Scar (Via Daemonia MC #14)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

T he bitter notes of antiseptic touched his nose as his ears picked up on the faint beep-beep of a heart monitor. Scar knew immediately he hadn’t been sleeping, because he didn’t sleep . Not in a lot of years anyway. There were times when he rested and times when he dozed, but not the concept of an eight-hour night sleep. It wasn’t a lack of desire to sleep or being so busy that he didn’t have the time. Sleep required a feeling of safety and security that Scar rarely ever found.

He did not feel safe and secure now.

His senses told him he was in a hospital or a hospital-like setting. The feel of the cotton sheets and something tight over his chest, the smell of heavy-duty cleaner, the telltale mechanical sound of his heartbeat… But it was too quiet. Hospitals were generally noisier.

He recalled being shot and going over the bridge. His shock at not being dead had the beeping of the heart monitor pick up, but two even breaths later returned it back to normal. Until he determined where he was and who he was with, Scar did not want the monitor to give away the fact that he was awake.

Was it possible his club had found him after he went into the water? He’d been so sure that he was going to die. He wouldn’t have had the energy or the blood to swim to safety, nor did he remember regaining consciousness in the water. How was he alive then?

Tessa was an emergency room doctor, but she was also nine months pregnant and due any day now. Even if she managed to get to the bridge when he fell, there was no way she could have saved him. It would have taken time he did not have to get him out of the water.

The air on his face was cool. It reminded him of how cold the river water would have been. The mountain runoff made it extremely deep this time of year and the occasional ice chunk was known to make it down as far as Mount Grove. It was possible, though his fogged brain was having a hard time believing it, that he went into cold shock. That would have helped stem the bleeding from the bullet wound but would not have kept him alive for long.

Someone still had to have pulled him from the river.

His ears picked up on the faintest ripple of a piece of paper. Once he detected that, he concentrated his hearing more. The slight inhale of breath; something moist, like a thumb rubbing across a tongue; and the gentle tapping of plastic against leather, perhaps a shoelace against a shoe, as a foot bobbed up and down.

Scar was not alone.

His hands twitched minutely. The pressure in his shoulders told him something was wrong. He wasn’t simply lying in a hospital bed with a blanket over him. Something else was on him, something that created weight and had his arms crossed over his chest.

Fuck it. He opened his eyes.

Gridded white ceiling tiles came into view. A quick glance to his left and right confirmed he was in a sterile white room with no windows and a stainless steel door. An oxygen tank, hospital cart, and EKG machine were on his left and an IV stand to his right. His gaze traveled down the length of his body to find he had a tan blanket covering his lower half. A wiggle of his toes told him he wore no shoes, but he was fairly certain he had on pants. Not his pants. It had taken him a long time to get his legs used to his leather riding pants and what was touching him now was too soft to be them. Cotton hospital pants perhaps?

On his upper half was a white straitjacket. Scar raised an eyebrow, because he certainly had not been expecting that. Was he in a mental hospital? Even if he had been rescued from the river, putting him in a mental hospital made no sense. Also, he was fairly certain that straitjackets were not commonly used anymore.

The presence of the man sitting in the corner of the room answered most of Scar’s questions without the man even having to open his mouth.

Henry Meacham, owner of Primis Global Security and the man Scar had signed his life over to nearly ten years ago. His soldiers only knew him as ‘Alpha’. It had taken Scar a long time for him to learn Alpha’s real name. He wasn’t the public face of Primis and worked tirelessly to keep his anonymity, but Scar knew. There was very little he didn’t know about this man.

The three-piece dark gray plaid suit was accentuated by an orange paisley tie and flawless pocket square. Tan wingtip oxford shoes and dark gray socks covered his feet. His dark skin didn’t appear to have aged a day since Scar last saw him, though the man had recently celebrated his sixty-third birthday.

As a birthday present, Scar had sent him the bodies of whatever nameless soldiers he’d sent after Scar, gift wrapped and with a red bow. He felt no remorse for those deaths, though they did add to his body count when he finally did manage to die. None of Primis’ mercenaries had families. That was against the rules, after all. Why have soldiers that could betray the company for love when you could have nameless, faceless armies at your disposal?

Alpha’s dark onyx hair was sheared close to his scalp. His clean circle beard barely had any gray. His amber eyes had yet to look up from the manila file folder he had splayed open over his bent knee. And sure enough, his left foot was bobbing up and down in open air, his ankle resting on his right knee.

