Chapter 32 Quinn #2
“You called him Kai,” Niall says. The heel of his boot hits the back of Jewel’s desk, and the rhythmic thump thump thump pounds in time with Quinn’s heart. “He has led us on a merry chase.”
Quinn wants to tell him to get his mate’s name out of his mouth, but only a growl manages to escape.
“We’ve been looking for him for a long time, you know.
Thought we had him last fall, but—” He runs a finger over his eye patch, jaw hardening.
“And finally, four days ago, we knew he was close. Then again, yesterday, about thirty minutes from here. Imagine my surprise when Mr. Vincenzo called to say that he’s here.
So simple, really. We merely had to wait for Fate to deliver him right into our hands. ”
Gregor appears in the doorway, blood smeared across his black gear until parts of it shine wet. “Boss? We’re ready.”
“Good.” Niall gets to his feet and leans in close.
“Now—Mr. Lomax, I believe Alfonso called you? Yes? No matter.” Niall shrugs.
“You might be thinking that we’re going to take you along on this new adventure.
We know all too well that Weres are possessive of their mates.
” Denise bares her human teeth. “And we will no doubt be letting Kai know we have you tucked up somewhere safe for leverage. Alfonso wasn’t wrong about that.
But you see, I’m smarter than Mr. Vincenzo. ”
He places his large hands on Quinn’s shoulders and turns him to face him. Standing like this, they’re the same height, and Quinn can smell something rotten about him that’s not magic. He’d not seen Niall use magic once.
“You see, Mr. Lomax. Weres are a funny species, and if there is one thing I have learned in the last year, it is that keeping you animals apart is harder than it should be and certainly more than you’re worth. So—and this is where I feel my genius really shines, wouldn’t you say, Denise?”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“So,” he continues, “where we could try and put you in Rapunzel’s tower, so that Kai will be more motivated to fulfill his destiny, I realized that he just has to believe that you’re sitting quietly, waiting for rescue. Hope springs eternal and all that.”
He lets the words settle like he expects the others to clap or Quinn to flinch—as if Denise’s magic would let him.
“You see? You’ll be dead, but he won’t know it, and your pack alpha will be so worried about a territory war and looking for you that he’ll be too busy to bother thinking about some inconsequential Human. Sheer brilliance, if I do say so myself.”
Quinn can’t move. He can’t turn his head or shift his eyes toward where Kaian lies crumpled on the floor behind him. Denise’s magic holds him upright like a moth pinned to a board, iron bands tightening every time his wolf surges against them.
He’s going to die here, and he knows it now with a cold, terrible clarity.
And the worst part of it is that the last thing he’ll see won’t even be Kaian’s face.
The bastard in front of him waits, expectant, like Quinn should be impressed with the cleverness of it all. Like he should gasp—maybe beg or cry.
Even if he could, Quinn won’t give him that.
He thinks of Kaian’s smile. How he’d been resigned, but there had been that quiet affection shining through his eyes even as the light inside him went out.
Don’t do anything stupid.
Too late for that.
Regret twists through Quinn’s chest so violently that it almost steals his breath. Not for himself—he’s made peace with worse endings than this—but for Kaian.
For not fighting harder. For getting them into this in the first place. For the fact that the last thing Kaian saw when their eyes met was fury and helplessness instead of something better.
And beneath the rage and the regret sits another bitter truth.
Connall won’t be thinking about Quinn. Not really.
The alpha will be hunting the men who wrecked his club.
He’ll be protecting their pack, securing the O’Daire territory, and avenging the insult.
Quinn was just a problem Connall tolerated because the bond demanded it. Kaian is the one they’ll come for.
Good. Let Connall come for Kaian, and let him tear the city apart doing it.
Niall is still watching him, and maybe he is getting some perverse satisfaction from the anger and regret that must be bleeding from his every pore. When nothing happens—when Quinn doesn’t beg or spit or even flinch, no matter that he can’t—irritation flickers across the man’s face.
“Nothing?” he says mildly. “No heroic last words?”
Quinn would laugh if he could, because if he could speak, he’s sure his last words would be Fuck. You.
In the end, the sentiment must show on his still face or burn from his eyes because Niall’s expression tightens, and then he steps forward and backhands Quinn across the face.
