Chapter 22
North
Iwake to the steady beep of a monitor, the burn of antiseptic in my nose, and the faint sound of someone snoring. For a second, I’m convinced I’m dreaming. Hell, maybe I didn’t make it at all.
Then my eyes adjust.
Stitch is passed out in the chair by the window, chin tucked to his chest. Rook’s stretched out on the couch, boots still on. Iron’s got his arms crossed, head tipped back against the wall, asleep like he doesn’t give a shit about neck pain.
It’s too peaceful. Too still.
Something’s wrong.
The fog in my head clears just enough for memory to come back in jagged flashes: chains, blood, Nyxa’s face, Myka’s hands on her. My stomach knots, bile clawing up my throat.
The door slams open.
“Rise and shine, fuckers.” Soul’s voice blasts through the room. He’s grinning, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Prez’s awake.”
Iron jolts upright. Stitch blinks. Rook mutters a curse. All eyes swing my way.
I push up on my elbows. Pain detonates in my ribs, white-hot and mean. I grit my teeth and growl, “Where’s Nyxa?”
Iron starts, “She’s—”
I swing my legs over the bed.
“Don’t,” Stitch warns, limping to stop me.
The IV tugs at my arm. I rip it out, blood welling at the puncture. I don’t care. “Where the fuck is she?”
“She’s alive,” Iron says, slow, like that’s supposed to calm me.
“Alive?” My voice is a snarl. “That all you got for me? Alive?”
I’m on my feet before they can stop me. Every cell in my body screams, every stitch pulls, every bruise throbs, but I cross the space and slam Iron into the wall. My forearm presses against his throat.
“You better have more than that.”
Rook grabs my shoulder. Stitch hooks an arm around my chest. Pain lances through me, but I hold Iron’s gaze.
He doesn’t flinch. “You want the truth? She’s banged up because she wouldn’t sit her stubborn ass down,” he snaps, finally pushing back.
“Because she shoved her way into the middle of that goddamn war to get to you. While bullets were flying and bodies were dropping, she was threading her way through hell, North. You were chained and still breathing because she made damn sure of it.”
My grip tightens. His words sink like lead in my gut.
“She fought like she was born for it,” he continues, his voice cutting deeper.
“Took hits that would’ve dropped some of our brothers.
Put Myka on the ground with your old man’s knuckles and kept moving, bleeding like a stuck pig, until she rolled your sorry ass and the boys down from those chains.
You’re standing here because she didn’t stop. She didn’t fucking stop.”
I loosen my grip, but it’s not out of mercy, it’s because the weight of his words is already cracking me open.
“Where is she?” My voice is lower now, but it’s dangerous.
Iron jerks his chin toward the door. “Room across the hall. But you better get your head straight before you go in there, Prez. She’s the reason you’re not a corpse, and she’s still paying for it.”
I don’t remember crossing the hall.
One second Iron’s words are still ringing in my head, the next my hand’s on her door, the smell of antiseptic bleeding through the crack. My pulse is a drum in my throat, loud enough to drown out the world.
I push it open and freeze.
Nyxa’s small in that hospital bed, swallowed in white sheets that make the bruises stand out like war paint.
Her neck is wrapped in clean bandages, the stark white already shadowed with the bloom of blood beneath.
Her right hand is swaddled in gauze, thick enough that I can almost feel the sharp edge of the iron knuckles she wore, the way they must’ve torn her skin when she swung for Myka’s face.
Dark bruises arc over her collarbone, her arms, scattered like the fucking roadmap of everything she went through to get to me.
My stomach turns.
Myka’s hand’s in her hair, jerking her head back. The knife grazing her throat. Her voice, raw, furious, pleadingfor Iron to shoot, saying her life meant nothing without me.
It’s all right there behind my eyes, brutal and uninvited.
I remember thinking I was hallucinating when I saw her moving toward the chain system. I thought the serum was messing with my head but she did. She came.
And she almost didn’t walk back out.
Her chest rises and falls in slow, drugged rhythm. For a second I just stand there, my fingers curling into fists at my sides because I don’t know if I’m supposed to touch her or not. I don’t know if my weight anywhere near her is going to hurt her.
But I know one thing: she bled for me. She fought for me.
She risked every goddamn thing for me.
And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.
I drop to my knees beside the bed before my brain even catches up. The tile’s cold under me, but her skin is warm when I reach for her. Too warm. Feverish.
“Since when?” My voice is rough, like it’s been dragged through gravel.
“Two days,” Soul says quietly from the doorway.
Two days.
My forehead presses to her arm. I don’t care who’s in the room. Don’t care that my brothers are watching me break open. My shoulders shake, my jaw clenches until it aches, but I still pull her closer, careful not to jostle the tubes and wires.
“I’m here now, Firefly,” I whisper, but it’s more for me than for her.
My hand finds hers, what’s left of it under all that gauze, and I feel the weight of what she did like it’s been poured into my bones. She came for me when she shouldn’t have. She fought for me when every rule says she should’ve stayed the hell away.
She’s reckless, dangerous, and mine.
I push my tears back. Soul shifts closer.
“What about Myka?” I ask, voice low enough it’s almost a growl.
“In our cage,” a grim smile touching his mouth. “Cutter stitched him. Kept him breathing. Figured you’d want him alive.”
Alive.
Good.
Because I’m not done with that bastard. Not by a long shot.
I keep my eyes on Nyxa, brushing a loose strand of hair away from her bandaged neck. “Yeah,” I murmur. “I want him alive.”
And when I’m finished with him, he’ll wish I hadn’t.