Chapter 33 Soren #2
He flings the metal drum into the glass, shattering it in every direction as the heat blasts some shards outward and the new influx of oxygenated air feeds the inferno.
It roars like a high-speed train through the station, forcing him and Connall to jump back.
When it settles a little, he doesn’t look back.
He climbs through the searing door frame.
A piece of glass catches his arm, but it’s nothing compared to the caustic smoke and broiling heat burning his face and lungs.
“Quinn! Kaian!” Soren shouts into the room that looks like a hellscape.
Mounds of burning chairs and tables add fuel for the mounting flames that crawl up the walls and across the ceiling.
The stripper poles have bent with the heat, and bulbs from the stage lights burst, sending sparks and glass raining down on his head.
He scans across the room to where he knows Jewel’s office is, and a wall of flame blocks any possible entrance.
“Quinn! Kai!”
His eyes adjust to the swirling flames, a mirage of heat curling his eyelashes, and there on the floor, about thirty feet away, are two bodies.
Grief scours his fear away, and he’s running before he can even think.
Leaping over a falling beam and dodging the shards of wood as they pop and explode.
The noxious smoke makes it impossible to breathe, but when he falls to his knees, he sees Quinn on his side, turned toward a woman who is flat on her back, their fingers an inch apart.
Soren lays his fingertips on Quinn’s throat, where a fluttering pulse fights to keep Quinn’s chest moving, every inhalation more poisonous than the last. His hands are bad, but it doesn’t stop there.
Angry red burns and rising blisters climb from his palms up both forearms, the skin shiny and split in places where the heat must have seared flesh to the bone.
Beside him, Lana lies grey and still. She’d been the closest thing to a friend that Quinn had allowed himself, and by the grey color of her skin and lips, she’s gone.
There’s no sign of Kaian anywhere.
A cold, ugly certainty slides down his spine. Quinn would not have left Kaian in a burning building.
“Quinn.” He grabs his shoulder and shakes him hard enough to make his head loll. “Quinn, where’s Kai?”
Nothing. Just that weak, poisoned drag of breath.
Fuck.
Something happened. Vincenzo is outside, and given who had shown up at Quinn’s place looking for Kaian, he can only imagine where his mate is now.
But Quinn is still breathing, and if Soren doesn’t get him out now, that won’t last. He can come back.
He will come back. But first, he has to get Quinn outside.
It’s easy to get Quinn into a sitting position and get him up over his shoulder. He glances toward the door and spots two big firetrucks finally rolling up outside.
“Almost there,” he grunts. He’s almost at the door when two firefighters tear down what’s left of the front entrance, the whole frame giving way in a shower of sparks.
Masked and wearing tanks, the bigger of the two says, “I’ll take him, man.”
But Soren can’t let go of his mate.
Coughing, he pushes past them. Connall meets him halfway, and together they lower Quinn to the ground. Soren drops to his knees beside him, fingers pressed hard to Quinn’s wrist.
Two medics appear with an oxygen mask, but Soren shoves them away until one of them slips it over Quinn’s face first.
Only then does he let them fit one over his own mouth and nose, panic claws through him again. He tears the mask down long enough to struggle onto one knee.
“Gotta look for Kaian…”
“Stop.” The word is hoarse and familiar. Quinn yanks his mask off with a gasp. “He’s gone. They took him—” A coughing fit tears through him, violent enough to cut the words off. Then he slumps back, unconscious again.
Gone. The word tears straight through the smoke and the adrenaline. Gone is not dead—not with Quinn fighting through half-burned lungs to say it—but it might be worse. Gone means someone came here and walked out with him.
He scans the parking lot for Mario Vincenzo and sees that the car is gone, and Connall is no worse for wear.
“Sir, we need you on the gurney. You’ll have to go to Lupine. Smoke inhalation is serious, even for an alpha, and—” Soren tunes her out.
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the flash of Haruka Takashiro’s Lamborghini pulling up near the white truck.
“Sir, I really must insist.”
“Just give me a minute—” but it ends in a coughing fit.
Connall frowns and puts an arm around his waist, letting Soren rest his weight against his side. “You’re not dispensable. Get on the gurney, Ren.”
Beau Johnson steps out of the car with Haruka Takashiro hot on his heels.
