Heart of a Rocky (18 page)

TYSON HAD LEFT
more
than three days ago. Since his absence, things slid back into a normal rhythm. Their daughter slept through the night for the most part, which was a blessing. Additionally, her sister Melody seemed to come out of her trance and was more engaged than she had ever been.

But Harmony wasn’t happy. She could tell in the depth of her soul that a life without Tyson was going to be miserable. Every single day, the distance bothered her; she could feel it vibrating in her. She needed him and that knowledge chafed like nothing else.

Like all the other days, she spent them pretty much wrapped around Raina’s little finger. Her daughter wanted for nothing, despite Harmony wanting for everything. At least everything that had to do with Tyson, but she let go of the Soul’s Mate that she couldn’t have.

She jolted from the sofa that she sat on when the doors to the study slammed open and two males stalked into the room. She tried to hide her anxiety and the weapon she drew automatically as she met the males’ hard gazes.

“Can I help you?”

The younger of the two males, the one she seen before, stepped forward. “My name is Trent. I have to ask you some questions about the last time that I was here.”

“Okay.”

“The last time that I was here, did anyone give you a package?”

She hesitated, but she could see on the boy’s face that he knew.

“She’s terrified. I bet it was him.”

She glanced between the two men, trying to decipher what they were talking about.

“I’m going to show you a picture. Can you tell me if you recognize the man in it?”

“I’ll try.”

She flinched when he pulled the picture from a folder. The man in the picture stared at her, his gaze intense. She could almost feel his eyes devour her, like all those times that he stood over her, commanding her, demanding of her, belittling her, making her wish she was dead.

“Fuck. I knew it. The little shit wants to take over the Hafiz Nation, doesn’t he?”

Harmony stilled and stared at the new man that spoke. The idea that her master would try to take over the Hafiz Nation turned her stomach. If he succeeded, he would have them all at his beck and call. Every single Omega Hafiz would be vulnerable, and with Tyson’s new organization, he wouldn’t have to work that hard to find them.

“What exactly do you mean?”

“Sorry, my name is Luke. I am Guardian to the Shiriki. Stacy is the one that Challenged Tyson. If he wins, he gets all of you and quite possibly a way to continue his business. Too bad he’s a Rocky. Now that we know, even if he does win the Challenge, he won’t live long enough to enjoy it.”

“Does Tyson know?”

“No,” Trent said. “I’ve been in one battle after another since I left here. This is the first time that I’ve had the chance to come by here. We needed verification before we went to Tyson. Now that we know, we’ll be on our way there.”

“Do you know where he is right now?”

“He should be on his way to the Challenge area in Alabama.”

“I need to go with you.”

Even as she said it, her voice trembled. The thought of seeing Stacy, her master, did something to her soul, but she needed to make it clear, perfectly clear, that Tyson needed to win this challenge. Even if the Rockys did uphold their credo and kill Stacy soon after he took over the Hafiz, soon wasn’t soon enough.

“Why do you need to go?” Luke asked.

“I have something to tell Tyson. It’s not a telephone conversation.”

“We can keep you safe. The only problem is, Tyson may not be in the best of moods. He’s had a lot of bullshit to deal with lately. If you wanted us to take him a message, we can do that.”

“I can handle his mood. Remember, I have a baby by a man that hates kids.”

“Fair enough. Do you think you can be ready in the next fifteen minutes?” Trent asked.

“Yeah. Let me go get Raina ready, and I’ll be ready to go.”

She could tell the males wanted to argue with the fact that she was taking her baby, but she wasn’t going to leave her daughter unguarded. She was comfortable with the idea of Tiana watching Raina while she took a shower, but the idea of leaving her daughter behind while she went out of town made her bones ache with anxiety.

* * *

Bile and unbearable memories rose as they drove into the wooded area where the Challenge was being held. A brief wave of fear careened through her.

What if they were like Stacy?

Luke glanced at her in the rearview mirror, his gaze intense.

“You’re safe with us, Harmony. I would rather be put out of my misery like a ball-less mutt than have the legacy that Stacy has. Nothing about what he has done to every Lycan species appeals to me or Trent. Besides, if we let anything happen to your daughter, Tyson will skin us alive.”

Trent snorted. “He’ll skin you.”

“Right, me. Mikko Wayne would have his ass in a sling if he so much as looked at you cross-eyed.”

