Strays

Mayhem

Chapter Sixteen

Juice

 After dinner, I'm escorted into Tully's and my private cell, but my head's still spinning from the conversation with Jax earlier. His voice, his warning, his promise — it all echoes like a low hum in my skull.

Tully leans back on the bunk, eyes locked on me. Those almost-black irises pin me down harder than any shiv could. He's silent at first, just studying. Then, finally, his voice cuts through the silence like a blade.

"How was the talk with Teller?"

I shift on my feet, pulse thundering in my ears. "...I think you know." My throat's dry. My voice betrays me. "You here to kill me?"

For a long, brutal beat, he doesn't answer. He just stares. Then, flat and low, he asks,

"You ready to die, Juicy?"

The way he says it makes my skin crawl and burn all at once. This isn't the Tully I've been meeting with these last few weeks — the one who's reassured me, protected me, claimed me. No, this is AB shot-caller Tully. The wolf. Nothing soft, nothing safe. There's steel in his voice, fire in his veins. And yet... it isn't rage I see in his eyes. It's something deeper. Something worse.

My chest tightens. I close my eyes for half a second and brace myself. If this is it, let it be quick. I don't want to see it coming — not from the man holding the leash around my neck.

Not from the man Jaycee calls hers.

Not from the man I just found out knows I put a baby in her.

My baby.

The words still don't feel real.

Only I would screw this up like this — lose myself with the one woman I shouldn't have touched, in the one moment I should've thought clearer. And yet, part of me wonders if I wanted this from the start. To feel her skin on mine. To keep a piece of her forever.

Tully's voice cuts into the spiral, low and sharp.

"I asked you a question. Are you ready to die?"

I force my face blank, swallowing the panic clawing up my throat. "...I know the deal."

I try to sound indifferent. I fail.

He circles me slowly, deliberate, predator-silent. My chest rises and falls like I just ran a mile, and when he stops inches behind me, I feel his breath ghost the back of my neck. Every nerve in my body lights up, screaming move — but my feet stay planted.

Then his voice drops to a whisper, dangerous and intimate.

"Jax wants me to kill you for betraying him..." He pauses, letting the words sink like hooks into my spine. "...but there's something he didn't factor in when he asked me to do you."

The hair on my arms rises. My voice comes out strained, shaky despite my best efforts. "W-What's that?"

Suddenly his hands are on me — rough palms sliding up my back, gripping my shoulder hard enough to anchor me in place. In one sharp movement, he spins me around. I'm chest-to-chest with him now, trapped between Tully and the cold cement wall.

And then his hands come up to my face, cupping it like I belong to him.

His voice is a rasp against my lips.

"I don't want to."

And before I can even breathe, his mouth crashes against mine.

Push him away.

That's what every survival instinct in me screams, but I don't.

I do the opposite.

I pull him in.