The emptiness inside me seemed to recede just a fraction, pushed back by the intensity of physical sensation. The pain was real. It was something. It was more than I'd felt in weeks of going through the motions, of pretending everything was fine so my pack brothers wouldn’t probe.
"That's enough," a voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like Xander warned. I ignored it. Xander wasn't here. None of them were. Just me, the night, and this small flame that was currently eating away at my skin.
Five more seconds passed before I finally pulled my hand away, inspecting the damage with detached fascination. A red, angry welt was forming, blistering at the center. I flexed my fingers, feeling the skin pull tight around the burn. The pain throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Good. Real. Present.
My gaze drifted downward to the small gas canister resting by my feet. It was nearly empty now. A thin trail of liquid already stretched from it toward the warehouse, gleaming faintly in the moonlight. I'd spent nearly thirty minutes carefully laying it out, making sure it was continuous, connecting to the puddle I'd created at the warehouse's rear entrance. I’d watched this place for a few weeks. They didn’t even have security. No night guard roaming the property. No alarm for break-ins. Not a single fucking surveillance camera. I’d studied the way they trucked in the tanks and stored them. Nothing in the warehouse was upright or secured. There was no ventilation or fire-resistant padding required by law. I wondered if the company had a government official in their back pocket making sure they passed inspections.
It boiled my blood that these assholes were overcharging and not even maintaining basic safety.
I was doing them a favor. Better I burn it down now and prevent a bigger fire later. One where the kids across the street might get harmed. Yeah, that’s what I was doing. I was saving Turner Natural Gas from a damn lawsuit.
I could do it. Right now. Just touch the flame to the starting point and watch as the fire raced along the trail. The warehouse would go up spectacularly. I’d ride away, an inferno at my back, and pause just long enough to ring emergency services on my burner phone. A backup in case the rain didn’t fall.
I flicked the lighter again, watching the flame spring to life. The burn on my palm screamed in protest as I flexed my fingers around the metal casing.
"What are you trying to prove?" I asked myself, my voice sounding foreign in the stillness of the night.
That I could still feel something? That I could still affect the world around me? That I wasn't completely hollow inside? Did I think I was a fucking good guy… burning down a building, justifying my actions by imagining an old ass woman getting frostbite?
"Pathetic," I hissed, closing the lighter with a sharp snap.
The pack was unraveling. I could feel it, sense it in the heaviness that hung over the compound. We all saw our future crumbling. No Cirque du Sang tour. No screaming crowds. Hell, we’d be lucky if we got gigs at two-bit racetracks if we kept falling apart.
What was the goddamn answer?It certainly wasn’t Eros. If anything, the guarantee they made—the one that had turned sour so damn quickly—only made shit worse by getting our hopes up that we’d reclaim a morsel of sanity by mating with some random fucking Omega. How long had we been waitingnow? Half a year? Longer? When was the last pathetic client basket sent?
I grinned at a memory. Nitro tossing knives at one of the cellophane-wrapped offerings, blade after blade sinking into the woven container. Alpha tonics seeping pale yellow fluid after being punctured with a sharp tip. Course, nothing beat the time we’d mailed it back, replacing the original items with dead rats.
I looked at the warehouse again, imagining how the flames would climb its walls, how the windows would shatter from the heat, how the night sky would glow. Beautiful destruction. So warm.
My phone vibrated in my pocket—third time tonight. I pulled it out and saw Xander's name on the screen. It was enough to have his voice in my head, telling me to stop. That I could brush off. But if I answered and he talked me down from my madness, I’d walk away from the kerosene and the vision of fire. And I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to follow my intrusive thoughts tonight.
I pocketed the phone and picked up the gas canister, its weight familiar in my hand. I'd stolen it from Kane's workshop, knowing he had extras. He'd notice eventually—Kane noticed everything about his tools—but by then it wouldn't matter. I wouldn’t admit I took it; the others had no reason to take it. Kane would be annoyed, but he’d get over it fast.
All I had to do was bend down, touch the flame to the beginning of that liquid trail, and step back. Then watch as chaos claimed the night. It would be so easy.
Too easy.
And that was the problem, wasn't it? The easiness of destruction. I'd been walking that edge for too long, pushing boundaries, testing limits. The rush wasn't the same anymore. Even the pain in my hand was already dulling, the emptiness seeping back in.
I checked the fuel canister cap was tight and then picked it up.
"Should I?" I murmured, flicking the lighter. “Should I not?”
I kept turning the wheel, bringing the flame to life and then killing it quickly. I treated it like I was picking petals from a flower, wondering if someone loved me. They never did.
Flame to life:should I?
Flame gone:should I not?
Over again. And again.
I stopped the obsessive flicking at ‘flame gone’.
Yet, despite that, I knelt to the ground, brought the ombre glow to life one last time, and touched its tip to the kerosene trail.
I stood up, turning around without lingering to watch the river of fire as it snaked towards the warehouse.
As if perfectly timed by some unseen force, the moment I straddled the bike—the fuel-scented shirt and jacket back on my body—the rain started.
