Chapter 24
Cobra
My demons were screaming, accusing, sinking their knives into my mind and I couldn’t escape them.
In my waking nightmares, it was no longer Hanna dead in the hovel with me.
It was Lynn’s crystal brown eyes staring at nothing, her face slack and grey, her body stiff with death.
The scent of brimstone and decay was so easy to recall from the first week we met.
I dragged my hands over my skull, dug furrows into my skin, and released a scream that had been building for hours.
Two days.
Two entire, harrowing days when the love of my goddamn life was being violated and abused and—was she alive? Had she survived this time, or had the sick cunts who took her snuffed out the bright, violent flame that had burned in her for so long?
Another rage-filled scream tore from me, tangling with a growl that promised endless suffering and pain of the most severe degree.
Two days, fifty hours, and twenty-nine minutes since Sweetie got the call from ChaCha to alert him they were in trouble.
My breathing raced out of control, my hands shaking as I tore them from my head, balled one hand into a fist, and drove it into the side of the garage.
“What’s taking so fucking long?” I roared at anyone, no one.
I’d been an Alpha Knight for years, and I knew how long it took to get ready and roll out for a raid, but this wasn’t just a raid. This was Lynn’s life at stake. If she was even still alive. What would I do if she wasn’t?
I’d been awake for three days, scouring every CCTV camera I could find, hacking traffic cams, ripping through firewalls and defences in a fit of rage and panic, and we’d finally tracked down the van that abducted Lynn, Jessia, and ChaCha thirty minutes ago.
Yet we were still fucking here. There were no cameras with a view inside the pub, nothing to indicate how those pieces of shit were treating our loved ones, but the pub was called The Alpha’s Bark.
A true bark was… horrific. A twist of nature.
Omegas could be barked into obeying any command, turned into a mindless slave.
Even betas could be barked into submission if the alpha was dominant enough. I knew that first hand.
Wasn’t it enough? Hadn’t Lynn gone through enough? Hadn’t all of them?
I paced the small path outside the garage, my breathing chaotic, my hands shaking.
I needed to hear from my dad, needed Em to talk me down from this edge or I was going to go apeshit on the entire city.
But my calls had all gone to voicemail. So I’d thrown myself into tracking the women, driven myself to exhaustion and then beyond it.
I was awake on a mix of caffeine, taurine, and adrenaline.
And fear. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest, couldn’t stay still because I was terrified we were already too late.
How many cases had we dealt with where victims had been assaulted and discarded, unbreathing? Five? Eight? A scream built behind my teeth but I choked it down. I could smell it again—brimstone and decay. Lynn and death.
I needed to get my shit together, needed to control this fear instead of it controlling me.
I turned towards the wall and rushed it.
If I slammed my head into the concrete, maybe I could knock some calm loose.
Lynn was my calm, my centre in the middle of a storm controlled by demons, the only thing that could cleanse the scent of bitter chocolate and cherry.
Was that who took her? Did the man who cuffed me to a bed and pimped me out to anyone and everyone have my Lynn?
Firm hands caught me before I could ram my skull into the wall. “Okay, we’re not doing that.”
I whipped around to face Warning, a voice in the back of my head telling me not to start shit with my VP because he could beat me down to size in minutes. He squeezed my shoulders and wisely stepped back, releasing me.
“You can fight me, but that will slow us down,” he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest and levelling me with a stare I couldn’t quite read. Hard but not harsh, composed but worried.
My entire body rattled, my knees jellified. “What if she’s dead?” I blurted, gasping for air.
Warning straightened, slowly letting out a sigh. “What if she’s not, and she needs you to keep your head on straight when we find her?”
I shook my head fast, a stabbing sensation in my eyes. “The people who took her—”
“I know.” Warning caught my frantic gaze and held it, as if he could infuse me with calm just by looking at me. “I realise what sort of men they are, Cobra. I know what they’ve done. But we’re working on the assumption that she’s alive. They all are.”