He couldn’t even be bothered to go through the passenger side door, just climbing out after Beau mid-argument, the smaller man jabbing a finger into Johnson’s broad chest. Soren might have been worried for the bigger man, but a smile tugs at his mouth instead.
He’s enjoying every minute of what looks like an epic dressing down.
“What the—” Soren says. “Since when does Johnson let a Takashiro—” He coughs again, this time his eyes bug out, and his vision goes black around the edges.
That’s when the paramedic has had enough.
She stands to what must be her full five-foot-five height and pushes him backward onto the gurney.
“You can see them at the hospital, sir. Please lie down.” Another firm push follows, and when he lands flat on his back, she tightens the safety belt like she knows he’s already thinking about rolling off the other side.
“I’m riding with him.” Appearing suddenly, Isaac has a grip on his borrowed shorts, but his puffy, tear-stained face brooks no arguments.
“Iz—”
“No. You were stupid, and I need at least fifteen minutes to yell at you about it.” He kisses Connall’s cheek. “Don’t be too long, Alpha, okay?” He walks away, climbing into the back of one of the two waiting ambulances.
The paramedic grunts approval, muttering under her breath. “At least fifteen. I am telling Javi to take the long route back.”
“I’ll take care of Quinn,” Elias murmurs. “You scared us, Soren. Don’t do that again.” His eyes are red, and that bruised bottom lip wobbles.
Soren has always felt like a weapon. The gun in someone’s hand. The hammer that tears something down. Useful and necessary, sometimes, but not really a person that anyone worried about.
But Elias is looking at him like he matters, and the look on Connall’s face earlier—was that relief?
The realization sits strangely in his chest, tangled up with the smoke and the panic clawing through him for Quinn and Kaian.
Foreign, but the small flicker of warmth threading through the fear isn’t unwelcome, just… new.
Soren coughs, the pain in his chest sharp now. “Yeah, okay.”
Elias turns away, and Soren gets the distinct impression he is neither believed nor forgiven.
A second later, they’re loading Quinn into the other ambulance, and Elias is already climbing in after him.
Connall’s hand runs over Soren’s head, catching on the elastic of the oxygen mask, but his attention is fixed on the ambulance carrying Quinn away.
“I’ll meet you at Lupine,” he says, and his voice is steady enough that someone who didn’t know him might believe it. “I need to figure out where Kaian is. Get Beau on Vincenzo and figure out why Takashiro’s second son is—”
He breaks off abruptly. The calm in his tone only makes Soren more anxious.
Connall is never more dangerous than when he sounds like this, every word neat and cold while the panic is forced down somewhere out of sight.
Kaian is gone. Quinn barely got one sentence out before he passed back out, and whoever did this lit the whole goddamn club on fire to cover it up.
Soren wants off the gurney so badly his teeth hurt, and there’s no doubt he could get both families to talk.
There’s a loud guffaw from Beau, and Soren watches as Haruka gives him another tongue-lashing.
Maybe the bigger man is already on the inside track with the Takashiros.
“Looks like Beau already has his hands full.” He nods toward where Beau is trying, with limited success, to take Haruka’s hand while they wait.
“Takashiro and Beau? No…” The thought seems to surprise Connall, and he shakes his head. But he doesn’t sound certain. “Really?”
Beauregard Johnson has never looked happy a day in his life unless you count the sort of grim satisfaction he gets from being right, in charge, or both.
Calm, yes. Sharp enough to cut yourself on, absolutely.
Bossy as hell. But this? This is different.
Softer around the mouth and a glimmer of something in his eyes, even visible from thirty yards away.
Beau’s sharp gaze and sharper tongue are problems for another day. At some point, he is going to realize that the man he’s known all this time as Vexley has been Connall’s Soren all along. Soren can’t help the tiny thrill his choice of words sends down his spine.
Right now, though, Soren can’t make himself care about that fallout more than he cares about Kaian being out there somewhere with monsters.
The paramedic adjusts the straps on the gurney and drops her bag near Soren’s legs. “I’m sorry, Mr. O’Daire, but we have to get moving.”
Behind them, Quinn’s ambulance pulls away in a scream of sirens.
“Yeah, of course. Thanks.” Connall gives her a nod and a quick, grateful smile before leaning down over Soren. He presses soft lips against the shell of his ear, and even after the smoke, the pain, and the near-death experience, the contact still sends goosebumps racing over Soren’s skin.
“Be good,” Connall murmurs. “I won’t be long.”