Something about Luke’s reply set Trent on edge, his shoulders tensed, and he drew his mouth into a tight line.

“Relax, kid. We know you can handle your own. Learn to laugh at yourself more or all you will ever know is death and destruction, without joy. Laughter is the easiest joy you can share with another person.”

Though Trent relaxed a little, he didn’t seem the type of person to ever learn to laugh at much of anything, especially himself. Whoever eventually won his heart would have to be made of stone or a saint.

Luke parked near a blacked out Jeep. The hard angles reminded her of Tyson so much she assumed it was his, so when he stepped around the rear with his weapon drawn but angled down, she wasn’t too surprised.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” he asked before they could even step fully out of the car.

Just her luck, Raina started crying before she could respond.

In three quick steps, Tyson holstered his gun and invaded her space with a menacing glare into the car seat.

“You brought my fucking daughter away from Tiana’s?”

“We need to talk-”

He pulled out his phone and pressed a few buttons. Her phone started ringing before abruptly cutting off.

“I gave you a damn phone for a reason. You need me, call me. Surely, even you can follow those directions.”

She shoved him back away from her. “What I needed to talk about wasn’t a phone conversation. I came with your fellow Rockys. Don’t you trust them more than anyone else?”

“Trent isn’t a Rocky yet. As for trusting them, with my life, yes. With Riana’s or yours? No. I trust few people with your safety, and even then it is with a strict understanding that I will dismember every one of their family members if harm comes to either of you because of their negligence.”

She paused and held his fiery gaze. He was dead fucking serious. He’d dismember people. For her and a kid he didn’t want.

What the hell would he do for the woman he loved?

* * *

Tyson turned his attention to Luke. The way he scrutinize the man would’ve made a lesser man shrink or search for cover, but Luke only shrugged and made his way to the rear of the SUV where Trent stood looking bored and unassuming.

“Walk with me, Harmony. Tell me what you need to say and leave.”

Her presence was more of an annoyance than a cause for worry. He needed his head in the game in order to deal with another Rocky. Stacy was not the fighter he was, but he wasn’t going to let his guard down until Stacy took his last gurgled breath.

He stopped near a small altar that he’d erected to say his evening prayers. He’d given up praying for himself long ago. Now his prayers were for the well-being of his people and the health and safety of Raina and Harmony.

“You can’t die.”

He narrowed his eyes at Harmony’s somewhat panicked tone.

“Concerned over my health?”

“If that’s what it takes for you to live, then yes. You can’t die. I can’t—”

She halted her words and flicked her gaze around the forest as if trying to find some hidden target.

“You didn’t come all the way here to tell me not to lose, Harmony. What would make you get in a car with two relatively unknown Lycans, putting my daughter and yourself in danger?”

“Stacy is my master.”

His brain seized. There was no way that she said what he thought she just said. Stacy, while a general annoyance, never came off as a threat to the general populace of omega Lycans. Then again, he was a shifty bastard. When Harmony repeated herself, the message he’d been trying to deny took root. Every muscle in his body went still. He tried to keep the rage building in the pit of his soul from boiling over, but he couldn’t. His rage became audible as it careened from his lips in a growl of anger that shook the branches of the nearby trees.

Harmony flinched from the sound, forcing him to pull her into his grasp. He needed an anchor because her confession was not helping him focus on anything beyond anger and decimating the sack of shit that abused the Rocky oath in a way that could very well ruin the foundation the Order was built on. He held her for a few silent moments, trying to find a sense of calm before he planted a kiss to the top of her head and released her.

The residual anger made his voice shaky, but he managed to string together a command.

“Take Raina and go back to Tiana’s. I’ll be by later on tonight.”

“I can’t. I have to be here. I have to know when it’s over, that he’s… dead. I have to know.”

He needed her to leave so that he could focus past the anger. He could tell that a singular glimpse in her direction would only stoke the fires of his rage, and that was a distraction that he didn’t need. Right now, he had one task to accomplish, one singular focus that he could not afford to have his attention diverted away from. Stacy needed to become the center of his universe, because at the moment he was fixated on one goal and one goal only—ripping Stacy to fucking pieces.

“Harmony, even if I die, Stacy won’t live long enough to hurt you. Mikko Wayne won’t let him live for what he’s done. I don’t know how he kept it all a secret, but he won’t live beyond today.”