“We don’t know that!” I argued, a twist in my stomach that told me I was going to throw up again. The last time, there was only bile as my gut ripped itself apart. I didn’t know when I last ate.
“We don’t know otherwise,” Warning countered calmly, taking a step closer to me, enough that I could see flecks of colour in his hazel eyes I’d never noticed before.
Stormy blue, clear crystal brown. Like Lynn’s clear crystal brown.
I nearly fucking cried, nearly broke down right there, but he was measuring, reading me.
“What we do know is she’s going to be hurt and afraid, and she’s going to need you. So you’re going to take a breath.”
I bared my teeth. “You gonna force me to obey with a growl?”
His mouth thinned. “No. I’m going to stay with you until you’ve managed your fear.”
I screwed my eyes shut, pressed the heels of my palms into them. “Fuck. That was low. I’m sorry. My head’s…”
“I know. Which is why you’re going to take a breath.”
“Can’t.”
“Doesn’t matter how shit you are at it. A breath is a breath.”
“Dick,” I muttered, dragging air through my gritted teeth.
It was worse with my eyes closed. I saw the shitty room in the block of flats, smelled slick and cum too clearly, heard their growls and barks as if the clients were in the room with me.
I ripped my hands away. “Can you?” I asked, my voice raw as I met Warning’s patient gaze.
“Can I what?”
“Growl me into obeying, force me to fucking breathe. I can’t control this.
I can’t shove it back, can’t fucking function, and you’re right.
Lynn needs me.” If she survived, if she was still out there, fighting like hell, I was in no fit state to save her.
My stomach twisted, bile crawling up my throat.
“No.” His jaw set, obstinance in the flat line of his mouth. “I'm not gonna force you to do shit, Cobra, that’s not who I am.”
I groaned, debating ramming my head into the concrete again.
“But if you were willing to be growled into submission after what you’ve been through, you can endure this, too.”
“What—”
I growled when he hugged me, locking his arms like fucking iron around me, immovable even when I struggled.
“Calm down,” he ordered. No growl, just natural dominance and the VP voice it had become second nature to follow.
I grumbled, but stopped struggling.
“You wouldn’t hug another alpha. Why do I have to put up with this BS?” I demanded, staring at the wall, my eyes burning.
“I absolutely fucking would hug another alpha if they were two seconds away from smashing their brains out on the garage wall.”
I grunted. Fine, he probably would.
“Bastard,” I muttered when I realised it was working and I could breathe again.
“Everyone’s ready,” he said. “Are you calm enough to ride out?”
I jerked my head in a nod, feeling less like a live wire when he let go and stepped back. “This never happened.”
“Sure.”
The easy way he agreed… “People saw, didn’t they?”
“Just Sweetie, Devil, Guard, and Justice.”
I groaned, avoided eye contact with Warning as I got out the modified brass knuckles from my pocket. I had one for each hand, and every knuckle had a razor-sharp blade attached to each finger.
“Not a goddamn word,” I snarled at my brothers, holding up my bladed fist. “I’ll rip your fucking guts out.”
Devil didn’t notice I’d spoken. Sweetie just grunted, already sat astride his bike, knuckles white as he gripped the handlebars.
Justice caught my eye and smirked, then said to Guardian, “He’s always threatening me. I think he’s flirting.”
“You’re flirting with fucking death,” I muttered, removing the knuckle duster and stalking over to my bike, checking Winner had done a good job fuelling up.
Justice made kissy faces at me, trying to break the heavy dread hanging over us, and it half-worked.
“Devil,” I called across the garage, my voice a roughened rasp. “How long?”
He knew what I meant. I saw myself reflected in the dead look in his eyes. “Thirty-eight minutes.”
I fired up my bike when the rest of the Knights appeared in the doorway, hard expressions on their faces. Thirty-eight minutes and I’d know if Lynn was alive. Or dead.