Chapter Thirty-Three
Ravage
Diamond Creek Hospital...
I hated waiting. It was the worst. I didn’t get why I had to be here.
It wasn’t like I knew Maureen well enough to call her family.
I mean, I knew she was, sort of, but I wanted to check on Karlyn.
She hadn’t said much of anything since we got back.
In fact, she’d flat-out ignored me. I knew she was still hurt because the others and I had left her out of the plan, but in my defense, I had only wanted to protect her from the pain.
And wasn’t that my whole mantra? To protect?
To shield them from the ugliness of the world?
But Karlyn... she saw through that. She always did.
She called me out on my bullshit, and maybe that was why I hated this so much.
Because I had failed her, and it was entirely my fault.
In the end, she still got hurt.
Not by Karl, but by me. By my arrogance, by my misguided belief that I knew what was best. I had tried to be the shield, but I’d ended up being the sword.
The weight of my own choices pressed down, cold and relentless.
I stared at the hospital walls, my mind racing through all the mistakes that had led to this moment.
Every second felt like an eternity, each tick of the clock reminding me that some wounds couldn’t be patched with apologies or good intentions.
I’d always believed in second chances, in the power of a sincere apology, but the icy dread coiling in my stomach told me that for Karlyn, I might have used up all mine.
Was this the price of my pride? To lose her trust, and worse—to watch her suffer because I couldn’t bear to admit I was wrong?
I wondered if Karlyn would ever forgive me, or if the distance between us had grown too wide to cross. The air felt heavy, thick with regret and a desperate, gnawing hope tangled together when a gasp had me looking up from where I sat.
I watched as paramedics rolled in fast with a man on the gurney, a paramedic sitting over the man as he pumped his heart.
King jumped to his feet and ran. “What the fuck happened?” he shouted, his hands braced on the gurney, halting its progress.
Just then, a doctor rushed down the hall and pulled him back as Eros and Romeo strode in.
Scanning the room, Eros looked at me, and I slowly stood as a low hum started buzzing in my ears.
Walking over to me, I barely heard the doctor yell at King.
All I could concentrate on was Eros and the way he was solemnly staring at me.
The way he always looked at me, as if he could see right through the bravado, right into the mess I was.
“Brother.”
Steeling myself, I balled my fist and snarled, a guttural sound that felt alien even to me. “Just fucking tell me.”
I hated sounding like this, like a cornered animal, but the thought of Karlyn, of her hurt, made every ounce of control I possessed crumble.
“The Death Dogs took Karlyn.”
My roar was instant, like the volleying shot at the beginning of a race as I propelled myself forward. Arms grabbed me, trying to hold back the raw, ravage fury that erupted all around me.
Not my Karlyn.
Not again. I gave her my word.
This wasn’t happening. I refused to believe it.
She was safe. She had to be because I refused to believe otherwise.
But a sliver of the truth, sharp and unwelcome, pierced through the red haze.
I had promised to protect her, and I had failed.
Spectacularly. Now the only way to save her was to plunge back into the darkness I swore I would leave behind, and become the very thing I’d tried to shield her from.
The choice was brutal—a bitter pill I had to swallow.
Save Karlyn or salvage the remnants of the person I wanted to be.
And as the primal scream tore from my throat, I knew I wouldn’t hesitate.
I’d choose Karlyn every single time, no matter the cost to myself.
“Let him go,” a rough, gravelly voice demanded as Poseidon stepped back. Eros and Firestride kept their grips tight as I continued to fight my way free. Through the haze of fury, I vaguely saw King getting in Eros’ face.
“Get your fucking hands off him,” he growled, leaning forward, almost nose to nose when someone shouted, “Eros, enough!”
The second Eros let go, Firestride put his full weight onto my stomach as I tried to break free.
“Jackson!”
I blinked, and my head snapped up to find King glaring down at me in all his fury.
The second I looked into his eyes, I knew, felt it in my bones, we were one and the same.
That volatile blood, that need for revenge, to scorch and ravage the earth to protect what was ours, was ingrained deep, and all anyone had to do was look in our eyes to see the truth.
It was there, within his, just like it was in mine.
That cold death buried deep, just waiting to emerge, settled in my gut.
The rage... that all-consuming rage that sucked every bit of humanity out of us, choking us until we gave in to its fury.
The darkness had consumed him, and now it was staring back at me, demanding I do the same.
