Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

KANE

I t took way too long to get out of the damn auction house, and now we’re driving an hour to the Kelly’s home. Morris is going down back roads and winding deserted streets, because we’re all paranoid that somehow, we’re going to get caught.

I want to tell the paranoia to go fuck itself. I need to see her, talk to her.

Demon is grunting in pain next to me, and I turn to glare at him.

“Dude, what the fuck? You sound like you have to take a shit,” I growl.

“No,” he says breathlessly. “Fucking hurts. Adira is wordlessly screaming and awake. It feels like a deep, dark nightmare inside. I’m just as on edge and can’t fucking help her.”

“The guys are with her,” Jed grounds out, his body twisting until his leg is underneath him, so that he can turn to look at us. “It’s the best we can do until we can explain things to her.”

“You think words are going to be able to fix what happened?” I ask, eyes wide. “There’s no fucking way that’s going to make a difference, Jed. I don’t know what will.”

Morris makes a strangled sound under his breath and I sigh, feeling bad. I know he’s buried in guilt, and noticed the bite on his neck. I’m jealous as hell about it, not realizing he wanted a bite.

Though, by the smug look on my brother’s face when they came out, his possessive ass may have forced the issue. Morris is ours, and that’s never going to change. If he threatened to leave our pack, I have a feeling Jed wouldn’t have taken that very well.

“Okay, fuck,” I mutter. “How much longer?”

“Kane, I swear to God,” Morris groans. I can be the worst backseat driver ever, and I’m aware of this little flaw in my personality. “Twenty-five minutes.”

“Thanks,” I grunt. “What are we going to do when we see her?”

Demon rubs his chest, wincing, and I swear he looks like he has ants in his pants with how much he’s moving around.

“We throw ourselves at her mercy,” he rasps. “This… can never happen again. We have to be able to swear to her that she’s safe. Dad is a fucking menace.”

“Yeah, he is,” Jed says. “We’re going to end him. But here’s the thing about that…”

“We’ll be the new head of his mafia empire,” I sigh. “New enemies, new issues to deal with.”

“Not if you rule differently than your father,” Morris says. “Your father doesn’t run in sex trafficking, but does have the auctions. It’s always felt like a cop out in my mind, because it’s the same damn thing. Cut Ophelia off.”

“That’ll make her even stronger, because she’ll make all of the profits. At least right now, Dad is holding her leash,” Demon says, still appearing in pain.

The mention of a leash makes me flash back to Jed telling me about the leash they put on Adira. I was already out of the room with my brother when it happened. I can’t fucking imagine how she must have felt.

Ophelia makes Dad and herself money in the cruelest ways possible.

He may hold her leash, but she gets off on seeing how far she can go on it.

“Cut off her leads,” Morris says. “Doesn’t your father feed her people to sell?”

“I don’t know what percentage that is,” Jed says. “I’ve always stayed away from that side of the business, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out. Cutting her off from Dad’s protection would hurt her.”

“I imagine she’s pissed off a lot of people,” I muse. “Dad’s always talked about how we’re inheriting the business once he’s retired, but I figured that would be once he’s dead. Dad isn’t the type to gracefully retire. He likes power too much.”

Remembering how excited he was as he watched Adira being hurt and humiliated makes me shudder. I can taste bile as I swallow hard and reach for a bottle of water. I’m rarely disgusted by the shit we do, but I am today.

The little rabbit is already changing us. She just doesn’t know it.

“I’ve never wanted any part of leading, but I don’t have a choice now,” Jed says. “If we eliminate him and don’t step up, people will come after us, because we share his blood.”

“They’ll expect us to take the reins,” I agree. “No one else will believe we simply need him dead to protect a little rabbit. No one will respect it, and we’ll appear weak. They’ll slaughter us all anyway. It’s what we would do.”

“Yeah, well we’re assholes,” Demon says. “Unfortunately, we set the standard for murder and mayhem, so we’re going to have to cut the heads off of our mafia heads and then show we’re in charge.”

“Murder is a walk in the park for us,” I say. “Redemption is a whole other story.”

“I don’t think we deserve it,” Morris mumbles. “Think about what we know about Adira. Exactly nothing. I’ve kept her unconscious for weeks, drugging her while pretending to give a shit about her. I took her out to the porch before we drove to the safe house and gave her the choice to be injected with a sedative, or take a pill that would keep her asleep.”

I didn’t know this, and my brows draw down. “What did she choose?” I ask.

“At first, she was upset, but realized there was no point in fighting. The entire property was covered in snow. I told her she was going to auction, and it would happen regardless of how much she fought,” he says in a dead tone as he turns onto another road. “She chose the pill.”

“She’s had shit choices forced on her the entire time, since we burned down her father’s estate,” I grunt. “The little rabbit has a lot of fight in her. I know there’s a fire that’ll burn the world down if we let it. I want to let her light the match.”

“What if she tells us all to fuck off?” Demon asks grimly. “She could decide she wants to do things on her own. I heard there was some kind of omega’s shelter now in Minneapolis.”

“Since when do you pay attention to the outside world?” Jed asks, surprised.

“I saw a billboard about it and looked it up,” he mutters. “Adira has choices, even if she doesn’t know it.”

“That’s not a choice for her,” I remind him. “What about when she has her next heat? No one will be enough for her if you’re not there. You’re connected, which is why this entire plan had to happen.”

“It’s killing you to be away from her,” Jed grunts. “She may think she can cut herself off, but biology will win out. The time where you can deny this is over. You claimed, bonded, and tied yourself to the little omega. No one will ever be enough for her. It’s fucked, but she’s stuck with you.”

“Which means she’s stuck with us,” Morris says. “I need to make things right with her. I tried to leave…”

“You’re pack,” Demon says, startling me. Morris and he have always stayed out of each other’s way. “You can’t leave.”

“That’s what I told him,” Jed says smugly as Morris snorts. “I gave him my teeth marks as a special gift.”

“We’re such assholes,” I say, shaking my head. “Biology must have a sense of humor to give us such a sweet omega.”

“I don’t understand how it all works,” Demon says. “I can feel raw, screaming pain, and it’s making me claw out of my skin?—”

He cuts himself off, face bleeding of any emotion before he glances at me.

“There’s nothing anymore,” he says. “It’s just this pit of nothing where she is. Almost like the static on a television. She checked out but she’s awake. I’d rather her be screaming at me than this. It’s unnatural.”

“I don’t know what that means, but we’re almost there,” Morris says. “They know we’re coming right?”

It’s coming up on one thirty in the morning, and my hands are begging for something to do. Pulling out a penny, I rub it between my fingers over and over. I’m aware that I’m stimming, but usually I’d be playing with my knife. My anxiety is clawing at me after Demon’s words, and I need to lay eyes on my little rabbit.

There’s no other outlet for this wild energy that’s constantly living inside of me, which makes me such a crazy bastard.

“Five minutes out,” Morris grunts. “Get your heads on straight. It’s almost go time.”

Nodding, we all take a collective deep breath, knowing that we could be walking into anything.