Page 9 of Ruin Me Knot
A flicker of panic flashes through me.What if we’re too late?What if this heat, this torture, has already broken her beyond healing?
She’s slick with sweat, barely conscious. I clutch her tighter, anchoring myself with the fragile weight against my chest, I yank my shirt collar over my mouth, Ronan snatches a hygiene mask from the supply tray and fits it over her face as the mist thickens.
"Move, now!" Ronan shouts, voice hard and urgent, muffled by his shirt.
We stagger into the hall, red lights strobing. The gas pours from more ceiling vents, burning my throat, biting at my eyes. My gut turns over, nausea crawling up like a live thing. This isn’t a warning.
It’s a purge.
The guards have vanished. We run half-blind, through the twisted corridors, past the empty rooms of horror. The place echoes with alarms and chemical hiss. I can’t tell if it’s my head spinning or the red lights flickering that make the hallway bend.
We finally stagger into the ruined lab we broke through on the way in. Jax heaves the window frame up, letting in desperately needed cold, clean air. I pass Leah to Ronan, haul myself through the opening, lungs burning with every breath and land rough on the tarmac outside.
Ronan maneuvers her carefully back to me. She’s weightless, her skin feverish through my shirt. Jax tumbles out next, boots scraping concrete, and Ronan’s already through behind him. We're all coughing, lungs raw and throats shredded, but there's no time to stop and catch our breath.
"Move! Get back to the car. Go!" Ronan’s voice is thick and hoarse.
We stagger across the lot, not even pretending to care about the security cameras tracking us. Jax widens the gap in the fence and we squeeze through. Ronan takes the lead, drawing us like a lifeline toward the stolen sedan.
Jax yanks open the back door, and I slide inside with our Omega cradled tight against me, her head lolling against my chest. There’s blood and grit everywhere. Our Omega is so small, shaking so hard my muscles ache just to keep her together. I keep counting her breaths, terrified that if I stop, she’ll slip away. My hands won’t steady. I can’t speak. Nothing matters but holding on, making sure she stays real and alive, right here, right now. Everything outside is noise. All I have isthis, her pulse weak under my fingers, and a prayer in my teeth that we’re not too damn late.
Jax piles in beside me, one arm stretched to steady us both. Ronan hits the driver’s seat, hotwires the engine and floors it. Wheels spin, rubber shrieks and we rocket into dark, deserted streets.
We don't look back. We keep driving. Just us and the night.
The only thing that matters is filling my lap with too-light breaths. Finally out of hell, but are we too late to save her from death?
Chapter Five
Jax
As Ronan pushes the car past the edge of the district, I twist around, scanning every shadow, nerves wire-tight. The streets behind us are dead quiet. No one seems to be following. Cold air whips through the interior as we use the flow to get the gas out of our hair and clothing.
"I don’t see anything. Think we lost them.” The words taste bitter. “Or… maybe they aren’t even coming." The thought lands hard, thick with heat that settles in my gut and rots. "They didn’t expect us to survive. That gas. Shit, they zeroed that whole place. That was a deliberate wipe."
It wasn’t just some knockout stuff. I recognized the burn, the way it clawed at my throat, fogged my head, numbed my hands and blurred my vision. A lethal cocktail designed to kill. We’ve seen similar deployed overseas, used by regimes who wanted nobody to ever know what happened behind their closed doors.
Gabriel wipes sweat from his brow with a shaky hand before wrapping his arms around our Omega again. "As soon as the mist hit, those males bolted. They knew what it was."
The knowledge Hardwick was willing to kill everyone, including her guards slams hits me hard. Hardwick was ready to purge everything. Our Omega, every other poor soul who suffered in that place. All at the flick of a button and a vent in the ceiling.
I’ve seen a lot of horrors with my bond brothers, but that chills me to the core.
Ronan’s knuckles tighten on the wheel, the city lights stuttering by in the rear window. "The place was a death trap by design. They set it up to leave no trace."
"Yeah," I mutter, voice rough. "I bet anything they used the old tunnels in the rail network right underneath the station, and… Gods, if you wanted to run a slavery ring, hiding it over a secret escape route would be how you’d do it. No wonder the authorities haven’t been able to catch these traffickers in the act. It was all underground and off the books."
My hands fist on my thighs as I cough, throat burning. Everyone responsible for that place got away. The senator used the cover of the fight, and the males used our need to secure Leah to get away. The blond male we saw exiting the building before we found our Omega has hit my shit list. He’ll have secrets we’ll want to extract.
"Are you still suffering the effects of the gas?" Ronan asks.
"Bit woozy, but my head’s clearing." I swallow, turning toward Gabriel next to me and the precious cargo in his lap. "Gabe?"
He nods, rubbing his eyes. "I’ll live."
What matters now is the Omega curled in Gabriel’s lap. She hasn’t woken; she hasn’t made a sound since we pulled her from that gurney. Leah’s skin is too hot, slicked with sweat and too pale.
"Hardwick took her blood. Too much blood," I admit, soft and scared in a way I will never let anyone but my brothers see. "She hasn’t stirred."
