The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #1)(84)

Nyx looked up to the dais and lost her footing. Jack was chained to the center post, and there was something wrong with him. His body was trembling violently, his head jerking around on his shoulders, the chains keeping him in place chattering because of all the movement— that certainly seemed to be involuntary.

But he managed to focus on her. Even through his palsied condition, his eyes, those blue eyes, locked on her—and as she was brought closer, his shaking eased some. He couldn’t seem to talk, though, his lips moving and nothing coming out. Was he sick?

No, he was drugged, she decided.

The guards dragged her up onto the dais and stood her in front of him. Off to the side, Apex was down on the ground and not moving. When there was a rustling from the shadows behind the dais wall, Nyx expected her sister to walk out—no, not her sister.

The Command.

Instead, another set of guards emerged, and they were dragging a prisoner by the male’s arms, the torso and body lagging behind. They dropped the body like it was trash next to Apex, and Kane slowly flopped over onto his back.

Nyx gasped. His face was so bloody and swollen, she almost couldn’t recognize him, and as he breathed through his mouth, all that came out was wheezing.

She glanced back at Jack just as one more was brought in. Mayhem was fighting against the guards who had him tied in rough rope, big body jerking and twisting, white hair ripping around as he snarled and cursed. All that fight stopped as he got a look at the empty Hive. He was so stunned that as he was chained to the post on the right, he didn’t resist.

Then again, he was done for and he must have known that.

They were all done for.

The guards stepped back from them, forming a line on the left, and as Nyx’s biceps were abruptly released, her balance went wonky and she had to catch herself from falling over. She steadied her balance by focusing on Jack. She wanted to ask him what they should do, how they could beat this, but she knew the impulse was the immature part of her talking, the little girl inside the grown female who was desperately looking for someone she trusted and loved to tell her it was all going to be okay: She wanted the plan that would magically free Jack and Mayhem, that would bring Apex back to life and save Kane from his injuries, that would make her sister not dead and the Command someone else . . . that would see Nyx, herself, safely back to the farmhouse, this whole nightmare never having happened.

The yearning for that fantasy was as strong as her love for the quaking male who was chained before her, stronger even than her mortal fear about the death that was surely coming.

“I wanted to see you two together.”

Nyx jerked around. Down on the floor of the Hive, standing in the center of the vast, empty cave, was the black-robed figure that had briefly removed her hood and looked, catastrophically, like Nyx’s long-lost sister.

The Command came forward, those billowing folds of black fabric ominous, like funeral draping about to fall on a casket. She stopped when she was five feet away from the dais, the hooding angling back as she looked up.

“Bring the basket.”

Nyx looked at Jack. The trembling was subsiding in him, the unhealthy flushing in his chest and throat and face fading—to reveal a palm print on his cheek as if he’d been slapped.

“No,” he mumbled. “Not her—”

“You gave up any chance to have an opinion about anything when you let her take your vein.” The Command shook her head. “And your reward for being a faithless fuck is that she gets to watch everything. Then I’m going to teach her about death—”

“No!” he yelled as he strained against the chains.

“Fuck you!” the Command hollered back. “You had everything here! I took care of you—you were treated with more goddamn deference than anybody except me. And you fucked it all up—you fucked yourself when you fucked her!”

The Command grabbed the folds of her robe and marched up onto the stage. “I fucking hate you!”

Nyx started to respond, but the Command went by her like she didn’t exist, getting up into Jack’s face, punching at his chest. “You fucking asshole!”

“I was never yours,” Jack said on a growl.

The Command ripped off her hood, that red hair glowing under the harsh lighting. “You were left to your own devices here, you were taken care of, you had everything—”

“I had nothing—”

“You had me!”

“I. Didn’t. Want. You! ” Jack screamed the last word, the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulging. “You drugged me and strapped me down and took what I didn’t want to give you. I didn’t fucking want you!”

The Command seemed stunned. “You lie.”

“When was the last time I got on that bed willingly? It’s been decades,” he spat.

Nyx felt the world spin on its axis again. As her brain jammed with the implications of it all, the Command, trembling with rage, hauled back with her open palm—

Nyx moved before she had a conscious thought to take action. Surging forward, she took her cuffed hands and raised them high, jacking them over the Command’s head and yanking back, catching the chain between the shackles right across the front of that throat.

Blind rage gave Nyx a strength she had never had before, and she dragged the Command up against her own body, taking control, owning the situation as she wheeled around and faced the guards.