Chapter 8 Jabari #3
The bond connected. The air shuddered, pressure rippling outward in a shockwave that rattled bone and made my alpha rear back, and Nyx’s knees buckled as if her body could not decide whether to run or submit. Elijah held her up only because his bite had made her his in the ugliest way possible.
I did not remember crossing the tile. One second I was behind him, and the next my hands were on him, hauling him back by the collar and the throat. He made a choking sound as I drove him into the wall hard enough to crack concrete.
“You put your mouth on her,” I said, and my voice came out polite, Southern smooth. That politeness was a lie. It was the last thin layer between him and what I wanted to do.
I slammed him again, once, twice, each impact a punctuation mark, and my knuckles ached as my vision edged red. I wanted bones. I wanted a lesson carved so deep it would never leave him, because he had not just hurt her, he had rewritten her biology without permission.
Behind me, Nyx’s body shook, caught in the violent aftershock of a bond she had not chosen. Her hand flew to her shoulder, fingers slicking red, and her scent turned jagged, peaches soured by panic, cream curdling into something sickening.
Kairo moved to her, jacket already in his hands, but Nyx flinched away from him. That was the true damage. Not the blood. Not the mark.
The fear.
Elijah froze. Horror tore across his face as awareness crashed back into him, and his eyes flicked toward Nyx.
“What have I done,” he whispered.
I did not answer him with words. I answered with my hands.
I ripped him away from the wall and drove him into the opposite side hard enough that the tile trembled, and he went down on his knees. Blood spilled from his mouth, and he stared at his hands like they belonged to a stranger.
“Get him out,” I snarled, and my voice was no longer polite. It was the sound of a man who had decided mercy was optional.
Kairo wrapped Nyx in his jacket, swallowing her bare shoulders in black fabric, and pulled her tight against his chest like he meant to hide her there.
His nose brushed her hair once, quick and rough, pulling in her scent before he lifted his head again.
Nyx fought it, not because she wanted distance from Kairo, but because her body was panicking, trying to reject what had been forced into it, and each jerk of her shoulders made the bite mark weep.
“Do not touch me,” she choked, voice cracking.
Kairo’s shoulders tightened at that, the movement small but sharp. Water still dripped from the ends of his braids, darkening the collar of his shirt, and the muscles in his jaw worked like he was chewing back three different reactions at once.
“Relax,” he said, voice rough but lighter than the room deserved. “If I was trying something, sweetheart, we’d both know it.”
The joke landed crooked, more instinct than humor, but it was still Kairo. He pulled the jacket tighter around her shoulders anyway, careful with the fabric, his hands hovering more than holding as he wrapped it around her bare skin.
“Easy,” he added, softer now. “Just breathe for a second. Nobody else is putting their mouth on you tonight.”
His hand tightened on the jacket around her shoulders like the thought alone made something ugly stir under his skin.
Nyx’s breathing stayed ragged, chest rising too fast. Her scent kept snapping between fear and heat, sharp bursts of panic cutting through the sweetness still thick in the room.
The bond sat in the space like a bruise.
Wrong.
Heavy.
I could feel it pressing against instinct, trying to settle into her system whether she wanted it there or not.
Malachi arrived seconds later.
You didn’t need to see him to know he was there. Every alpha in the corridor felt it the moment he stepped close. The pressure of him spread through the room immediately, the quiet kind of dominance that straightened spines before a man even realized he had moved.
He took the scene in with one slow look.
Water still running across tile.
Blood smeared bright against the white floor.
Nyx shaking inside Kairo’s jacket.
Elijah on his knees with my handprints already blooming dark along his throat.
Malachi didn’t raise his voice.
He never needed to.
“No,” Malachi said quietly.
The quiet was worse than shouting.
“Not you,” he continued. “I did not expect it to be you.”
“I lost control,” Elijah said, voice broken.
Malachi’s expression hardened, something old and unforgiving settling behind his eyes.
“You did not lose control,” he said evenly. “You took it from her.”
Elijah flinched.
Malachi didn’t look away from him.
“Take him to containment.”
Two Meridian security alphas stepped forward and hauled Elijah to his feet. He didn’t resist them. Didn’t speak again. His shoulders sagged while they dragged him out, the scent of shame thick enough to cut through the blood and water still in the room.
It didn’t soften what he had done.
Kairo shifted Nyx higher against his chest.
