Chapter 268 The Heard the Music
The deafening, metallic boom of Fennigan’s bleeding fists slamming against the impenetrable bunker doors echoed violently through the freezing tree line. The Weaver was physically cowering in the mud, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold the heavy copper wires of his decryption rig.
If Fennigan kept hitting the rusted steel, he was going to completely short-circuit the hacker's fragile tech—or tear his own hands down to the bone.
Marcus didn't wait for an order. The stoic, lethal Head Warrior stepped away from his defensive perimeter, his heavy combat boots crunching over the frozen earth. He stepped right up to the massive steel doors, perfectly mirroring Jax on Fennigan's opposite side.
Marcus reached out, his thick, calloused hands clamping firmly onto Fennigan’s heaving, heavily muscled bicep.
"Hey," Marcus grunted, his voice a low, incredibly steady, grounding rumble that sharply contrasted the Alpha's apocalyptic rage. He didn't use formal titles; he spoke to him as a brother who had bled beside him in a hundred battles. "Let him work, Fenn. You're shaking the panel. Back up and let the human work."
Fennigan violently pushed back.
A guttural, feral snarl ripped from the King's throat as he violently thrashed against the iron grips of his Beta and his Head Warrior. The freezing mountain mud violently churned beneath their heavy boots as Jax and Marcus rigidly dug their heels in. They were two of the deadliest, strongest wolves in the entire Blackwood pack, and it still took absolutely every single ounce of their combined, supernatural strength to physically drag the raging, desperate Alpha King backward, away from the steel.
For ten agonizing seconds, it was a brutal, physical clash of titans in the dark. Fennigan fought them blindly, his liquid-mercury eyes entirely unhinged as he desperately tried to claw his way back to the barrier separating him from his mate.
But then... the terrifying, agonizing mental whiplash finally caught up to him.
The catastrophic mind pressure of feeling Leela's absolute, paralyzing terror, followed instantly by the suffocating, dead silence of the chemical void, was too much. It was a physical vacuum violently tearing his soul apart from the inside out. The adrenaline that had been keeping his feral beast upright suddenly, violently crashed.
Fennigan stopped fighting.
The terrifying, unshakeable monster of the Blackwoods completely crumbled in the dark. The lethal fight violently drained out of his massive frame all at once, his heavy knees entirely buckling beneath him.
He collapsed heavily backward against the two men.
Jax and Marcus instantly adjusted, their massive arms wrapping tightly under the Alpha King's shoulders, entirely catching his dead weight and physically holding him upright in the freezing mud. They became his literal, living pillars of support when his own legs could no longer hold the crushing weight of his crown.
Fennigan’s massive chest heaved with ragged, shuddering breaths. His broad, heavily scarred head fell forward, his chin hitting his chest as the absolute, devastating exhaustion and grief overtook him. He blindly reached out, his bleeding, dirt-caked fingers wrapping weakly into the heavy Kevlar fabric of Jax's tactical vest.
When he finally spoke, the world-shattering, demonic roar was completely gone.
"Just get me in to her, Jax," Fennigan whispered. His voice was entirely shredded, stripped of all Alpha command, leaving behind only the raw, agonizing plea of a desperately broken mate. A single, hot tear carved a clean line through the freezing mud and blood smeared across his cheek. "Please."
The heavy, metallic groan of the massive blast doors echoed into the pitch-black abyss as the bunker finally lay entirely open to the Blackwood pack.
Marcus instantly tightened his white-knuckled grip on the hilt of his heavy, serrated blade. The lethal Head Warrior took a single, aggressive step forward to follow his Alpha King into the dark, his own fangs fully bared and ready for slaughter.
Jax violently threw his massive arm out, slamming his heavy forearm solidly against Marcus's chest to physically halt the warrior's forward momentum.
"Hold the line," Jax ordered, his glowing golden eyes entirely ruthless as he turned to his Head Warrior. He didn't yell, but the absolute, unyielding Beta authority in his voice left zero room for argument. "You stay put, Marcus. Guard the Weaver and guard this exit. I don't care if the entire mountain collapses on top of us, do not let these hydraulic doors close behind us. If anyone else tries to come out of this tunnel... you slaughter them."
Marcus’s jaw aggressively locked, a muscle feathering violently in his cheek. He hated being left out of the breach, but the tactical command was absolute. He gave a single, sharp nod.
"Understood," Marcus grunted, his voice a dark gravel. He ripped his gaze from the dark tunnel and spun around, physically planting his massive body directly between the bunker entrance and the terrified human hacker.
Jax didn't look back. He drew his heavy tactical sidearm, racking the slide with a sharp, echoing clack, and plunged directly into the suffocating darkness behind his King.
The transition from the freezing, organic chaos of the Blackwood forest into the subterranean belly of the bunker was violently jarring. They stepped over the rusted threshold and instantly entered a massive, cavernous loading bay constructed entirely of thick, dead concrete and reinforced steel pillars. The air down here was stagnant, entirely devoid of the wind and pine they were used to.
Fennigan was a terrifying dozen paces ahead of Jax. The Alpha King wasn't running, and he wasn't roaring anymore. His silence was vastly more horrifying than his screams had been. He moved through the pitch-black industrial space with the smooth, lethal, absolutely silent grace of a starving apex predator tracking its prey. The glowing, liquid-mercury of his eyes cut through the shadows like twin blades.
As they moved deeper into the underbelly of the facility, the sensory assault began.
To a werewolf's heightened senses, the air was agonizing. The raw, putrid, medicinal tang of heavy chemical antiseptics, bleach, and rubbing alcohol aggressively burned the sensitive lining of their noses. It was the terrifying, sterile scent of a laboratory—a place where living things were taken apart. Every breath Fennigan took of that chemical cocktail only tightened the coiled, apocalyptic violence in his massive frame.
And then... they heard the music.
It was completely surreal. Drifting up from the suffocating depths of the concrete corridors, echoing unnaturally off the metal bulkheads, was the smooth, upbeat tempo of a jazz saxophone.
It was hauntingly, psychotically out of place. The light, casual music felt like a direct, arrogant mockery of the world-ending devastation the Blackwood wolves were currently bringing down upon them.
Jax’s upper lip curled into a vicious snarl, his finger resting lightly on the trigger of his weapon as he seamlessly fell into a highly coordinated, lethal military wedge formation just over Fennigan’s right shoulder.
They stalked silently down the long, dark primary corridor, following the maddening sound of the jazz. As they rounded a wide bend in the concrete, the pitch-black darkness was suddenly broken.