Well, this wasn’t good. If Alpha was here, then Scar could only be in one place—and it was a place he’d sworn to himself he’d never return to.

Scar couldn’t say he found the straitjacket all that surprising. The last time he’d been in the Primis headquarters, he’d snapped the neck of Alpha’s second-in-command and set fire to their records room.

He could understand Primis finally getting ahold of him, as Scar had been in a rare and vulnerable state. What he didn’t understand was how Primis had known where he’d been. He was extremely careful to keep Primis’ tail away from Mount Grove. They’d gotten to him in Mount Grove, which meant he’d missed something, and that did not sit well with Scar at all.

With his hands bound by the straitjacket, Scar was forced to sit upright using only his core muscles. The action caused a twinge in his chest that Scar ignored and it also confirmed the fact that he was wearing pants. The straitjacket had a groin strap that connected his bound forearms to the small of his back. Impressive. Alpha was not taking any chances, but then, he wouldn’t be as good at his job if he didn’t learn from his mistakes.

“I was wondering when you’d wake up.” Alpha flipped another page in his file folder. “And before you glare your silent questions at me, we performed surgery on your chest to remove the bullet. If it had gone through you, you would have been fucked, my friend. The cold water and the mud caking your skin saved you until my man was able to reach you. You’ve been in a medically induced coma for seventeen days. Also, you tore a ligament in your left shoulder. My doctors were able to repair it, but you won’t have full use of that arm for about four months.” He finally looked up. His barely visible brow raised over his right amber eye. “I suppose it’s a good thing you have a spare arm then, because you’re going to be very busy.”

Scar stared at him. The torn ligament was problematic, but worth the price as it had saved Sophia’s life. He had saved her, hadn’t he? His memory was hazy, but he was fairly sure that he’d been able to get Sophia up to Pirate.

Alpha closed the folder on his raised thigh. Sitting back against the maroon chair, he studied Scar. “You broke your promise to me, Solo. You promised me five years in exchange for my help destroying the terrorists who took your brothers from you.” He held up his hand with all five digits spread. “You only gave me two .” He folded three fingers into his palm. “That’s three more years on your contract. I’m also throwing on a year for every soldier you sent back to me in a body bag or who went missing while hunting for you.” He lowered his hand down to the file folder on his leg. “I don’t have enough fingers and toes to show you the number of years you now owe me.”

Scar had sent him a couple of bodies a year over the past eight years. The man’s math was not an exaggeration.

The itching on his skin like fire ants told him that he was not wearing a shirt under the straitjacket. It was uncomfortable, but that was likely also Alpha’s intention. As much as Scar knew about Alpha, Alpha also knew about him.

Or the him he’d been. It had been a lot of years since anyone had called him ‘Solo’. The moniker he’d been given in the Army had nothing to do with Han Solo or the franchise. Scar had gotten a reputation for working solo . Even when placed on a team, he worked best alone. His superiors in the Army and training officers had tried to drill into Scar’s head multiple times that ‘teamwork’ accomplished the job better, but they had a hard time arguing with his results after a while.

It hadn’t been until he’d met his Delta Force teammates that he’d truly understood what it was his superiors had been trying to teach him all along.

The nickname ‘Solo’ had stuck. But Solo had died in those Afghani caves. Solo had had a flag on his shoulder and God in his heart. Scar only had darkness.

“Now, before you start trying to fight your way out of this, let me explain to you some things that are going to happen. First, now that you’re awake, all the medical equipment you see around you is going to be taken out of here. That includes the bed. You have been here for seventeen days, as I stated. You have been given glucose and saline to keep you alive, but you’re bound to be hungry. However, I believe another day of solitude will help… boost ,” Alpha flashed his teeth in a joyful smile, “your recovery. We’ll feed you the day after tomorrow.

“Second, you’ll be put through training again. I don’t know what sort of bad habits you’ve picked up over the last eight years, but my men will have no trouble beating them out of you. I believe some time in interrogation will also do you some good. I have acquired several new interrogators since you were last here, and let me tell you, they are dying to break your silence.”

Scar didn’t doubt that—but he also knew that there was nothing they could do to him to make him talk. If he hadn’t been able to do so for Sissy or José all these years, and that was not from lack of trying, he knew there was nothing Alpha’s sadistic interrogators could do to him to change that.

