Chains by Kristine Allen

“Under  Your  Scars”—Godsmack

December…

Without flinching, I pulled the trigger, and the scumbag dropped to the dirty floor of the gas station bathroom. Blood immediately began to pool around his crumpled form. I wanted to empty my clip into his worthless body, but I needed to leave.

“Fuck you,” I muttered over him. If I didn’t care about leaving DNA behind, I would’ve spat on his corpse. Maybe even shit on his crappy ass scorpion patch.

Not a soul saw me walk out of the bathroom, get on my bike, light a cigarette, and pull out of the isolated lot. The attendant had been too busy watching porn on his phone, cameras were non-functioning, and there hadn’t been a car for miles.

If I’d been in a cage, I might’ve run over the asshole’s bike too.

The winter wind whipped at my leather jacket and bit at the exposed skin of my head, but I barely noticed it. There wasn’t much I cared about anymore. The one person I cared about more than anything was broken and wanted nothing to do with me.

After we found out some of the shitbags responsible for kidnapping Trace, Jasmine, and Lynda were still alive, I made it my personal mission to take them all out. It was the least I could do for her.

The two-hour ride home was black and cold—like my heart. When I parked my bike, I could barely feel my fingers.

I went to my room through the back door so I didn’t need to socialize. Then I dropped to my bed and stared at the white ceiling.

There was a knock, and I sighed.

“Yeah?” I said with absolutely no emotion.

The door opened enough for Raptor to stick his head in. “Venom wants to know if there were any issues.”

“Nope.”

“Cool.” He moved to leave, then paused. “Bro, you okay?”

“Peachy.”

If I couldn’t hear his breathing, I might’ve thought he left. Finally, he sighed. “If you need to talk, you know I’m here.”

“Yep.”

“Venom has the prospect taking the ol’ ladies to the mall to go shopping tomorrow morning. He wants one of us to go along. You available?”

“Who all’s going?”

“Loralei, Korrie, Kira, and Jasmine, far as I know,” he replied. At her name, I inwardly flinched.

“Can’t. Sorry.”

He studied me for a moment. When I gave him nothing, he nodded. “No problem. Jigsaw is here, and he said he’d go.”

I grunted, and he left.

Did I want to go? Yeah, because everything in me screamed to protect Jasmine from the world. If only I had demanded she go to the hospital with me on my bike. Maybe if I’d risked more, she wouldn’t have been taken. Except I couldn’t live by “if only.”

Being in close proximity with Jasmine had been torture. Now it was worse. More than I could handle, because I wanted to hold her, and that was dangerous. She didn’t want anything to do with me, and I told myself that was for the best.

“Here you go,” the prospect said as he placed the third beer in front of me. Not in a mood to talk, I gave him a lift of my chin in thanks. Catching on quickly, he moved down the bar to wipe it off and inventory the booze.

“What the fuck has been up your ass?” Angel asked as he took the seat next to me. He signaled the prospect to bring him what I was drinking.

No way could I tell anyone what was going on with me. Especially not him, though I suspected he had an idea. He’d cornered me after the rescue, but I remained tight-lipped.

He had initially brought Jasmine to stay at the clubhouse when we found out she was in danger due to their father’s gambling problem. Their father was dying of cancer, and his bookies told him dying wouldn’t forgive his debt, that they’d take Jasmine as payment. We figured they thought it would be incentive for him to pay the money. Except they underestimated the cold stone he had for a heart.

Hell, for all we know, he offered her up. Fucker. If I could get away with taking his ass out, I would. Because in my opinion he was as responsible as the Bloody Scorpions. If he hadn’t been such a dickwad, Jasmine would’ve been safe at her house and not staying at the clubhouse. Though I knew she’d done her best to protect Angel’s son.

If my brothers thought Angel wanted to kill his father and the fuckers he owed money to, they would be shocked at the train of my thoughts. Torture wouldn’t be nearly enough. I wanted to peel their skin off and rip their hearts out while they were alive to squeeze the last beat from the bloody organ.

“I’m good,” I lied. Seeing it for what it was, he snorted.

Since Jasmine had come to stay at the clubhouse, I’d been crawling out of my skin. After what had happened to her, I’d been in agony. Helpless to do a damn thing, I kept my distance, though my body fought it with every molecule in my makeup.

The need to claim her burned in my veins. No matter how pussy-whipped it made me sound, I knew she was the half I needed to be whole. Without her I was a shell—a broken man. Yet, her brother was one of my best friends. A friend whose secrets I’d seen. Secrets that would probably horrify him if he found out I knew.

Not that I’d tell anyone—they weren’t my stories to tell. I kept everything to myself. I may be a lot of things, but I was a goddamn loyal brother.

