyes are wide with disbelief, struggling to take in the impossible reality.
“Leah. You’re…real.” She swallows hard, voice barely more than a whisper, as if saying it louder would shatter the fragile moment. “Gods, I held out hope. Every day I prayed you’d made it. I begged the fates I would see you again. And now…”
More large tears slip from the corners of her eyes as she takes in Leah.
I know what she sees. She’s struggling to contain her horror at Leah’s scars, her frail body, measuring all the changes.
The years of brutality, fear, and endless stolen nights press in from the shadows.
Their shared suffering is written deep in the tremble of Mira’s arms and the quivering in Emma’s gaze.
Emma’s lips part. Her soft gaze is filled with shock that ripples through her body. She blinks repeatedly, like she’s trying to make the moment real. “We never lost hope,” she finally breathes out, voice catching. “You’re alive. You’re really alive.” Her hands curl into shaky fists at her sides.
Their pain washes over me. I’ve seen reunions before, but this one’s close. This one is real and it cuts deep. These Omegas were never meant to face this unspeakable cruelty. And yet here we are, witnesses to their survival, to the unrelenting courage that brought us all here.
Leah lets out a sound that should never come from a living throat.
A wounded, animal scream that cuts me to the core.
She writhes against Ronan’s grip, fighting like she’ll die if she doesn’t get away, her hands flung out toward Mira and Emma.
For a split second it looks like she’ll run to them, but when they reach for her, she recoils, voice fractured and raw and I realize she isn’t reaching for them. She’s telling them to keep away.
"Don’t—don’t come closer! I’ll fucking kill you—do you hear me? I’ll kill you, stay away !"