Checkmate

𝐬 𝐢 𝐱 𝐭 𝐞 𝐞 𝐧

16 | Nox 

The married couple crept back into the compound where Zara and Kaspian were being held.

To their surprise they found Kaspian and Zara each pointing guns at a brunette woman tied to the chair Nox had previously been chained up to.

The room was destroyed as if a fight had happened.

There were dead guards that had been thrown to the outskirts of the walls, and Kaspian's face was slightly bloodied.

Nox felt the spike in Mackenzie's heartbeat through her own blood.  She felt his insane fear of her getting heart and his drive to protect her.  She also felt him battling with the words his father had crammed into his brain for so long.  She felt him internally yelling at himself each time he let his temper slip at her.

She felt it all.

And she loved him for it.

Mackenzie took her small hand in his large one and led them out from the shadows and into the light.

"What's going on?"

Neither Kaspian nor Zara were surprised that they had found a way back into the compound, nor were they frightened when Mackenzie spoke suddenly.

"The little bitch thought she could untie me and I would talk to her like a civilized person."

"What's she want?"

"Money."  Zara snapped, picking the blood out of her fingernails with the end of a knife.

"YOU OWE ME!" Kaspian's mother rasped, shaking from her chains.

"I've got this," Mackenzie said, his voice low.  Nobody questioned it.  Nobody even thought about letting him handle it.

He would want to make that woman spill all her secrets and then he would make her scream and cry ten times worse than how Nox felt when Kas's mother had her stabbed.

It would be loud.

And she would scream.

So Nox, Zara, and Kaspian silently left just like the shadows that filled their insides.

As soon as the bright Texan sunshine beat down on them once again, Zara enveloped the redhead in a bone-crushing hug.

"I thought you were dead," she sobbed, holding on to her tight.  "You were so far gone and then Kenz... and then he got you and..."

Nox felt tears come to her eyes as she watched her stone rock-solid friend break down in her arms.  She squeezed Zara back just as tightly.

+++

It was a while before Mackenzie came out of that room.

When his hooded figure slipped out of the compound he went directly to Nox and buried his face in her body.

"We're safe," he mumbled, "and you're never getting stabbed again or so help me I might kill every person until I find the one who did it."

She smiled softly and ran her fingers through her hair as she watched Kaspian check over all of Zara's wounds.

They were together.

They were safe.

And they had grown.