Page 113 of Tempest’s Torment

Then I hear her. "Kai!"

Everything inside me fucking stops at her voice carrying through the house.

I'm moving before I even start breathing again, but once again, Ghost catches the back of my cut and yanks me to a stop.

"Let me fucking go."

"Listen."

"Kai! Don’t come in!" I freeze. "Kai, it’s a trap!" Her voice cracks and something crashes inside the house.

“KAI!”

"Lilah!" I surge forward but Ghost holds on.

"Tempest!" he grunts, holding me still.

I try to shrug him off but it’s no use. "She's fucking screaming for me!"

"She's warning you!"

That gets through, and I stop fighting him. My chest is heaving as I stare at the front door. She's not screaming for help; she's telling me to stay out. After everything that fucker has done to her, she's in there worried about me. Of course she fucking is. My Lilah.

Another crash comes from inside.

That's it, I'm done. I look at Ghost, whatever he was going to say disappears as I pull out my gun. "Front or back?"

"Front."

I nod.

Ghost looks at Rogue, then Savage, and back to me. "Let's get your girl."

And we move.

The front door gives on the second hit and I'm through it before it finishes swinging, heading toward the room where I heard Lilah scream.

I find her in the main room, and everything inside me comes to a fucking stop. She's tied to a chair with her wrists pulled behind her and rope around her ankles. Evan Calloway is standing behind her with a gun beside her head, but for the first few seconds, all I can see is what he's done to her.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Her lip is split, one side of her face is swollen, and bruising is spreading beneath her eye and across her cheek. There's dried blood at her temple, more around her mouth, her hair is tangled around her face, and the skin above the ropes around her wrists is red and fucking raw.

I can't breathe properly. I've spent the last two hours telling myself she's alive, holding onto that because if I let myself think about anything else, I wouldn't have been able to function. I just had to find her alive, get to her, and bring her home, but I never let myself focus on what Evan might be doing to her while I was trying to find her.

Now I don't have a choice, because every fucking mark is right there in front of me.

I left her this morning smiling across the table at me, kissed her before I walked out of the apartment, and told her I'd be gone an hour, and now she's tied to a fucking chair, battered and bleeding, because that bastard got to her while I wasn't there.

My eyes burn and I blink hard, forcing everything back because I can't lose it, not while she's still sitting there with a gun beside her head.

Lilah looks at me. "I'm okay."

Fuck me. Of course that's what she says. She's been kidnapped, tied up, and beaten, and somehow, she's sitting there trying to reassure me.

"Baby," I manage, swallowing around the fucking lump in my throat. "You're really fucking not."

The corner of her split lip lifts slightly, and it nearly breaks whatever control I've managed to hold onto, because she's still in there, my Lilah, looking at me like she's trying to convince both of us that everything is going to be okay now that I'm here.