Page 7 of Omega on Fire

His eyes flicker, dark and dangerous. I might be pushing but fuck it—Iwanta fight. My whole body is vibrating with it, coiled tight with rage and something darker.Let me swing on him. Let me tear something apart.

"Really, Beaux?" His voice is low, warning. "You want to do this?"

I stare him down, my breathing ragged, my fists flexing at my sides. The gym is too fucking small, the walls closing in, my mind screamingGO, GO, GO. I can’t shake it. But I don’t move. Not yet.

Snorting, I stalk past him, my skin itching with the need todo somethingthat isn’t sitting here waiting. I grab a water bottle from the fridge, drain it in one long pull, then crush the plastic in my grip, letting the last drops splatter onto the floor.

"Three days is too long," I grind out. "We should beout there,not sitting on our fucking hands."

Teagan’s expression doesn’t change, but there’s fire banked behind his gaze. "Wewillbe. The second Joker finds something, we move."

I flex my hands, staring at my ruined knuckles, at the blood drying in the creases of my fingers.Soon, Iremind myself.Soon. I’m going to tear them apart, not only for her, but every single person they’ve taken.

"Well, would you look at this shitshow," Moses says as he steps into the gym, eyeing the bloodbath I've created like it's just another Tuesday. For us, I guess it fucking is.

I wipe sweat from my brow, probably smearing blood across my forehead in the process. "You here to lecture me too, Deacon? Trigger’s already got that covered."

Moses just shakes his head. The calm motherfucker never rises to my bait. It's annoying as fuck and one of the reasons I love him. "Joker's been up for seventy-two hours straight. Man's running on energy drinks and obsession. Eyes are bloodshot to hell, but he says he's onto something."

"Onto something?" I perk up like a dog hearing a treat bag. "What kind of something?"

"The kind where he's mumbling to himself and typing so fast his keyboard might catch fire," Moses says. "But he won't take a break. Not even for me."

Teagan's already heading for the door. "Let's go."

We follow him out, my bloody knuckles forgotten as adrenaline surges through me again.Finally, some fucking movement. I trail behind them through ourridiculous penthouse—fifty-story drop to the concrete below, Central Park spread out like some rich person's backyard. Sometimes I stand on our terrace and think about how easy it would be to just step off. Not because I want to die, but because I want to know what it feels like to fall. That's the kind of fucked-up shit that rattles around in my brain when I'm idle.

"I hate this fucking place when we're trapped in it," I mutter as we cut through the living room. "All this fancy-ass shit just sitting here looking pretty." I gesture at the sleek modern furniture that probably costs more than most people make in a year. "This couch has seen more of our asses than action lately." We pass by the east-facing windows, and I catch a glimpse of the city sprawled below us like a circuit board. "Fifty windows in this joint, and not one of them showing me what I need to see."

Moses gives me a sidelong glance as we head down the hallway toward Joker's tech dungeon. "And what's that?"

"Charlotte, safe. Or a trail of breadcrumbs leading to whoever took her so I can carve them into tiny fucking pieces."

The hallway stretches ahead, lined with our bedrooms that none of us have properly slept in lately. Mine's the one with the door that's got three dentsfrom the times I've punched it instead of one of my packmates. Pack discipline, they call it. I call it not getting my ass handed to me by Teagan.

We pass by the weapons vault—reinforced steel door, biometric locks, enough firepower inside to start a small war or end one. My fingers itch every time I walk by it. Inside that room is the solution to so many problems: bullets, blades, and bombs.

"That pool hasn't seen action in weeks either," I nod toward the glass doors leading to our terrace as we pass. The lap pool gleams turquoise in the afternoon sun, pristine and untouched. "Rich people shit. Who needs a pool fifty floors up? One good storm and half the water ends up raining down on the peasants below."

We round the corner to the rear of the penthouse where Joker's set up his command center. I call it his tech dungeon because it's where he goes to torture information out of machines. The air gets cooler as we approach, the hum of servers and cooling fans grows louder.

There better be something.If I have to sit through another dead-end theory, I’m gonna lose what’s left of my patience. I need atarget. A location. A fucking reason to pull the trigger on something,someone.

"I swear if he's been staring at the same fuckingscreen for three days and hasn't found anything." I let the threat hang there, empty as we all know it is. If Joker says he's onto something, he is. Man's brain works differently than ours, all genius and no filter.

Teagan pushes open the door, and the blue glow from a dozen monitors washes over us. The room smells like stale energy drinks, body odor, and desperation. In the center of it all is Josiah, hunched over his keyboard like a man possessed.

"Show time," I mutter, cracking my bloody knuckles. "Let's see what our little Joker's been cooking up."

Joker looks like he's crawled out of a fucking grave. His eyes, bloodshot and wild, blink rapidly at the light coming in from the hallway like he's forgotten the sun exists. The blue glow from his twelve monitors casts an eerie pallor on his brown skin, making him look sickly and translucent. Wrappers from protein bars and empty cans of energy drinks create a perimeter around his workstation like some kind of fucked-up ritual circle.

"Jesus Christ, J," I say, stepping into his tech dungeon. "You look like complete shit."

He doesn't even glance my way, just peels his glasses off and rubs at his eyes with the heels of hishands, leaving them there for a long moment like he's trying to push some energy back into his skull.

"When's the last time you ate something that wasn't processed garbage?" I ask, nudging an empty can with my boot.

Joker finally looks up, his eyes vacant for a split second before recognition flickers back into them. "Tuesday, I think?" He blinks twice, those rapid-fire blinks that tell me his brain is recalibrating. "What day is it?"

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