When Scar had first joined the Via Daemonia Motorcycle Club, José, or Bulldog, had explained to the other officers that Scar could talk but rarely did. That was a bit of an exaggeration. Scar hadn’t spoken in years. The doctors at the VA after he’d been rescued speculated that his voice box was too damaged to speak, but Scar knew better.

I will not talk…

“And third.” Alpha stood up, his eyes narrowing on Scar. “If you step out of line, if you so much as hesitate to pull the trigger for a single second , your friends all die.”

He threw the file folder into the air, causing piece after piece of paper to rain down on Scar, the hospital bed he was sitting in, and the surrounding floor. Dozens of colored pictures, surveillance photos of Mount Grove and the VDMC.

One of Harper, Lucky’s ol’ lady, landed on Scar’s right leg. He couldn’t reach to pick it up, but he didn’t need to in order to see it clearly. Harper was sitting up in a hospital bed, much like the one Scar was currently in. At her breast was her newborn daughter, Stephanie. She’d gone into labor early and had had to have an emergency C-section to save her baby’s life when she got stuck in the birth canal.

Scar had been at the hospital. He’d stood in her room, watching over both her and her baby as they’d slept that first night. The photo had to have been taken the next day, after Scar had left.

He stared at Harper’s still frame, her joy immortalized in ink. When Harper had first started dating Lucky over two years ago, Scar had followed her. She was the town’s new Sheriff’s daughter, after all, and Hannigan had had a hard-on for the VDMC in a big way. It was entirely believable that she could have been feeding her father information about the club. Mind, at the time, the club had been entirely blameless, besides one scuffle with a drug dealer who was now fertilizer.

Blameless…and boring . But Scar had needed boring. José had been right that the Via Daemonia had offered Scar some peace to sort through his demons. Not that those demons had been vanquished. They’d only gone dormant.

When Harper’s brother, Richard, had kidnapped Harper, it had been Scar who’d rescued her. Lucky had been in the hospital with severe burns after Richard had set his house on fire with Lucky, Harper, Scotty, Steel, and Jenna inside. Scar had been pissed when he’d learned about the fire. But he’d been tailing the Sheriff, wrongfully believing that Sheriff Hannigan had been behind the trafficked women they’d discovered in Ohiopyle the night before.

But he’d been following the wrong Hannigan. It had been Richard who had been the culprit, not his father. Though the Sheriff had known about his son’s crimes. In Scar’s book, that made him just as guilty, but Lucky had spared Hannigan’s life as a favor to Harper.

Harper had not been what Scar had expected of her. The young teacher with raven hair and olive skin was good —and that was a rarity in Scar’s world. Moreover, she’d apologized to Scar for being scared of him upon their first introduction. Scar hadn’t minded her initial discomfort. Most women were terrified of him. That fear either made them too scared to come near him or want to fuck him as some sort of twisted conquest. For Harper to apologize for misjudging him… Well, that had been unexpected, to say the least.

Her green eyes had been so honest as they’d stared into his own that he’d been compelled to reassure her. Not knowing what else to do, Scar had touched Harper’s shoulder. The touch had lasted seconds, but it had still been momentous for him. He’d even allowed her to touch his shoulder back.

After that day, Scar had pushed himself outside his comfort zone. What others took for granted was a challenge for him, but he’d managed to work on his tactile wariness with Harper.

Or he had been before he’d turned in his cut.

There were only two women in the world that Scar loved like they were his blood. His eyes traveled from Harper’s picture to one of Sissy.

Charlotte “Sissy” McCoy was Lucky’s adult daughter. When Scar had first arrived at Mount Grove, he’d been a little worse for wear. Actually, that was being generous. He’d been skin and bones, barely a human being. Sissy had been sixteen and Lucky had made it emphatically clear that she was off-limits, even after she turned eighteen.

As the club’s Enforcer, the protection of the club kids and ol’ ladies fell under Scar. Jenna, Steel’s wife, had been the only ol’ lady at the start of the club. There had only been five club kids, though Steel and Jenna’s son, Carter, had been an adult at the time. But Scar had had no intention of interacting with any of them.

