Reckless Regrets
Chapter 63

Kade

The flames were slowly making their way across the hardwood floor, and the smoke in the air was getting thicker and thicker. My lungs, nose, and eyes were all burning, and each breath was a struggle, but my wolf Elias was not going to let Thorne out of this room alive.

I’d caught him by surprise in my initial attack and slashed a deep gouge across his chest. Couple that with the air conditions in the room, and it was no wonder that Thorne was having such a tough time breathing. We were maybe ten seconds into the fight, and already he was on his hands and knees, panting like a sick dog. It was pathetic.

Let me take over, Eli. I doubt this guy will last even a few minutes with you. I’ve got this.

I shifted back to my human form in record time then approached Thorne’s wheezing body.

“You were breathing just fine when I walked in, sitting in the corner watching your own daughter suffer and never once coughed. So what’s the problem now, old man?”

“It’s a little hard to do with a hole in your chest; you’ll have to forgive me.”

“Oh, f**k your forgiveness. Usually, I’d feel bad about this, but not this time.”

I grabbed the back of his head and pulled it forward while I drove my knee up and into the center of his face. I don’t know which was more satisfying, the crunch of broken bone or the scream that escaped Thorne’s lips at impact. Through horribly garbled speech and a mouthful of b***d and lose teeth, Thorne was able to string together a few coherent sentences.

“I don’t remember killing your mother, but I remember attacking your pack. Blue Moon wolves have never had any morals or integrity, so if your mother died, it was her own doing. Any w***e who sides with-”

I saw red and didn’t need to hear anything else. My mind flipped through my Rolodex of techniques and landed on one I’d just recently saw Aires demonstrate and wanted to test out.

I pulled Thorne to his feet and spun him around so that his back was facing me. I then reached in front of him and hit him with the strongest uppercut I could manage and immediately placed both hands on the sides of his head and twisted with all my strength.

His neck snapped like a dried twig before his lifeless body fell atop a small fire that was eating away the rug. That woman was a handful, but she sure knew how to kill someone efficiently.

I didn’t have time to celebrate how easily I’d taken Thorne out. I immediately rushed to see if Marisol was alive. She hadn’t moved an inch since I’d come in, and I honestly didn’t have any hope, but I had to check.

Flames were starting to engulf the bed, and I only had seconds to make my move. I rolled her away from Nate’s body and gently smacked her face looking for the smallest reaction but still got nothing. I could no longer breathe and could barely see, so I lifted her from the bed and ran to the door only to replace that the hallway had become an inferno. There was no way that I was making it out of here without severe third-degree burns.

I turned towards the large bay window, which was thankfully already open, and looked out. It was no surprise that there was still a fair amount of screaming and running around in circles. Still, I could tell by the number of people, or the colorful blobs I assumed were people, that Xander had successfully evacuated the house.

My vision had blurred, and my eyes burned as much as the rest of this place. I was f****d and running out of options.

“Kade! You’re going to have to drop Marisol down to me!” I heard Xander yell out.

“I can’t see s**t! If I drop her, it’s totally on you to catch her,” I replied.

I heard some rustling below before he yelled up to me a second time.

“Lean out as far as you can and let go!”

I trusted this man with my life, so I didn’t see a reason to not trust him with someone else’s. It was only a three-story drop. I did what he said and prayed that things went well; I didn’t want to be responsible for breaking Marisol’s back because I threw her out of a burning building.

“I got her, now get the hell out of there,” Xander said.

Right. While trying to figure my way out, I felt a presence appear before me, take my hands, and suck me into the vortex I then knew as a shimmer. If I thought that the first shimmer was brutal, this one was ten times worst. With the way my lungs had been abused upstairs, the sudden presence of fresh air caused them to almost seize up.

I fell to the ground, hacking and coughing harder than I’d ever done before, and that was when nausea hit. Between violently throwing up, trying to catch a breath, and the tears that were streaming from my smoke damaged eyes, I was pretty sure I was about to die.

“Aires, can you get Marisol to Alaia or Alaia here?” I heard Xander ask.

“I’m sorry, Alpha, but I can’t. I barely had the strength to get wolfie out, but I couldn’t let him burn,” she weakly replied.

“Kade, get your s**t together and get the hell up. My f*****g house is on fire, and you’re taking a break,” Xander stated.

It took a few more seconds of trying to clear my lungs before I could respond.

“You are an a*****e, and your house was a piece of s**t anyway,” I finally replied.

“I’m glad to see you didn’t get any brain damage. The team back home are on their way up now. It will be an hour and a half for those who shift, twice that for those in cars. Can you stand up?”

I nodded my head and pushed up to my feet, then felt two pairs of hands take my arms and help me onto a lawn chair. I was passed a pair of sweatpants as a presence came and stood over me.

“Beta, I’m Dr. Ross. I’m going to check you over to make sure you don’t have any serious injuries,” I heard a voice say.

“I can’t see anything. Everything else is f****d up too, but at least a few minutes ago, I saw blobs, now it’s nothing,” I told him.

I felt him peel my eyes open but still didn’t see him or anything going on around us. After a few minutes of tests, he gave his diagnosis.

“I’m pretty sure you burnt your retinas, Beta, causing temporary blindness. It doesn’t look too bad, so I would guess that with rest and plenty of rewetting drops, your vision should return in the next few days.”

“f*****g fantastic,” I muttered under my breath. “How is Marisol?” I finally asked. I hadn’t heard anything about her yet, and since I couldn’t see, I was feeling more than a little helpless.

“Kade, how about we move further away from the house while we wait for the team and the fire department to get here,” Xander suggested.

