Page 77 of Ruin Me Knot
Ronan shoves the body aside with a rough, final push, nothing more than dead meat and old nightmares. In the next instant, he’s gathering me in his arms, the gentleness in his hold a jolt after all the violence. I melt against his chest,mind swimming between relief and aftershock, his scent washing away Deacon’s stench.
"You’re safe," he breathes, voice broken and soft, forehead against mine. "You’re safe, Kitten. I’ve got you."
Chapter Thirty-Six
Gabriel
Jax gathers Leah, easing her off Ronan, and presses a kiss to her mouth. Every nerve screams to touch her, to taste reassurance right from her lips, to prove she’s here.
My chest is chaos. I want to pull her away, push Jax aside, fall to my knees, do all three at once. She peels away from Jax, eyes half-lidded, and I draw her in, desperate for her warmth pressed against me before I burn up from the inside out.
I hold her close enough to feel her heart flutter. I check her arms, skim over her ribs. My movements are quick, clumsy, urgent. Like I couldpiece her back together with nothing but touch. My hands tremble at the angry new scrapes and mottled bruises blooming on her skin.
"You’re okay. You’re okay." My words stutter against her hair, and I don’t know if I’m lying or praying. If the bastard who did this wasn’t dead already, I’d snap his neck twice.
Jax’s jaw is set so tight it might shatter. He’s got that wide-open ache in his eyes. Pure relief and guilt fighting it out. Ronan’s fists are slick with blood, his body shuddering with adrenal aftershock; he looks like he might tear the van apart with his bare hands just for a reason to keep moving. Our pack bond frays at the edges, filled with white-knuckle restraint. The only reason we can hold it together is because we have our Omega in our arms.
I’m unmade: every thread of me saying check her, check her. Don’t stop until you’re sure she’s safe and whole. I bury my face in her hair and just breathe, shameless in my relief. "Leah, say something smart so I know you’re not a ghost. Or say something dumb, I don’t care, I just want to know I didn’t lose my mind back there."
"I’m here, Alpha," she says in that soft, beautiful voice of hers. "I’m actually hard to kill."
A spark still smolders beneath her frail exterior with the same surge that let her crack that asshole over the head with a spanner and gave us a chance to take this vehicle down. I laugh but it comes out choked, ragged. My heart’s a trap, and bonding venom floods my mouth because all I want to do is bite her. Bond her. Tie her to us so deep that nothing could ever take her away from us again. I force myself to breathe through the urge, concentrating on each inhale so I don’t drop my teeth right into her skin and change everything with a moment of panic.
"You know, Sunshine, the next time you want to go for a little ride, can we try a ferris wheel first? Perhaps a pony? Something a little less…homicidal." I try for levity, but don’t deny the truth in my words.
My hands shake as I hold her, every fiber in my body screaming: Mine, mine, mine! Safe now. Just barely. I cup her cheeks, my thumbs tracing her delicate cheekbones, and settle my mouth over hers. It isn’t gentle, not at first. Mygratitude at having her in my arms comes out rough and hungry. The relief is so sharp it strips me bare. She opens to me, and I kiss her like she’s the only air left.
Her fingers fist in my shirt, her small body pressed so close I can count every heartbeat shivering through her. She clings to me like she’s holding onto the only thing she trusts won’t vanish. She tastes like salt and terror and the first clean breath after nearly drowning.
I was ready to leave the city in ash for her. Ready to torch the world behind me. If fate had dared to keep her soul from mine, I would have clawed through the afterlife and come back, no matter what it cost. She is everything, the axis of my heart and every reckless oath I’ve ever made.
The sound of engines draw close, shattering the silence. Ronan peers out the caved-in van door.
"More vans heading our way," he bites out. "They haven’t given up."
He bands an arm around Leah’s waist and lifts her like she weighs nothing. "We need to move. Get back into our van!"
He sweeps her out of the door. My boots crunch over shattered glass and scattered tools as I vault through the ruined door after him, Jax close on my heels.
The air outside tastes like metal and smoke. I catch a flash of oncoming vans screaming toward us before I’m bolting after Ronan, rounding the back of our stolen van. They’re still after us. Still coming despite the bodies strewn in our wake.
Our van is half-caved, shotgun-blasted with holes and cracked glass, but thank fuck the engine is still running. I throw myself behind the wheel, heart detonating, hands slick on the battered rim. Jax scrambles into shotgun, his fingers white-knuckled on the dash, twisted halfway to watch Leah. Ronan shoves into the back with our Omega, arms caged around her body like nothing in the universe could pry her loose.
I wrench into reverse, engine roaring, frame shuddering. The van grinds out of the crater with an animal wheeze. I floor it, tires screaming, spinning us in a half-moon arc. Metal groans, the wheel jittering under my grip as I jam it into drive and gun it down the road.
I drive like a goddamn demon. My knuckles throb, sweat stinging my palms as I pitch us around corners, the battered van fishtailing so hard Jax has to brace himself. Ronan braces around Leah, absorbing the shock.
"We can’t keep driving like this. We need somewhere safe. The safehouse is blown and I don’t trust any of our others aren’t just as compromised now," Jax says.
Ronan’s voice is a low, volcanic rumble. "Our security is top of the fucking range, Jax. Top of the range. So how did they find us?"
My jaw aches as I slam the van through another red light, raking us barely ahead of the pack behind, buying us precious seconds to get ahead. "There’s only one place they wouldn’t dare tread with Omega trafficking. We need to get to Pinnacle Therapeutics."
Leah’s gasp is sharp, sudden bitterness rippling off her, biting into the back of my throat but there’s no time to ask why because somehow the bastards are gaining on us again.
The lead van taps our back bumper. The impact knocks my teeth together as the wheel jerks in my grip. "Hold on."
I swing us across the opposite lane, van lurching over the curb. Horns blast as I thread through oncoming traffic. Cars screech to a stop, veering sideways, tires smoking. I’m causing traffic chaos, but I keep my foot smashed to the floor, weaving us through chaos.