When Jasmine had been abducted along with Angel’s son and Lynda, I wanted to kill the people responsible with my bare hands. I’d been robbed of the satisfaction that night. It left me feeling like a junkyard dog at the end of its chain, snapping its teeth in frustration. The things she had endured I could only imagine.

I wasn’t sure which was worse, the things I imagined or what actually happened.

Though he’d never admit it, I think that’s why Venom took pity on me and assigned me to their assassination.

Watching Jasmine decline was fucking killing me. Anger seeped from my pores, mixing with the helplessness I was drowning in. Fury burned within me every fucking minute of every fucking day. It was barely after lunchtime, and I was halfway to drunk because I couldn’t function most of the time. I’d need to sober up by Monday afternoon for work, and that’s all that mattered.

“Angel!” Venom yelled as he hauled ass into the common area and headed to the door. “Jigsaw’s coming in, and we need you! It’s Roscoe. Prospect! Get the gate!”

The prospect was over the bar and out the door before I could blink. Angel immediately left his beer sitting and raced after our president.

My heart stopped. Roscoe and Jigsaw had taken the women shopping. Jasmine had gone along at Korrie’s urging. If Roscoe was hurt, how were the women?

Jerking on a pair of thin leather gloves, I scrambled off my seat and ran after them. I burst outside with my brothers. The prospect was rolling the gate open. Jigsaw came flying in and screeched to a halt.

“Sorry about the mess, bossman,” Jigsaw said to Venom with a smirk, and I swear to fuck my jaw almost hit the ground. Loralei had bailed out of the back seat and into Venom’s arms. Blood was splattered on the leg of her jeans. Stunned silence briefly ensued before Venom demanded to know who the fuck was in the back seat with Loralei. Whoever the guy was, he was fucking eviscerated—I’m talking guts lying on the floor of the SUV.

Jigsaw was nuts. Certifiably insane, if a man’s innards splattered all over the floor was “a mess.”

The rest of what he said was mere background noise as I ripped the door open and carefully lifted Jasmine out of the front seat. I brought her to the front of the vehicle, set her on her feet, and cradled her pale face in my gloved hands.

“Jazz, look at me.” My words were spoken softly and as calmly as I could manage. She didn’t respond well to chaos and yelling. Hell, she didn’t respond well to anything anymore, and it was shredding my soul.

Reluctantly, her haunted amber eyes rose to lock with mine. The lighter gold furrow around her pupil had almost disappeared, while the brown ring around the outside seemed near black. The fiery burst of striations seemed to glow as tears filled them.

“Oh, baby,” I whispered before I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her cheek to my chest. Her body shuddered as her hands desperately clutched the side of my shirt under my cut.

For the last three years, Jasmine and I had foolishly danced around each other, both of us denying the fact that we felt like half our soul was missing. I’d tried to drown the pain in booze, drugs, work, and women, but it didn’t work. It stopped doing jack shit for me and left me a vacant husk of myself.

Every time Angel had bitched about some asshole she was dating, I wanted to go berserk and destroy anything in my path. The thought of another man’s hands on what was mine made me insanely violent and full of rage. Yet, I couldn’t have her.

With Jasmine living under the same roof as me, I tried my best to avoid her. But I was a moth, and she was the flame. Yet, my sad truth was that I’d willingly burn for her if she’d let me.

“I’m so tired of being scared, Nico,” she said with a sad tremor to her melodic voice. “I can barely function. I want my life back.” She cried into my chest. Not having a good response, my eyes fell shut as I held her in silence.

When I opened them, I found Venom’s gaze locked on me. Shit.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Angel was staring at me with the muscle in his jaw jumping.

Fucking hell.

I carefully got Jasmine situated with the women when Venom called for all hands on deck with Roscoe.

Roscoe “woke up” a few hours later, but he refused to tell anyone exactly how he’d healed himself or what his story was. Voodoo hadn’t gotten anything from throwing his bones, and I wasn’t touching the guy again. Whatever the fuck he was, had some serious energy. So much so that it damn near blinded me to see it. That was more than some guy with a gift.

When I left the infirmary, I sensed Angel right as he spun me around and pinned me to the wall.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Stay the fuck away from my sister,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

Tired of everything, I shoved him off. I had a good couple inches and maybe fifty pounds on him. Didn’t mean I wanted to fight him, but I was tired of him calling all the shots.

“Fuck off. I was only getting her out of the SUV that had a dead guy right behind her. No one else had made a move to get her out and make sure she was okay. Maybe you should be grateful that I was looking out for your sister,” I snarled before walking away.

I went straight to my room and fell facedown on the bed with a groan. It didn’t matter how many times I experienced my “gift,” it always shook me and gave me a headache. This time it had made my head pound like it was going to explode. The run-in with Angel hadn’t helped.

My mind wandered, and I must’ve dozed off, because I was dreaming of my mother. I was a little boy, and we were sitting by a fire in the woods as she chanted and sang. The language was a mystery to me, but it spoke to my soul. Guttural and yet melodic, she sang a song that I didn’t understand, yet I was mesmerized.