“That works, but I still need to know if she’s alright,” I said as I felt him take my elbow and lead me away. The fact that he wasn’t answering me, though, told me everything I needed or wanted to know.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Dr. Ross checked Marisol as soon as you’d dropped her into my arms. He can’t say for sure, but from the soot around her nose and mouth, she probably died of smoke inhalation,” he replied.

“Smoke inhalation? But how? I was in that room almost as long as she was, and I made it out fine!” I irrationally yelled.

“You’re blind and wheezing like an asthmatic after a marathon; you’re not fine, Kade. And on top of that, you have a fighters body, with strong, healthy lungs. Any normal wolf wouldn’t have been able to survive,” Xander reasoned.

I couldn’t believe that I’d failed her. The one person she linked when she was in trouble, and I was too late to do anything. And now Cameron was an orphan.

“Thorne killed Nate, Xander. He marked Marisol, so Thorne killed him. And now their son is completely alone in the world. Who is going to tell Cameron that he’ll never see his mother again?” I asked.

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes; right now, I’ve got to get you, and Aires squared away; she looks likes she’s literally one step away from draining everyone here,” Xander said.

Dr. Ross was able to provide a few b***d bags from his clinic, which thankfully wasn’t damaged by the fire, pulling Aires back from the edge just enough for her to be able to make it home safely.

I felt someone come over and wipe my face and eyes, then fit me with an oxygen mask. Finally, I felt that my breaths were doing their jobs because the blaring headache and dizziness that had been plaguing me began to fade slowly. As I sat and recovered, I thought over Marisol’s final words to me.

He’s such a sweet little boy, and he loves you and Morgan so much. Maybe this is how it was always meant to happen; why you’re the only father he’s ever known…

“Xander!”

“What’s up? Did you need anything?” he asked.

“I do. I need you to help me out with some paperwork.”

***

Morgan

As soon as Aires came back to get Xander, Alaia, Taylor, and I hopped into the truck with Matt and Tyson and who were seconds away from pulling out of the garage.

“We don’t want to hear s**t! Just drive, or we’ll take another car, or shift and run the whole way,” Alaia commanded.

“Alright, Bean. Just be careful when we get there,” Matt said.

I saw at least fifty warriors shift into their wolf forms and begin to head north through the forest towards their Alpha and his call. I wished I could go with them; they would make it so much quicker than us, but I had my baby bear to think about.

I hoped, and I prayed that everyone would be alright. I didn’t want anyone to suffer any more grief, but I especially needed Kade to be okay. He’d left to help Marisol without a second thought, and I would hate it if his heroism caused him any pain. We drove in tense silence for maybe twenty minutes when Matt looked into the rearview mirror and made eye contact with me.

“Xan just sent me a link. The packhouse is a total loss, but the majority of the pack made it to safety,” he told the car.

“The majority? What does that mean?” Taylor asked. Thank God she did; I was too nervous to ask but was dying to know.

“It was Thorne who did this; he had help from two brothers who were still completely loyal to him and let him into the territory. He killed Nate, and Marisol died from smoke inhalation.”

The air was sucked from my lungs. I couldn’t believe they were both gone, they were so young and had so much love to give their son, but now that would never happen. I felt myself begin to cry for Cameron; he didn’t deserve something like this to happen to him at such a young age.

“Where is Thorne? I’ll kill him myself, I swear,” Alaia said.

“Kade killed him right before he made it out of the house; he not badly hurt, but he is blind-”

“What?! Blind?! What are you talking about?” I screamed.

“Mo, relax, and let the man finish his sentence. Kade is only temporarily blind, he will be better in a few days, or Alaia might even be able to heal him. Calm down,” Tyson said.

I closed my eyes and nodded, then began to rub circles on my belly to calm myself down further. He wasn’t hurt, and that was all that mattered. Knowing that Kade was alright made the rest of the trip pass by in a flash, and soon we were pulling up to the charred remains of what used the be the packhouse.

Xander had the warriors who’d come up secure the border and look for the guys who’d helped Thorne do this. I felt a little nervous knowing that two demented wolves were hiding out there, but the look on Xander’s face told me that he was going to replace those guys, and they would pay with their lives.

“So, what’s the plan? Luckily only the packhouse burnt, but that leaves about thirty omegas homeless,” Matt said as he walked up to Xander.

I was curious to know the answer, but I was more interested in seeing Kade. I needed to see, touch, and smell him; only then would I totally relax.

I saw a medical tent off to the side where a few people were getting treated for minor looking issues. At the back, stretched out on a cot, was Kade. He had one arm draped over his eyes, and the other rested across his chest. As I walked over, I noticed that his fingertips delicately traced the tattoo he had of me on his ribs, perfectly. He would outline my eyes, then my nose, then my lips, before coming up to tap my freckles. Clearly, this was something he’d done often, but seeing it was insane.

“Are you going to just stare at me, Sugar, or are you going to give me a k**s?” Kade turned to me and asked.

I rushed to his side and held his face in my hands.

“You can see me? They said you were temporary blind!”

“I can’t see you, and I hate that more than I can express in words. But I can smell your sweet apple pie scent, and I can hear you. I’d know the beat of your heart anywhere,” he replied.

I leaned down and gently kissed his lips.

“I’m so sorry about Nate and Marisol, baby. That’s horrible,” I whispered.

Kade wrapped his arms around me and pulled me down on top of him.

“It is horrible, but we can make the best of it.”

I pulled back and looked down at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Cameron. What if I officially made him my son; made him our son?”