“Let’s go.”
Heading for the exit, we rushed out of the hospital to the nearest vehicle.
Approaching the club SUV, I climbed into the driver’s side.
My hands trembled on the steering wheel, a stark contrast to the steely resolve King radiated as I fought the darkness, knowing one of us needed to think logically, rationally.
Every instinct screamed at me to find a safer way, to let cooler heads prevail, but it was quickly becoming a losing battle as my desperation, my need to find Karlyn, eclipsed all reason.
“We need to go back to the clubhouse.”
“They aren’t at the fucking clubhouse,” I growled as I started the vehicle, peeling out of the parking lot, leaving black tar tracks behind me. The raw aggression in my voice felt familiar, as the monster I desperately tried to keep caged woke from its slumber, hungry, thirsty, desperate for blood.
“No, but Nav is. And Sypher will be there too,” King advised, sitting in the passenger seat, his knuckles white to the bone, as he clenched his fist tightly.
“There are cameras at Trudy’s. I want to know exactly who the fuck took our women, because those motherfuckers don’t get a bullet in the head like the rest. Those motherfuckers we get to fucking play with. ”
I smirked at that.
A few minutes later, I pulled into the lot at the clubhouse, and King was out of the vehicle before it stopped. Slamming the SUV into park, I didn’t bother turning off the ignition as I, too, jumped from the vehicle, racing after my brother as the sound of pipes roared close behind me.
As I ran, I heard Moonshine’s voice in my head, his desperate plea echoing in my mind: Think, Jackson.
Don’t let the rage consume you. But the roar of the engines, the primal energy of the brothers, pulled me forward, a reluctant participant in a storm I both feared and, in a dark, twisted corner of my soul, craved.
“NAV!”
“In church, Prez!”
Thundering toward church, King burst into the room, barking orders. “What the fuck do you know?”
Nav didn’t say a word as he turned his computer toward us, allowing us to see.
There on the screen was the inside of Trudy’s place, and I could clearly see Grace and Karlyn sitting by the window talking.
Indigo and Johnny were inside with them, Indigo at the next table while Johnny sat at the bar, watching indiscriminately.
I watched as Karlyn reached over and put her hand on Grace’s.
Yet, when I saw my woman frown, then sit back, pulling her hand away, I frowned, too.
She looked upset about whatever Grace had said.
A cold knot tightened in my gut. Was Grace planting seeds of doubt?
Was Karlyn already wavering? The thought sickened me—a betrayal I hadn’t even begun to process.
“Is there any fucking sound?” I snarled next to King, wanting to know what the fuck Grace had said to upset Karlyn.
My mind raced, conjuring every possible venomous word Grace might spew, every insecurity she might exploit.
I wanted to be there, to rip Grace’s tongue out if it came to that, but I was here, and my woman was gone.
“No, Trudy wouldn’t let us do sound. She said people came in there to talk things out with her, or others, and it would be an invasion of privacy.”
“Fuck that. I want sound on every fucking camera we have in town,” King blatantly demanded.
My stomach churned. Privacy. It was a foreign concept to me, a boundary I never truly understood.
There were no boundaries I would scale to protect Karlyn.
But the thought of Karlyn being hurt, manipulated, by Grace.
.. it gnawed at me. If privacy meant Karlyn’s emotional devastation, then privacy could go to hell.
“King—”
“Did I fucking stutter?” he snapped.
“No, Prez.” Nav sighed, and I never took my eyes off the screen, watching as Johnny answered his phone, then walked over to speak to Grace.
Grace got up to pay the bill, leaving Karlyn sitting alone.
She turned to look at Indigo right before my brother stiffened, moving fast to shield Karlyn seconds before all hell broke loose.
Everything happened fast, and when Indigo went down, I saw him look at Karlyn, telling her to run, and my girl did.
A instinct to surge forward, to protect Karlyn, warred with the stark reality of my position.
I was an observer, a prisoner of the screen.
My helplessness was a bitter pill, more potent than any poison.
And as I watched Indigo fall, the image of him looking at Karlyn, his silent plea for her escape, branded itself into my mind.
He was sacrificing himself for her, a selfless act I could only admire from a distance, a painful reminder of the chasm between the men we were and the men we aspired to be.
I had failed to be there, to anticipate this, and the weight of that failure settled heavily upon me.