José had been trying to get Scar to eat, not yet realizing that Scar wouldn’t eat something that he hadn’t grown himself or watched made. Then Sissy had sat down across a picnic table from him. Her young face hadn’t had a trace of fear on it as she’d stared at him. Scar had stared back, not entirely sure what was going on. She’d looked like she was studying him.

“You look like you’re a cat in the middle of a pack of dogs, like you’re getting ready to run. My dad says a lot of you guys have PTSD and I need to be careful around you. If you have PTSD, I’m sorry. I’ll go if you want, but you looked so lonely. I thought you could use a friend.”

As amazing as it was, Sissy had become just that. Scar had had brothers over the years, was about to gain more, but it had been a long time since he’d had a friend . Despite her young age, Sissy was extremely intuitive and fierce.

She never once cared that he didn’t speak, never asked him a question a simple head nod or shake couldn’t answer. She’d said on many occasions that Scar had very expressive eyebrows. Even as an adult, she’d never judged or questioned Scar randomly showing up in her college dorm room and then her apartment. She always seemed to sense that Scar just…didn’t want to be alone. He’d sit while she did homework or read a book, not caring in the slightest that he was in the room.

But the rage Scar felt at the pictures of Sissy and Harper was nothing compared to the pure, unadulterated wrath when he saw the photo of Scotty on the floor.

Lucky’s seventeen-year-old son with Down syndrome was the single spark of brightness in Scar’s dark world. He never in all his years could imagine that such innocence could exist, and then he’d met Scotty.

The first time Scar had met Scotty, he’d been nine years old. A plump little boy with a heart so full of gold that his smile shone. The clubhouse had still been under construction, as had Jenna and Steel’s new home. Lucky was around to help and try to bond with the newly formed club. He often brought his little boy with him when his widowed neighbor, Mrs. Henderson, wasn’t available to babysit. Despite being told not to wander off, Scotty had.

His obsession with squirrels had caused him to chase after one in hopes of catching it and making it his pet. Lucky had been frantic, trying to find his son on a property that was still widely undeveloped.

It was Scar who found him. He’d followed the boy’s footprints up towards the front of the drive. The gate that now bordered the VDMC property had not been in existence yet and Scotty had been dangerously close to the road. By then, he knew he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, but he didn’t know how to find his way back to his daddy. Scar had stayed with him, watching over him to ensure he did not get any closer to the road, and had texted Lucky to tell him where to find them.

That was the day Scotty had given Scar his first nose-kiss. Both Lucky and José had tried to stop Scotty, not sure of Scar’s reaction, but the nose-kiss hadn’t scorched Scar as other touches did.

“Thank you for saving me, Uncle Scar. I’m sorry I was bad and got lost. I really like squirrels, but Daddy says I can’t have one as a pet. I like lollipops too, but those are for eating, not for petting.”

The innocence in Scotty’s wide-set eyes had nearly driven Scar to procure all the squirrels in the state to become Scotty’s pets. He would have created an entire menagerie of squirrels just to ensure that little boy smiled. Instead, Scar made sure to give Scotty a lollipop every time he saw him and often visited Scotty in his bedroom after a rough day, just to feel some goodness in his life again. The kid was so pure that he thought his Uncle Scar was magic because he would appear in his second-floor bedroom without needing to use the front door.

And Alpha had just threatened to snuff that magic, that goodness, out of the world if Scar did not fall into line.

His body shook with uncontrolled rage as he stared at the picture on the floor.

He could do as he was told. He could obey the rules. Jump, eat, shit when he was told. He could take anything they threw at him, falling even more into the darkness that tainted his soul. Alpha would leave the VDMC alone. Scar knew him to be a man of his word. Moreover, there was no incentive to harm those in Pennsylvania if Scar submitted. The noose around Scar’s throat no longer existed if he hurt a single person Scar cared about.

And Scar might have done it too. He might have submitted, fallen in line, and done what he was told, become the weapon everyone saw him to be, if anyone else’s picture had landed on the floor in his line of sight.