“Nico,” she said once she’d finished.

“Yes, Momma?” I asked.

Her soft hand caressed my cheek. “When you get older, there will be things you don’t understand. Things will happen that might scare you, but you must remember what you have is a gift. Your father had this gift, and it has been passed down to you.”

“Where is my father?” I asked her.

Pained, her gaze held mine. “He is with Tengri in the Eternal Blue Heaven,” she said with a sad smile.

My mother was half Mongolian, and she had taught me some of her beliefs, so I knew Tengri was the god of the sky. She fingered the howling wolf-shaped stone around her neck, then she raised it to her lips and pressed a reverent kiss to the obsidian stone. Slowly, she lifted it from around her neck and draped it around mine.

The chain was long, and the pendant hit down to my belly. The metal was warm against my skin, and I lifted the stone to look at the intricately carved wolf. When my mother spoke, I lifted my gaze to hers.

“I have to make one of the hardest decisions of my life, but if it means you live, I would do it a hundred times over. I love you so much, Nico. You are my heart.” A fat tear escaped her eye and trailed down her cheek.

“Momma? Don’t cry. I’m going to grow up big and strong. I’ll protect you, and you’ll never have to make choices that make you sad,” I bravely stated. My words brought out a laugh carried on a choked sob. She glanced over her shoulder, and I peeked around her to see what she was looking at.

In the dark shadows outside of the light of the fire, glowing spots dotted the darkness. A frown wrinkled my brow. “It’s time.” A growling voice echoed from the inky night. My heart started to race, but I tried to seem brave as I stood.

“Go away!” I yelled. My mother gripped my arm as a growl rose from the shadows followed by a snapping sound.

“Nico!” she whispered in admonishment, and I didn’t like the fear in her eyes.

She stood, and I followed, but she placed a hand on my shoulder. “Stay near the safety of the fire. When morning comes, take your backpack and walk toward the sun. Don’t forget your bag, and don’t stop until you reach the town.”

Confusion marred my brow. “But I want to stay with you,” I argued.

Her bottom lip trembled, and the corners of her mouth turned down. “I know,” she said with a sigh. “Wait here. Promise me. Until the sun rises.”

“But—” I started.

“Promise me, Nico!” she interrupted. The urgency of her tone made me want to please her, so I nodded. Relief softened her face, and she pressed a kiss to my brow.

“You can’t help you weren’t born a wolf but like your father. It was my choice to disobey the laws of my people. If I have to do this to keep you alive, I will do it. I love you to the moon and back. When you hear the wolf’s lonely cry at night, know that I’m watching over you,” she said before she wrapped me in a tight embrace. Then she reluctantly dropped her arms and turned away.

As she stepped into the shadows, I thought I saw her shed her dress, but as soon as I blinked, she was gone—swallowed up by the shadows.

“Momma?” I called as I made a full circle, searching the dark night for where she went. “Momma!” I shouted until I was hoarse and my tears had dried on my face. Then I curled up on the sleeping bag my mother had laid out when I thought we were having an adventure.

As I drifted off to sleep, a wolf howled. Instead of being frightened, peace settled within me, and I slept.

With a jolt, I awoke. Still wanting to shout for my mother twenty years later, I bit my tongue and sat up. Hand shaking, I speared it through the longer dark hair on the top of my head. Then I rasped over the shorn sides several times to shake off the dream that was really a memory.

When I joined the army and became special forces, I used the technology at my disposal to look up my mother. I knew she’d been half Mongolian, because she’d told me, but I hadn’t known she traced back to Genghis Khan. I’d never seen my mother again, and there was no record of her death. She’d simply dropped off the face of the earth that night.

Often over the years, I would think I saw a wolf hidden in the trees or at the edge of the park. Always, before I could search for it, the thing would be gone when I blinked.

I would dream of the wolf with a notch in its ear. At first, I was afraid. I’d been placed in foster care in a small town outside of Des Moines, Iowa, and there were wooded areas everywhere. I’d told my first foster mother about the wolf, and she’d laughed at me, telling me there were no wolves in Iowa.

When I’d gotten older, I had researched. There were wolves in Minnesota and people had claimed to have spotted them on rare occasion in Iowa. One had been shot in Northwestern Iowa, or so people believed. Nothing definitive though, because I couldn’t find anything that said the wolf’s body was found afterward.

It was another thing I’d never gotten an answer to—along with how I could see people’s memories if I touched them. Occasionally, I was able to get readings from objects as well, but those visions were usually muted and not as mind-blowing as they were when I touched a human.

Never in a million years had I imagined finding a woman that was my soulmate.

Yet, because of my “gift” I was damned—never able to have her.

Never good enough for her.