Chapter Eighteen
White Ravens
Scar
Awareness didn’t return so much as stalk him.
He was floating. Weightless. Boneless. Caught in that strange half-world where dreams felt real and reality was drugged.
His limbs were unattached parts, and his heartbeat thudded as if he were trying to breathe underwater.
Something warm blew across his cheek. A voice—soft, melodic, and familiar—kept saying his name.
“It’s me…Gage…”
His brow twitched.
That name hollowed him out.
In the drifting dark, he battled with the one thing he always chased off when he was awake.
Regret.
He wished he hadn’t left Gage in that fuckin’ barn. Wished he hadn’t been an asshole every time he saw him on the block, and they hadn’t been on opposite sides of the city. Wished he’d been man enough to—
The fog snapped, and Scar remembered.
The chase.
The snow.
The men who moved in silence.
Being tackled.
The sting of something piercing his back.
Shadows looming.
Blackness.
Scar forced his heavy eyelids open. His vision was grainy and refusing to focus. The stench of hospital-clean air stung his nose, sterilizers and bleach strong enough to gag him filtered through the haze.
He’d been caught.
Scar exploded off the table like a detonated bomb.
Adrenaline burned hot through his veins like oil set on fire. His pulse roared in his ears as his boots landed on the floor.
Someone lunged at him.
He spun out of their grasp and snatched the nearest object off a metal tray—too light. Useless. He dropped it, grabbed a stainless-steel table by its legs, and lifted it over his head.
People yelled his name.
He couldn’t see their faces. The drugs blurred everything into silhouettes.
The overhead lights snapped on, making him wince and his eyes flood with tears.
Four men—the wolves in green. Another hulking shadow that looked like—
No. That was impossible. That couldn’t be Roz. He had to be hallucinating.
What did they drug me with?
“Scar!”
The voice from his dreams.
Gage.
Scar’s gaze locked on the one figure reaching toward him—hands out, sightless eyes roaming in terrified confusion.
The only person in the room he didn’t want dead.
Scar reacted violently…and protectively.
He lunged, locking an arm around Gage’s waist and spun him hard. He threw Gage behind the bed he’d just launched from and without breaking stride, flung the metal table across the room.
It would’ve crushed the two lab coats who’d just come in, but the wolves moved unnaturally fast.
One shoved the two men out of the way and the other intercepted the table mid-flight and tossed it to the side.
Scar blinked, confused and angry as his weapon clanged harmlessly to the floor.
Roz—if that was Roz—charged forward. “Let him go!”
Scar reared back and kicked the side of the bed with enough force to send it barreling into Roz’s midsection, knocking the big man off his feet.
Gage wrapped his arms around him from behind, pressing his lips to his ear.
“Stop, Scar. No ones gonna’ hurt you.”
Scar drove them backward until Gage’s back hit the wall, and he was in front of him, using himself as a shield.
More people rushed toward the door, but the two men in green blocked them with a united, immovable stance.
“No one gets close to them until they say so,” the taller one barked.
“Scar.”
Gage’s warm palm cupped his cheek, making him freeze.
His touch, scent, and voice were calming despite the tremor.
“Look at me,” Gage whispered. “I’m okay. You’re okay. This is not the same place we were in before.”
Scar growled low in his throat. “How do you know that? They’re master manipulators. Liars.”
A woman’s voice carried from behind the barricade of green beasts.
“Gage,” she called gently. “May I come in?”
Gage wet his lips. “Scar…I only met her last night. But the men in green, they’ve been straight with me. They’re not bad guys.”
“I want out. Now.” Scar snarled.
“Open it,” the bigger warrior said.
Scar grabbed the closest item he could use as a weapon—a thick, metal diagnostic arm from a machine—and clamped his hand around Gage’s wrist.
Everyone gave him a wide berth as he dragged Gage with him into the empty hallway.
If he had to fight his way out, he wouldn’t leave Gage.
The corridors weren’t the same white labyrinth he expected. They were modern. Clean. Bright with LED panels.
There were no armed guards lining the walls. No limitless cameras or bolted reinforced glass.
Gage tugged him lightly. “Elevator’s this way.”
Scar didn’t release him. He still didn’t trust what he saw.
Inside the elevator, Scar sucked in a full breath.
His head still throbbed from the forced sedation. His body buzzed with the aftershocks of the rush as his eyes continued to skim the corners, vents, seams, and reflections, searching for traps.
Gage reached for him, but he dodged it.
“Why are we going up?” he bit out. “Are you seriously trusting these people? Haven’t you learned anything?”
Gage was too calm. Too centered. Too….
The doors slid open.
Scar didn’t let Gage step out until he scanned both ends of the hall.
Gage guided him to a door with a keypad. After he put in the code and the door clicked open, Scar surged inside first.
He swept every room, and corner. His vision had sharpened well enough to confirm that nothing and no one was hiding behind furniture, and no threats lurked behind closed doors.
When he returned, Gage was sitting on a chair in the living room area with his hands folded in his lap.
He looked at Gage…really looked at him.
He wasn’t the clean-cut church boy from the West Side, or the broken man in White Sector 30, or the scared man he’d stupidly left behind in a barn.
He was…he was… Fuck.
He stared at Gage’s fair skin—that’d always looked too damn soft for the streets—and gentle features. He looked too beautiful to be touched by his dangerous hands.
Gage’s eyes used to be as bright blue as the summer skies, the kind of color that’d pissed Scar off because no one was supposed to look that innocent.
Now his irises were lighter, almost translucent.
An otherworldly blue that looked carved from glacier ice. So damn beautiful it made Scar’s chest tighten and his jaw clench.
He’d always found Gage attractive. An annoying, good-boy handsome that drove him insane because it made him want him in a way he couldn’t have him.
But as he stared at Gage like this, blind, reshaped by the brutality of the world, clothed in pure white, it made something feral in him roar to life.
He dragged his gaze away before he let something slip.
“Sit down and let me explain,” Gage said softly.
Scar shook his head. “If you’re about to lie, I’d rather be standing. It’s one less step for me to get out the door.”
“Fine, then stand.”