But it wasn’t anyone else’s picture who landed on the floor. It wasn’t José’s or Abby’s picture. It wasn’t Steel’s or Jenna’s, Demo’s or Paige’s, Lucky’s or Harper’s, Bear’s or Tessa’s, Jumper’s or Jasmine’s, Pirate’s or Sophia’s, Angel’s or Cage’s, Scissors’ or Sissy’s, Papaw’s or Louisa’s. It wasn’t Ghost’s, Keys’, Grumpy’s, Jigsaw’s, Pumpkin’s, Ranger’s, Bones’, or Starbucks’. It wasn’t Carter’s, Lucy’s, Jordan’s, Melanie’s, Ollie’s, Drew’s, Conner’s, Stephanie’s, Maggie’s, Cassie’s, Lila’s, Caleb’s, Georgie’s, Mikey’s, Nelly Beans’, Bree’s, Aaron’s, or SJ’s.

It had been Scotty’s picture.

Scar pivoted on the mattress and stood up. The wires connecting him to the EKG machine pulled on the device now next to him. The blanket that had been on his legs fell to the linoleum floor. Pictures floated down like autumn leaves.

Alpha’s eyes narrowed as he watched Scar with newfound wariness. “What are you doing, Solo?”

Despite not having use of his arms, Scar advanced on the man who’d threatened the lives of his loved ones. His family .

Alpha was no slacker. He might be in his sixties, but the man had done his time in the field long before he’d taken up a position behind a desk. At five-ten, he was four inches shorter than Scar and still had enough muscle to him to pose a threat.

Scar didn’t care.

He kicked out with his bare foot, sending the EKG machine away from the wall and towards Alpha’s defensive pose. The adhesive on Scar’s chest under the straitjacket pulled free as the machine shot across the room.

Alpha’s amber eyes went wide as he put his arms out to stop the impact, though the machine did not hit him hard enough to do damage. It was merely a distraction.

Scar rolled onto the floor, coming in low. Twisting his legs around Alpha’s, he took the man in the immaculate dark gray suit down to the floor. Alpha landed with a heavy thud. The air escaped his lungs with a painful gasp.

Scar twisted. He might not have the use of his hands, but his elbows were forced into a bent position and he could use them. His right elbow landed in Alpha’s solar plexus, compounding the man’s lack of oxygen by momentarily paralyzing his diaphragm.

It gave Scar the time he needed to reach Alpha’s head. The straitjacket was bound tight, but Scar was used to contorting his body into various compromising positions. He’d trained himself not to be limited by the shape or size of his frame. He refused to be held prisoner again and he would never allow harm to come to those he loved.

Not when it was in his power to stop it, no matter how much pain it caused him.

Scar forced his right arm down into his socket. The action was not comfortable but not harmful in the short term. By pushing his arm up in the unnatural position, it created the slack he needed in the fabric to loosen the strap and force his arm down over Alpha’s face. He was not caring in the slightest if he squeezed the man’s head tightly either in his hasty act, but he needed to get his forearm around the man’s trachea. He forced his legs around Alpha’s to immobilize them.

Alpha scrambled, trying to break free of the choke hold he had suddenly found himself in. His struggles were proving futile, though, and Scar only applied more pressure on his windpipe as the seconds ticked by.

Something sharp sliced against the cotton of his pants, but Scar did not budge. He saw Alpha’s hand move again and the glint of silver in the overhead lighting. The groin strap that tied his forearms together suddenly snapped. While this did not break Scar free of the contraption binding his upper half, it did loosen his hold on Alpha’s throat enough for the man to take a gasping breath of air.

Scar fought to regain his grip.

The tip of the blade came down in a backwards jab and nearly landed in Scar’s left eye. He craned his neck just in time, though the blade nicked his earlobe.

Another jab of the blade and Scar was forced to loosen his legs to twist out of the way. Alpha brought up his other hand, driving Scar’s nearly useless left arm up. Scar gritted his teeth, but his arm would not obey his commands. He didn’t know exactly what had been done to repair the ligament and wondered if he’d been given any nerve blockers to help counter the pain. Scar did not take drugs, nothing that could distort reality, and this was one of the reasons why. He could have survived the pain, but not having use of his arm might just prove fatal.

Scar kicked with his heel at Alpha’s groin. Some might consider it a cheap shot, but in Scar’s world, there were no cheap shots. There was life or death, win or lose. Take any opening you could, because your opponent certainly would.

Honor had no place outside a sports ring.

As soon as his neck was free of Scar’s hold, Alpha rolled. His expensive three-piece suit was no longer in pristine condition. He got to his feet faster than Scar could. He kicked out with his wingtip, but Scar, on his knees, caught it between his bound forearms and twisted. Alpha’s knee bent with an audible pop.