“Do you trust Mikko Wayne with my safety?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I trust Mikko Wayne with your safety because in order to let Stacy continue with what he’s doing, Mikko would have to be willing to sacrifice Trent. No one would be able to know what Stacy is capable of; otherwise, the word of a Rocky means nothing. If there is anything that I am sure of, it is that Mikko would not sacrifice Trent to keep Stacy.”

HARMONY STOOD
well out
of Tyson’s sight. That was the only way she’d convinced him to let her stay. Raina remained in the car, having fallen back to sleep after her afternoon feeding.

She shifted her stance again when Lykil suddenly appeared next to her. The god nodded in her direction, but said nothing. She frowned at him because the usual laid back attitude he had seemed replaced by an odd melancholy.

“Something wrong, Lykil?”

“No. Just trying to avoid killing someone.”

“Someone who?”

He shrugged. “No one here.”

She relaxed a bit and turned her attention back to the open field where Tyson stood impatiently waiting with Ulryk. She had to squint to see across the field when two men rounded a particularly thick group of trees.

“Don’t do anything, Harmony.”

“Huh?” she asked, struggling to process the face of the man who stood next to Stacy.

“Ignore it.”

“That’s my…”

The words she needed disappeared as her brother looked directly at her and smiled.

Harmony imagined a lot of ways to reunite with her brother, but seeing him standing in Stacy’s shadow wasn’t one of them. She’d prayed for his safety long after she stopped praying for her own, and yet he stood with the man who caused their family irreparable harm.

“Stay, Harmony,” Lykil said.

“I can’t.”

“If you leave this place, you risk Tyson losing focus and getting killed. Are you willing to wish death on your Soul’s Mate for something that can wait?”

Her muscles hurt from the tension she forced on them to remain still. Her struggle with her desire for answers over her desire for Tyson’s life was brief, but she swore by all the gods that her brother would answer for what he’d done to her and her sisters.

“I understand what the betrayal of a sibling is like. He will answer to you before he leaves this earth.”

While Lykil’s tone was relaxed, she could sense a wave of animosity coming off of him. Everyone knew the ugly history between Destruction, War, and Love, the woman who came between the brothers. She didn’t know how he managed to tolerate their continued existence, but she knew that her brother wouldn’t continue to draw breath; not when he was the reason she’d had to send two sisters to Gardas.

Destruction snorted. “If there had been a way to kill them both, I would have. Instead, I turned into an ass for untold millennia, taking my vengeance out on mortals and the domain of War and Love.” He sighed and turned back to the car where Trent and Luke waited with Raina. “She’s crying. Can I hold her?”

“Sure.”

Regardless of his domain, Lykil was amazing with kids. After seeing him let his goddaughter and godson climb over him and torture him as if he were nothing more than a visiting uncle, she knew Raina couldn’t be in safer hands.

Her attention went back to the field just as Tyson charged across the field, clashing with Stacy in the middle.

* * *

Tyson was aware that in training, they were well-matched opponents. It appeared that Stacy failed to realize that his complacency as Asim didn’t translate to him being a sloppy fighter. Since the rules of their Challenge determined that they were only allowed to use their claws and blades, Stacy charged at him with his claws already out. Tyson chose his daggers, pulling them just before Stacy slashed his claws across his chest. Blood welled from the wounds. They would close slower than any knife wounds he received because injuries received from a Lycan typically healed slower.

Disregarding the injury, Tyson grabbed Stacy by the arms, pulling him down and kneeing him in the solar plexus. Stacy yanked his arms upward to break the hold, forgetting the direction in which Tyson held his daggers. Tyson smirked when the blades sliced through the tendons at Stacy’s elbows rendering his arms temporarily useless. He brought his elbow around and caught Stacy in the side of the face, cracking his jawbone and propelling him to the ground.

He stepped back, giving himself some distance while Stacy struggled to his feet.

“How was my sloppy seconds,
Asim?
” he asked with a sneer before spitting out blood and a broken tooth. “Her sister was better. Not half the fighter Harmony is though.”

Tyson tried to block out the images of the photos that assaulted him as he made his way across the field, but Stacy’s smug face kept distracting him to all the violent ways he wanted to just strap this fucker down and cut him like sushi-grade tuna.

He slowly exhaled, but didn’t respond. Words were the cheap distraction that weak fighters used when they were trying to stall from getting their asses kicked. Instead, he sheathed his daggers and shifted to his claws, ready to carve Stacy like a slaughtered hog. The disgraced Rocky would answer for every Lycan he took from their homes and every Lycan that Tyson had found in some hovel across the country as he tried to organize the Hafiz Nation. He had more than two thousand cuts to administer. Better get started.

