Chapter 14 #2
Rage flickers in my chest.
But I can't focus on that now.
Can't focus on anything except the girl in my arms, whose breath is growing shallower, whose blood is staining my clothes, whose life is slipping away faster than I can hold onto it.
"We tried to go to your place," I tell her, and I don't know why I'm talking, don't know why it matters, except that I need her to know. Need her to understand that we came. That we tried. "It was burning."
Another cough.
More blood.
"Figures," she whispers, and even now her voice carries that sardonic edge, that gallows humor that seems to be her default setting. "They always... gotta take everything... from the innocent Omega."
A giggle escapes.
Weak.
Wrong.
"Shh," I tell her, brushing blood-matted hair from her face. "We're gonna fix this."
"You can't fix crazy," she huffs, and her mismatched eyes are starting to lose focus, drifting in and out of awareness. "But if I'm gonna die and meet my parents... welp. Maybe I'll find purpose there."
"You have purpose right here."
The words come out fierce.
Desperate.
She makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a cough.
"What? With you bunch of fools, which..." Her gaze slides past me, taking in Jett and Blaze with their components and calculations. "By the way... I have no clue who your pack friends are, but at least you're all cute."
Leave it to her to compliment our attractiveness while she's dying.
Her eyes continue their journey.
Land on something—someone—behind me.
Kai.
I feel his presence before I see him. That heavy, commanding aura he carries everywhere, impossible to ignore even when you're not looking directly at him.
Seraphine grins.
It's weak—blood staining her teeth, her lips, her chin—but it's still unmistakably her.
"So you're my archnemesis..."
She laughs.
Coughs.
More blood.
"Hurry up!" I snarl at Jett and Blaze.
"Working on it," Jett replies, his voice tight with concentration. He's grinding something—herbs, compounds, things I don't recognize—while Blaze creates a small fire in his palm, the flames dancing obediently in his cupped hands.
Heating the antidote.
If it even works.
"Damn," Seraphine murmurs, still looking at Kai. Her voice is dreamy now, fading. "I bet your father looks just like you."
Kai's expression flickers.
Dangerous.
"Why would you say that?" His voice is cold, controlled, but I've known him long enough to hear the tension underneath.
Seraphine's grin widens.
Blood-stained and terrifying and absolutely unhinged.
"Only a narcissist can order for his own son... heir to be assassinated with his entire pack... at an academy like this."
The words land like bombs.
Silence.
Absolute silence.
I feel Kai go rigid behind me.
Feel the shock radiating through the pack bond—not just from him, but from Jett and Blaze too.
Assassinated.
His own father.
Us.
"What?" The word escapes me before I can stop it.
Seraphine smirks.
"Don't believe me?" Another weak giggle—that sound that used to be manic and bright now reduced to something fractured and fading. "Aphrodite... I'm... just gonna take a little... nappy nap... so you just repeat... what those fuckers... said... pretty please..."
The small robotic sphere I noticed before—the one she called Ro, her AI companion—hovers closer, its sensors blinking.
"Blood pressure dropping," Ro announces, its synthetic voice carrying clinical concern. "Risk of seizures and decline is imminent."
No.
No, no, no—
"Jett?" I demand.
"One more minute. It's almost at boil."
"She'll be dead in a fucking minute!"
Seraphine's eyes are fighting to stay open.
I can see the battle—can feel it through the bond, the desperate struggle to cling to consciousness when her body is trying so hard to shut down.
"Ro," she whispers, and her voice is barely audible now, slipping away like water through fingers. "Tell them... please... and thanks... for being my friend..."
She trails off.
Her eyes roll back.
Her body goes limp in my arms.
"SERAPHINE!"
The scream tears out of my throat as her weight goes completely slack—as the steady, chaotic pulse of her emotions through the bond suddenly dims to almost nothing.
Blaze curses.
He grabs the heated liquid from over his flame—pours it into his mouth despite the steam still rising from it—and moves with a speed I've rarely seen from him. His hands grip Seraphine's face, tilting it toward him, and then he's kissing her.
Not romantically.
Desperately.
Transferring the heated antidote from his mouth to hers, forcing the liquid down her throat, using the most efficient delivery method available when she can't swallow on her own.
While this is happening—while Blaze is literally trying to kiss life back into our dying Omega—Ro begins to play audio.
Recorded voices.
Male.
Rough.
Clearly not expecting to be heard.
"—orders came from the top. Lawson himself. Wants his son and the entire pack eliminated before they become a problem."
"The heir too? Isn't that a bit extreme?"
"Something about insurance. The boy knows too much. Got too close to figuring out what really happened with the Eastman massacre. Can't have him connecting the dots."
"So we burn the Omega's place, grab her as bait, and when the pack comes running—"
"Pop. One shot each. Make it look like a territory dispute. Academy violence. Happens all the time."
"And the money?"
"Triple our usual rate. Lawson doesn't fuck around when he wants someone dead. Even his own blood."
The recording ends.
Silence.
I look at Kai.
Watch his face as the information processes.
Watch the careful control he's maintained for years crack—shatter—crumble into something I've never seen from him before.
Pain.
Pure, devastating pain.
His father—the man who raised him, trained him, turned him into the weapon he is today—ordered his death.
Sent us to this academy not to eliminate the Eastman heir, but to be eliminated.
All of us.
Disposable.
Inconvenient.
Problems to be solved.
Kai's jaw works.
His hands clench and unclench at his sides.
For a moment—just one moment—he looks like the boy he must have been before his family broke him. Vulnerable. Hurt.
Then the mask slides back into place.
Colder than before.
Deadlier.
He looks at Seraphine's unconscious form—at the Omega who just exposed the truth that might save all our lives, who danced in front of her enemies' cages, who fought and bled and nearly died to give us information she didn't have to share.
"Make sure she stays alive."
The words are clipped.
Final.
Then he turns and walks away, his footsteps echoing through the empty theater as he disappears into the darkness.
"Kai—" Blaze starts.
"Let him go," Jett says quietly. His fingers are on Seraphine's pulse, monitoring. "The antidote is slowing the poison, but she needs real medical attention. We need to move her."
I look down at the girl in my arms.
My pen pal.
My bonded Omega.
The heir to a legacy my pack was sent to destroy—by a man who wanted to destroy us too.
She saved us.
Without knowing who we were.
Without owing us anything.
She danced in blood and revealed truth and nearly died for a pack she had no reason to trust.
And now Kai—
Kai is planning something.
I can feel it through the bond. The cold, calculated fury building in our pack leader. The shift from shock to purpose.
Whatever he's going to do, whoever he's going to become in the aftermath of this revelation—
It's going to be ruthless.
It's going to be devastating.
I gather Seraphine closer, pressing my lips to her forehead, feeling the weak flutter of her pulse against my palm.
"Stay with me, Sweetness," I whisper. "Stay with us. There's so much more revenge to witness."
She doesn't respond.
Can't respond.
But through the bond—faint, fragile, barely there—I feel something that might be acknowledgment.
Or maybe it's just hope.
Jett and Blaze move to flank me as I lift her, carrying her toward the theater's exit, following the path Kai took into the darkness.
Behind us, the caged men groan and bleed and slowly die.
Ahead of us, somewhere in the night, our pack leader is already planning a war.
All I can hope is that our Sweetness survives long enough to witness the ruthless revenge their fearsome leader is already brewing.