The crack echoes off the office walls. Quinn’s head snaps sideways, but Denise’s magic locks him upright before gravity can claim him.
Blood floods his mouth where his teeth cut into the inside of his cheek.
The copper taste spreads across his tongue, dribbling out the side of his mouth and down his throat.
For a moment, the room is silent.
Then Niall sighs, disappointed. “Well,” he says lightly, straightening his sleeve. “Goodbye, Mr. Lomax.”
Quinn never sees it coming.
Only the sudden movement of Niall’s arm—and then a blinding explosion of pain detonates inside his skull.
***
Quinn comes to, coughing. The kind of cough that wakes you out of a dead sleep when you’re choking on your own spit.
He jackknifes into a sitting position and realizes he’s on the floor of the locker room at The Hole instead of Jewel’s office. Orange light and the sound of a rumbling train seep in on the heels of a cloud of smoke.
Fire.
He scrambles backward, tripping over a body he hadn’t noticed behind him on the floor.
Still in her flannel and blue jeans, Lana lies on the floor with her blonde hair fanned around her head as if she’d simply lain down to sleep.
His heart slams against his ribs hard enough to hurt.
Clumsy fingers grab her wrist, searching for a pulse he’s almost too afraid to find.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
There. Faint, but there.
“Chére, why are you here so early?” His voice comes out wrecked and raw from smoke and panic. An upside-down textbook lies beside her, pages bent back as if she’d come in to grab it before class and dropped it when something startled her.
The magic users. Niall and the others had dropped him in here and set the place on fire.
A thundering crash outside the door shakes the whole building.
Smoke fills the upper third of the room now, turning the flickering locker room lights a sick orange. Quinn silently thanks every fire safety video he’d ever half-watched in school for drilling one thing into his head.
Don’t grab the door handle.
Even from where he’s crouched, the heat pouring through the metal door makes the air ripple. When he crawls closer, it intensifies until it feels like he’s kneeling in front of an open oven.
His gaze snaps to the bathroom. A towel hangs half off the rack inside, the kind that one of the dancers would leave behind without thinking, musty and smelling faintly of cheap soap and sprinkled body glitter.
Better than nothing. Quinn lunges for it.
“Stay with me, Chére,” he mutters over his shoulder, though Lana hasn’t moved.
He snatches the towel, wraps it around his hand, and drops low again as another cough claws its way up his throat. The smoke is thickening fast now, pressing down from the ceiling like a closing lid.
He should cover Lana’s face.
The thought flashes through his mind, sharp and urgent. Something damp over her mouth, something to filter the smoke while he—
The door shudders violently, and a deep cracking sound splits the air above them. Quinn jerks his head up just in time to see a row of lockers wrench loose. It tips forward with a shriek of metal and slams into the other wall hard enough to rattle the whole room, blocking the path to the bathroom.
“Shit.” There’s no time to move it and no time to look for anything better.
The fire roars louder somewhere beyond the locker room, the sound deepening into something hungry. Quinn wraps the towel tighter around his hand and grabs the handle.
It’s still hot enough to bite through the fabric.
“Come on…come on…”
He yanks the door open.
A blast of heat and smoke punches into the room hard enough to make him recoil.
The hallway outside is already half-swallowed by smoke. And the staff exit is hidden entirely by a heavy beam. Quinn stares at the beam for half a second, trying to understand how something that big could have fallen so perfectly across the hallway.
There’s no time to think about it because the fire roars somewhere down the hall, a deep, hungry sound that vibrates through the floor and the lockers behind him.
“Fuck,” he rasps, though the word barely makes it out through the smoke clawing at his lungs. “Okay, just fucking do it.”
He wraps the towel around both hands, doubling the fabric over his palms before reaching for the beam.
Even through the cloth, the heat is immediate and vicious.
He doesn’t waste any more precious breath on screaming, but a growl tears out of him as the wood bites through the towel like it isn’t even there.
The beam is hot enough to blister skin in seconds.
His wolf surges forward inside him, instincts screaming to pull away, but Quinn grits his teeth and shoves against it, anyway.
Please, fuck. Move. Please.