The word slams into me harder than any fist. I sit up too fast. Pain splits through my head, black spots cutting across my vision as whatever Doc put in me tries to drag me back down. My muscles don’t respond cleanly. There’s a delay between command and movement that makes rage crawl under my skin. Not enough. Nothing is enough to keep me down. I swing my legs off the couch and shove to my feet.
The room lurches. Doesn’t matter.
I take one step toward the door.
“Take one more step like that, and I’ll have Doc put you down again.” Logan. His voice cuts through the haze, flat and sharp enough to stop the room from spinning for a second.
I look up.
He’s standing between me and the door. Not beside it. Not near it. In front of it. Deliberate. His arms are crossed over his chest, but there’s nothing relaxed about him. His eyes are hard, jaw locked, body set in a way that tells me he’s already made the call before I woke up. President first. Brother second. Obstacle if he has to be.
I take another breath. It burns. “Move.” My voice comes out rough. Dry. Wrong.
Logan doesn’t. “You’re not walking out of this room like that.”
“I am.”
“No,” he says. “You’re not.”
The office comes into focus in small, ugly pieces.
Logan’s desk is cracked where I flipped it. One shelf is half torn from the wall. Papers are scattered across the floor, footprints ground into some of them. There’s a dark smear on the edge of the doorway that might be my blood from where I put my fist through the wall before they hit me, before Doc got close enough with a needle.
The memory comes back.
The link. The feed. Olivia restrained. Eli refusing. The gunshot. Her scream.
My hands curl. The office shrinks around me. “They sent something?” I ask.
Logan’s expression tightens. “Not yet.”
“Then I’m going.”
“Where?”
I don’t answer. Because I don’t have one. Not yet. That doesn’t matter to the part of me that wants to move. That part doesn’t need a location. It wants roads, bodies, doors kicked in, men with throats I can close my hands around until one of them points me in the right direction.
Logan reads it. “You’re not helping her like this.”
Something in my chest snaps tight. “Don’t.”
His eyes sharpen. “Don’t what?”
“Use her to leash me.”
“I’m using her to keep you useful.” The words hit. Harder than I want them to.
Useful.
Blaze said it before,Olivia needs you useful.Not feral. Not fucking stupid.
My jaw tightens until pain cuts down the side of my face.
Logan steps closer. Not much. Enough. “You either calm down and listen,” he says, voice low now, controlled anger running under every word, “or I’ll have Doc put you into a fucking coma until we deal with this shit without you.”
The room goes silent. Not empty. Heavy.
I stare at him. He means it. If I move wrong, if I make him choose between me tearing out of here blind and the club finding Olivia without me, he’ll choose her. He’ll choose the mission. He’ll choose control. That’s why he’s president.
