Chapter Twenty-Four
Battle of Wills and Blatant Advantages
Nick
I wake up to commotion. Someone is shouting. Why is my bed so hard? I blink my eyes open. Pain sears through my head. Then I see him. Elliot. Slumped beside me, just out of reach.
“Elliot?”
He turns sharply. His eyes go wide. Are those tears? Why is he crying? I’ll fucking kill anyone who made him cry. I try to slide closer to comfort him. The chains don’t let me move.
I turn my neck with effort, looking around. Matt is still crumpled beside me. Beside him, two women. Faces covered with hair. Sloan. And Bree? No.
“Ah, he’s up again. You chose a sturdy one, there. He refuses to stay down.” My gaze snaps to the werewolves in front of us. The man who destroyed Elliot’s life.
“Let him go, please,” Elliot says, his voice broken.
I growl, my claws extending again. I’ll kill him.
Raymond Booth smiles. “I will. You know I will. But then he’ll arrest me. And you see, that doesn’t work so well for me.”
“Why did you bring him here then? He was nowhere close to finding you. You could have stayed in the wind,” Elliot yells.
Raymond’s eyes narrow. The smile is nowhere to be seen. “Because you stopped. You needed motivation to continue. I warned you. Killed all those werewolves to get you to start again. But—”
“You did what?” Adrian’s voice is low.
My head snaps to him. Right, the murderer’s kid. He doesn’t look like he wants to be here.
Raymond waves him off. “They deserved to die. Didn’t they, Eli Boy?”
Elliot sees it too. Adrian. That’s our escape here. His eyes flicker to me before meeting Adrian’s. “I don’t know. Your father has been killing innocent people for decades. I only killed criminals, so no one ever does what he did to all those innocent people right in front of me.”
“Cute story. Is that what you and your little Bureau tell yourselves? Who gave you the fucking right?” Raymond shouts, his voice booming through the empty space.
His eyes are red. He’s barely holding off his shift.
Elliot is in danger. “Your boyfriend’s little band of vigilantes destroyed my life.
” He turns to Adrian. “They’re the reason I couldn’t be with my son. ”
I turn to warn Elliot, but he’s smiling. “You know I didn’t know anything about the Bureau until two months ago. Didn’t know they saved me from you all those decades ago. Saved him too.” He points at Adrian. “You’ve been on the run—”
“I did not run. I was planning. That little organization needed to be destroyed.”
“So, monsters like you can get a free rein?” Elliot’s voice is just as loud. No sign of the scared little boy who was here a few minutes ago.
“Werewolves are not monsters,” Adrian interrupts them.
Elliot shakes his head. “Not all of them. They aren’t.” He jerks his head towards me. “They’ve dedicated their lives to protecting humans and werewolves from evil like—”
“Enough,” Raymond’s voice freezes the air. Before I can notice, he’s standing next to me. Pain zaps down my body. My bones rattle as he pumps electricity from the taser connected to my arm. I writhe on the floor. I hear shouts, pleas. My body gives out.
Everything goes dark again.