The Alpha's Rogue ✔️

48 | Chemical Imbalance

^ Zion's memory of Leila, his first mate 🥰

4353 words

"He's losing a lot of blood!"

"Keep pressing this to his stomach."

"Where is Tas? He was meant to bring the car around."

"We're running out of time! We need to get him to a hospital, stat!"

"Not a hospital. We need to find the Captain."

"Then let's do that. Sure. The Captain is the easiest person to find on the planet."

"We don't need your snark now, Chay! Just get in the car and drive."

"Did you just hot-wire this?"

"Do you see anybody else who coulda dunnit?"

The onslaught of voices was painful to his ears. The words were rushed, garbled, tangling over each other like many octopus in a small fish tank.

Why did the car smell like fishy octopus? Why couldn't it smell like chips and calamari rings?

At the thought of hot chips his stomach growled, suddenly demanding food. He felt famished, a hollow feeling enveloping his gut and climbing up his esophagus.

"He's about to vomit!"

"Then give him a bag!"

"You're assuming there's one magically in the backseat of this rusted piece of junk metal?"

"So sorry I couldn't find a Rolls-Royce for his royal highness! Just use your shirt to catch it. I don't care."

His throat felt like it was burning; his mouth on fire. Something was shoved over his face, and he couldn't breathe. Why was Niko trying to suffocate him?

"Not like that, you dufus--you're smothering him!"

Rough hands grabbed at his face, his chest, his stomach--each tough feeling like sharp spikes against his skin. Every bump of the road and jostle of the car beneath him was torture. He'd never been in so much pain. He was supposed to be invulnerable, impervious, practically bulletproof... So why was he hurting so bad?

He was drowning. His body was on fire while his insides melted within, filling his lungs and choking the bronchioles of oxygen.

"Come on, brother, stay with us!" Chayton's voice cut through the fog in his mind.

"Hey, I got a hit!" Niko's voice was loud and excited, like a pup on his birthday. "Looks like the Captain was last seen in Fairfax, at a small convenience store. Traffic cameras have him heading to what appears to be an industrial estate. Take a left up here and head north on M1."

He could have told them that. All they had to do was ask. Only he and a few others knew where his father lived off the grid, secretly supporting himself and his comrades through aliases and a lucrative spare parts business.

It would be good to see his father again. Maybe he could help him find Leila.

No, wait...

Leila was dead, wasn't she? Shot through the chest while she was in his arms as they swam together in their favourite swimming hole. Her blood was warm against his own skin, caressing him now like a phantom of horror. The face of that monster, Alpha Bastien, still grinned at him from through the trees, inviting him to come and make his move.

He had, now all he needed to do was make the same move on the mastermind behind Leila's brutal murder--Lucifer.

He had the ruby, he just needed to use it to draw the devil out.