Chapter 554

Olivia

The gunshot never came.

Slowly, almost dreading what fresh horror awaited me, I peeled my eyes open.

And blinked in utter disbelief.

We were surrounded—not by more goons as I had feared, but by a sea of grim-faced women, all of whom held various weapons; rifles, shotguns, batons, one even held a pickaxe that she seemed to have picked up from the abandoned quarry that we had found ourselves in. I realized, in an instant, that I recognized them all. The escorts.

Mira stood at the forefront, looking vengeful as ever as she pointed a shotgun directly at Montgomery’s skull. Despite the tears streaking down her cheeks and the way her hands trembled, she was unwavering in her stance.

She was ready to kill. I think she may have even craved it.

I felt a swell of sheer disbelief ripple its way through my body. I wasn’t sure how these women had slipped in unseen, but they had made it. And the weapons trained on Montgomery’s, Dan’s, and the goons’ heads had made them freeze just before they had pulled the trigger on us.

“What is the meaning of this?” the tall and wiry man, whose name I had only just learned was Montgomery, said slowly and haltingly.

“You made a mistake when you forced us girls to turn on our own,” Mira said. “We may have been scared at first, may have let ourselves get pushed around. But we’re done being your victims.”

She punctuated the declaration by cocking the shotgun with a crisp snap. Around her, the others followed suit—cocking their own guns, raising their various weapons, stepping forward and causing the men to flinch.

“So here’s how this is going to go,” Mira continued, her fiery gaze meeting mine for just a moment. “We take you all out back behind the shed over there. One by one, nice and efficient. You want to tango with death so bad? Well, death is a woman. And she’s come calling, gentlemen.”

A ragged murmur of malicious delight rippled through the assembled women at her words. All around us, angry glares bored down from every side. For the first time since this nightmare began, Dan looked well and truly afraid as he took a shaky step back, his hands held up in a useless warding gesture.

“Now hold on just a minute,” Montgomery began, but Mira simply shook her head, silencing him with a look that could kill.

“You boys made your choices. Choice after choice to ruin lives, to hunt us down like prey,” she spat. “Olivia and Nathan here actually tried to help us. They did more than any of you pigs ever could.”

She swiveled that blistering stare towards us then. For a fleeting heartbeat, I saw her mask slip—a look of pure anguish flickering in her eyes, pleading with me for… what? Understanding? Forgiveness? Before that impassive veneer slammed back into place and she snapped her head back toward Montgomery.

“So we’re not about to let them die beside you monsters,” she concluded through grit teeth.

There was a deafening pause where even the birds seemed to hush. Finally, I saw Dan’s shoulders sag in resignation, his face crumpling as he slumped forward onto his knees—only to go rigid a second later as Nathan’s voice sliced through the silence.

“No.”

Every head snapped towards my husband as he hauled himself to his feet with a visible effort. The gun that had once been trained on the back of his head had now been discarded by the goon that had held it, dropped into the dirt out of fear.

His face was still a kaleidoscope of purples and reds, so swollen I could scarcely recognize the familiar, beloved angles and planes. Yet still he drew himself up with as much dignity as a beaten, half-naked man could muster.

With slow, heavy steps, he made his way across the clearing until he came to stop in front of the two men who had caused all of this evil. Dan and Montgomery peered up at him from where they both now kneeled on the ground with their hands behind their heads, their once-towering presences rendered small and pitiful beneath his shadow.

“It would be too easy, too merciful a fate to simply kill them,” I heard Nathan say, his voice low and cracked from the torture he had endured but shockingly firm at the same time. “No… you arrogant, pathetic fools who think yourselves masters of the universe deserve a far worse punishment than the sweet release of death.”

He paused, seeming to savor the terror etched into the faces of our former tormentors. Dan’s jaw opened and closed uselessly as words failed him for the first time since I had met him. He looked shaken and small and pathetic, a far cry from the imposing Alpha who I had once feared.

Montgomery, on the other hand, betrayed no emotion. Shock, perhaps, but nothing else. No fear, agony, or even anger betrayed that perfect mask on his face.

“Let us bring these bastards back to our pack,” Nathan said, straightening and turning to Mira. “I’d like to subject them to ninety days of confinement before I decide what to do with them. Assuming there’s anything left of their bodies once the carrion are through with them.”

An audible tremor made its way through the silence; even I found myself trembling slightly as I stood, although I couldn’t quite decide whether that was from the leftover adrenaline of it all or not.

“Confinement?” I asked, slowly reaching down to pick up the gun that the other goon had dropped, just in case he tried anything—although, judging by the pickaxe aimed perfectly at his temple and the terrified look in his eyes, it didn’t seem as if he had any grand plans. “Nathan, this…”

“I know what you’re thinking.” Nathan turned to me, one eye nearly swollen shut but still burning with that Alpha ferocity of his. “I know that it’s something my father would do, something that I didn’t think I would ever do myself. But these bastards…”

He paused, shooting Dan and Montgomery a sidelong glance.

“They deserve it,” he finished. “After everything they’ve done, they deserve to feel what it’s like to be imprisoned, stripped of all dignity, picked apart by animals in the same way that they let other men pick apart these women.”

I swallowed, feeling the weight of his words settle in. He was right; no matter how barbaric and outdated confinement felt, the thought of Dan and Montgomery being left in the pit for ninety days did fill me with the tiniest scrap of joy.

“Very well,” I said softly.

Nathan shot me the smallest of nods before turning to address the women. “Let’s tie them up,” he said. “We’ll take the goons to the authorities, but I’m taking these two sick fucks as political prisoners. They’re coming home with us.”

Without a moment of hesitation, the women dispersed to begin binding the men’s wrists and ankles with thick nylon cord that was retrieved from the two vans. I watched in stony silence as the men were unceremoniously hauled onto their feet, defeat and terror written in every pathetic twitch of their faces.

Only then did Nathan finally turn away, his expression softening a fraction as his blue-green eyes found mine across the divide. He began to move, drifting toward me with a single hand outstretched.

But his steps faltered before he could reach me, his knees threatening to buckle out from under him. I surged forward without a second thought, closing the distance in a few frantic strides to draw him up into my arms, letting his dead weight sag against my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured with a wry chuckle as I helped him over to the tailgate of one of the vans to sit down. “This is pathetic of me.”

“Pathetic?” I let out a snort. “Nathan, you survived. We survived, and justice will be served. That’s about as far from ‘pathetic’ as it could possibly get.”

The slightest huff of air caressed my cheek, the ghost of his familiar chuckle. “Justice,” he echoed. “Is it justice, or is it revenge?”

Before I could answer, he leaned in, pressing his lips to mine. His tongue tasted like metallic blood and ashen dirt, but I didn’t care. I cupped his face in my hands and pulled our faces closer, the sounds of the men being loaded into the vans drowning out into the abyss.

Nothing else mattered. Not blood, not dirt, not justice or revenge. Just us.

When we finally pulled away, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the van’s window; the tears that had streamed down my cheeks had left clean streaks in the dirt and grime on my face. I looked like hell, and so did Nathan, but we had made it.

“Come on,” I said, holding out my hand for him. “Let’s go home.”