She hissed when the jacket brushed the bite, shoulders tightening under the fabric. Her pupils had blown wide now, glassy and unfocused.
Not heat.
Shock.
When her gaze slid toward me there was nothing soft in it.
Only fury.
The kind that promised she would remember every face in this room.
Malachi moved before anyone else did.
He reached out and caught Kairo by the back of the neck for half a second, fingers tightening just enough to remind him who held the leash in this room. Not rough. Not restraint. Just a steady grip that pulled him back into himself.
Mine.
Kairo leaned into it automatically, the tension in his shoulders easing a fraction.
“Look at me,” Malachi said quietly.
Kairo did. His breath hitched once before he got it under control.
“You’re shaking.”
Kairo let out a short breath through his nose and dragged a wet hand back over his braids.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Watching my brother turn into a damn monster’ll do that.”
He swallowed hard, pulling himself together by force. His grip adjusted around Nyx, careful of her shoulder, and his breath caught again before he forced it down.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” Malachi said. There was no edge in it, only fact. His thumb pressed once at Kairo’s nape, a quiet instruction to settle.
“You’re going to be. But you are not right now.”
Kairo stilled under his hand.
“Keep her close,” Malachi continued. “And keep your hands gentle.”
Nyx’s gaze snapped to that touch. To the way Kairo obeyed it without thinking.
For a moment her anger faltered, something sharper slipping through it.
Confusion.
“Med bay,” Malachi said.
The softness in his voice disappeared, replaced by clean authority.
“Now. Get her cleaned up, get the wound treated, and get suppression back in her system before the bond sends her into a spiral.”
Kairo nodded once.
Before he could move, Malachi stepped forward and adjusted the jacket around Nyx’s shoulders himself, pulling the fabric higher like he didn’t trust anyone else in the room to look at her properly. The gesture was brief but deliberate.
His eyes lifted back to Kairo.
“And you do not bleed your panic into her,” he said quietly. “You hear me, son.”
“Yes, sir,” Kairo answered. His jaw flexed.
Then his voice dropped, softer, meant for Malachi even if the room still caught it.
“Yes, Dad.”
The difference was subtle, but it carried weight.
Then he moved, stepping carefully across the wet tile.
Nyx tried to twist away again, but the strength had already started draining out of her. The bond backlash rolled through her body in waves, stealing coordination and breath both.
Kairo tightened the jacket around her and kept her upright, murmuring something low and steady under his breath. Half nonsense, half comfort.
Malachi watched them go.
Then his gaze shifted to me.
“Jabari.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered automatically, because hierarchy was the only thing keeping this from turning into slaughter.
“You will stand outside that door,” Malachi said, his voice calm and level. “You will keep every alpha in this wing away from her scent. You will keep yourself away from her scent. If you cannot manage that, I will put you in containment with him.”
The threat came measured and precise, which somehow made it worse.
“I can manage,” I said, my jaw clenched hard enough that the muscles ached.
Malachi stepped closer.
His dominance pressed against my skin the way heat pressed against you when you stand too close to a fire. It was not loud. It did not need to be. It simply existed, and every instinct in my body recognized it for what it was.
“That bond is wrong,” he said, quieter now.
“Wrong bonds have consequences.”
He paused for a moment, eyes steady on mine.
“If it settles, it will call him. It will call her. It will call anyone close enough to scent it who thinks they can take advantage of what was made vulnerable.”
Nyx’s scream still rang in my ears.
The sound of it sat under my skin like something lodged there. The moment when her body realized what had been forced into it, the moment instinct collided with panic and she could not escape either one.
“I will handle it,” I said.
Malachi held my gaze for a long moment, weighing the words the way he weighed every decision that mattered in this building.
Then he turned and walked down the corridor, following Kairo toward the med bay.
The space felt different after he left.
Quieter.
Colder.
I stayed in the doorway a moment longer.
The tile was still wet. Water ran across the floor and carried thin streaks of red toward the drain, the last evidence of what had happened here.
Blood on white tile.
A mark nobody in this pack had meant to make.
My alpha paced hard inside my ribs, restless and furious. Hunger pushed at the edges of it, but for once hunger was the smallest part of what I felt.
This was not the violence that happened in a fight.
This was the kind that happened when something was taken.
Elijah had put his teeth on her without permission.
He had forced a bond that was supposed to be chosen.
The pack would carry the weight of that.
And so would he.