Page 2 of Reckless Consequences

Wind crashes against the cabin in irregular bursts, rain tapping the roof in near-perfect rhythm. Beneath the scents of illness and pack, the hideout reeks of dust and disuse.

I catalog our shelter despite the fever—the steep roof pitch, the cramped room dimensions, the loose boards that creak with every step. My mind can’t help measuring our precarious safety.

In fever-vision, Cayenne’s chess pieces move—what looks like chaos but follows perfect logic. A feigned retreat. An unexpected advance.

“Checkmate in seven,” I whisper, the certainty of the sequence bringing momentary clarity through the fever.

The pack bonds stretch between us like quantum entanglement, impossible to break.

Ryker’s presence feels like steel-cable, threaded with the fear he tries to hide.

Jinx radiates volatile energy, his protective rage barely leashed.

Theo pulses warm and rhythmic beside me, his temperature rising with each breath.

But it’s the fifth bond my fever clings to—thinner, distant, fluttering like a heartbeat just out of reach.

Cayenne.

I feel her—barely, through Jinx’s connection—a citrus-bright determination pushing through darkness. The sensation fades and strengthens like a signal oscillating between frequencies. Moving. Fighting. Calculating her way back to us.

“She’s making good time,” Ryker says, misinterpreting my restlessness as his fingers check my pulse with methodical precision. “Quinn’s last satellite ping showed them fifty miles out.”

“Not fast enough,” Jinx growls, the temperature dropping with his fear.

Not fast enough,my brain calculates, running deterioration algorithms against distance and time variables. The virus has infiltrated my central nervous system. My fingers twitch with involuntary movements. Soon it will be my lungs, my heart.

“Rook sacrifices position... queen freed to attack,” I mumble as another fever spike hits, seeing the necessary moves unfold.

“What did he say?” Ryker asks, his authority cracking like glass under pressure.

“Something about sacrifices.” Theo’s voice breaks into fragments as his fingers interlace with mine. “Finn, stay with us.”

I want to tell them that I understand now—understand what Cayenne did, why she ran to Sterling’s labs alone. Not abandonment but applied game theory. Sacrificing a piece to protect the board. The queen moving into enemy territory, drawing fire while setting up the endgame.

“Beautiful move,” I whisper to the Cayenne in my fevered calculations. “Didn’t see it coming. None of us did.”

The fever pulls me under again, deeper this time. Pack bonds stretch thinner, voices becoming distant equations. Outside, a vehicle approaches—tires on gravel creating sound patterns too slow to be Cayenne. The pack tenses around me, Jinx’s low growl vibrating through the floorboards.

But as darkness claims me, I hold onto one certainty—the single constant in a universe of chaos.

She’s still out there. Calculating her way back to us.

And somehow, impossibly, the board remains in play.

Not checkmate.

Not yet.

Chapter1

Cayenne

The Ducati screams beneath me,engine roaring as I push past eighty, then ninety. My hands are sticky with blood—mostly Mona’s, seeping through the makeshift bandage around her bicep. The wind strips away the copper smell, but nothing can erase the image of Alexander’s face when he realized I was choosing Mona over the pack.

Not choosing, I correct myself.Strategizing. There’s a difference between abandonment and necessity.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

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