Alpha yelled, tipping forward but did not fall. He was nearly to the door of the eight by eight room. The man hobbled and hopped his way to the stainless steel blockade.

Scar was about to stand, but noticed Alpha’s blade, a blue tip foldable Manix, on the floor next to his knee. He had a choice, attempt to stop Alpha from getting to the door and leave the blade behind or grab the blade and have a chance of survival if that door opened.

Scar dropped down onto his back and reached for the blade with his bound right hand through the fabric. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blood on the white cotton pants from where the blade had sliced him. It wasn’t bad and not an artery, so he pushed the injury aside.

His fingers closed over the handle as Alpha reached the door. Through the fabric of his sleeve, Scar sliced blindly at the buckles at his back. He had to hand it to Alpha, the man knew how to keep his blades sharp. Unfortunately, Scar got skin more than he got the fabric surrounding the buckles.

As soon as the door was open and Alpha sounded the distress, all hell broke loose. Three men came charging into the medical room. They looked like hospital orderlies, wearing white scrubs and combat boots, but Scar knew them to be nothing more than hired muscle.

Scar gritted his teeth. Fine, he’d have to do this with his hands tied.

Keeping hold of the knife in case he needed it in the future, Scar got to his feet just as the three men surrounded him. One had a syringe in his hand. Scar pivoted, using neither his hands nor his feet to defend himself.

The art of capoeira was not used in the United States military, but it was a study Scar had taken upon himself when he discovered there was more to self-defense than physical combat. The versatile Brazilian martial art emphasized using lower body strength against greater odds and was often seen as a combat dance.

The needle came down in open air. Scar spun, his upper body bending low to give his right foot the momentum he needed. The syringe flew out of the mercenary’s hand and jabbed into the chest of the second man, who shouted in shock and pain.

Scar kept moving. In the single motion that had knocked the syringe out of the first man’s hand, he spun counterclockwise until his right foot landed back on the floor. Lifting his left, he slammed his heel down on the plunger. Whatever that syringe had been filled with was now in the bloodstream of the second man.

A heartbeat later, the man’s eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed to the floor in a heap.

The air shifted and Scar bent his hips backwards to force his bound upper body into a backbend. The third man’s hands grabbed onto nothing but air.

Scar continued downward, aware of the blade still in his right hand through the sleeve of the jacket. He rolled onto his upper back, his legs coming off of the ground and over his head as the first man’s booted foot came stomping down where Scar’s legs had been. He threw his bare feet forward, using his core muscles to lift himself back off the floor, and thrust his feet under him once more.

Scar was proficient at blocking or ignoring pain. He had to be. There was too much of it otherwise, but there was no faking being low on energy. If Alpha was to be believed, and he had no reason to lie, Scar had been in a medically induced coma for seventeen days after nearly dying of blood loss from a bullet wound to the chest. Regardless of the glucose he’d been fed intravenously, Scar’s stomach was still empty. His body was stiff after not moving for so many days.

He needed to end this fight and go after Alpha.

It had been eight years since he’d been in this building. If they hadn’t changed the layout, he was on the second floor on the north side. Which hallway could only be determined once he was outside of the room. Alpha’s office was on the twenty-third floor and faced the Capitol Building across the Potomac River.

The third man tried to tackle Scar like a linebacker, but Scar pivoted and the two mercenaries collided in a tangle of limbs and grunts. They landed on the floor. Scar was already heading for the still open door.

With his arms bound, he couldn’t close it. That was unfortunate, because he was fairly certain they couldn’t be opened from the inside. The RFID chip in Alpha’s wrist would have opened the door at his command. Scar didn’t know if the mercenaries had the same access, but Scar was what some might call a hot commodity. Alpha had been after him for years and believed that Scar owed him a large debt that could only be repaid by pointing Scar at an enemy and demanding ‘destroy’. There was a good chance Alpha would have secured Scar’s room so only he could open the door, but Scar would not get to test that theory because he couldn’t manage to get the door to close.

Once in the hall, his eyes landed on the large bay windows all the way at the end. Echoing shouts, both from around the corner from where he stood, as well as inside the room he’d just escaped, told him fate was not on his side. He would not get to Alpha.

Not today, at least.

He was too low on energy and his arms were still bound in this damn jacket. With a growl of frustration, Scar ran for the window.

He was going home.