Stacy stepped back in ready stance as Tyson approached, diving over him at the last minute, but Tyson caught the exposed tendon at the back of Stacy’s knee and severed it. Tyson felt a small wave of satisfaction when Stacy released a pained howl as he landed ungracefully on his other leg.

Tyson tackled the disgraced Rocky to the ground, biting back a growl of pain when Stacy impaled his claws into his sides. He head-butted Stacy and reached back to yank the Rocky’s hands free from his torso.

His vision blurred a bit when Stacy’s claws exited his torso, but he didn’t let Stacy’s incessant squirming distract him. Since he outweighed the male by fifty pounds—mainly because Stacy chose to work on guns and stick to his trimmer size—Tyson used the advantage to pin Stacy’s wrists with one hand while his other worked on severing more tendons.

Stacy fought—at least he tried and failed miserably. The hatred in his eyes was quickly clouded by the fear. The disgraced Rocky wouldn’t beg for mercy, but Tyson knew that going forward, Stacy would understand real fear. He thought himself a monster, the villain in this story, but he hadn’t met Tyson’s worst.

The wounds that lined Harmony’s tortured body came to mind. He remembered each cut and the silent promise he’d made when he saw them.

He straddled Stacy and made the cuts to his torso as deep as he could without dismembering him. He was patient with his craft, treating it like artwork, and his tools were nothing more than his blood-covered claws. Each cut mirrored those on Harmony, marking Stacy in the unforgivable way that the monster had marked each and every Lycan he made a part of his disgraceful games.

Tyson kept count of the cuts he gave Stacy, while tracking the Rockys sluggish struggles to free himself.

In the background, he heard someone yelling, but he ignored it, focusing on the final slash across Stacy’s throat.

He didn’t move until the Rocky drew his last breath and even then he rose cautiously from the body.

“Overkill much?” Ulryk asked.

Tyson shrugged. “I found more than two thousand Lycans across the country locked in cages or being fought as I reorganized the Hafiz. There is a cut for every single one of them.”

“And the others?”

“I repaid him in kind for the scars that Harmony has.”

The God of Kings and Queens nodded and turned his attention to another male who’d been standing at Stacy’s side before the Challenge began.

“I hear you were looking for Harmony’s brother.”

Tyson took a step towards the male when shots were fired.

Harmony’s brother jerked violently as an entire magazine was emptied into his body. He’d tried to shift, but the quick succession of bullets kept him from completing the change. Harmony walked forward, reloading the clip as she made her way to her slowly healing brother before she stood over him and emptied the second clip into his head.

Devastation. That was all Tyson had to describe the scene in front of him. Harmony’s brother’s head was nothing more than a ruined mess of brain fragments and blood. Harmony, despite the obvious rage she’d felt when she pulled the trigger, knelt in the gory remains of her brother’s body screaming to the heavens. Her hands shook as she reached around and tried to put the pieces back together—tried to fix the destruction she’d caused. When that failed she started to rock and mumble.

He went to her, pulling her into his embrace. “Come on, Harm. We need to go.”

She stopped ranting long enough to drop her head. “He died too fast. I wanted him to suffer, but I couldn’t make myself savor it. I…” She shook her head. “It didn’t last long enough.”

“He has ten thousand lifetimes to suffer, Harm. Let’s go.”

He hauled her to her feet and ushered her towards the vehicles.

“Why is Lykil holding Raina?”

She blinked and frowned in the direction of the god. “He asked.”

Tyson growled and gestured to her to get their daughter. “Destruction isn’t my idea of a babysitter. Go get her. I have to speak to Ulryk.”

Ulryk met him and raised his hand. “He did not go into Gardas as an honored Rocky. Nivar met him on Trobis to strip his honors from him. You can go ahead and leave. You have a mate to claim.”

He frowned. “She isn’t my mate.”

The god laughed. “Okay. Just remember what I said about what she means to the state of the Hafiz Nation and your survival. None of that has changed.”

“Another threat?”

“The greatest one. You, the villain who needs a heroine.”

Tyson glanced back at the car and the woman who was supposed to save him and shook his head. If carving herself into his soul was supposed to save him from himself, she was the last thing he needed.