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I’m strong now. I’m not the stupid, weak little kid I was back then. I shouldn’t be shaking like a fucking leaf.

“Hey, you okay?” Chase asks, gripping my forearm.

I’m so out of it, I didn’t even hear him come over to my locker.

We’re all getting ready in the weapon room Kane has in the basement. He makes sure we’re armed to the teeth and ready for anything.

“I—I’m fine,” I say, turning away from him and back to what I was doing.

I’m jealous of Chase. He looks so fucking calm right now.

“How’re you not freaking out,” I mutter under my breath.

“Because I know we’re gonna be fine, but I don’t know whether Luna will be, which is why we’re doing all this,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Look at yourself, man.”

I actually do glance down at myself, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see.

“You’re a fucking tank. Plus, you have all of us as backup. Noone’s gonna be able to do anything to you,” he says. “You have the power this time. It’s not like when we were kids.”

I scrub my hands over my face, trying to pull myself together. He’s right.

“Are you ready, Madden?” Archer calls from the stairs.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

The drive over to the Southside of town is silent. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, but I know the place like the back of my hand. You had to, for the sort of drug running I was doing as a kid.

“How do you have updated intel on my brother?” I ask Kane, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.

“I make it my business to try and know everything that can be useful to us as a pack,” he shrugs. “Your brother played a big role in your life. Thought it’d be useful to keep tabs on him even if that info was never useful.”

My older brother was arrested when everything went down, but I don’t think he was actually charged with anything. That night was the last time I saw him. The night when he was prepared to sit by and watch them shoot me dead, executioner’s style.

All I know about him now is that he’s the leader of the gang my family was a part of.

We pull up to the broken-down warehouse. It’s ridiculously similar to the one I spent so much time in as a kid. There’re a couple of guys guarding one of the doors.

“We’ll follow your lead,” Archer says to me, gripping my shoulder. “We have your back.”

I give him a nod in appreciation, taking a deep breath before I open the door to the car.

The guys guarding the door have already seen us. We weren’t trying to be very subtle with our entrance and cars as expensive as ours just aren’t a thing here.

“Who the fuck’re you?” The younger guy asks, reaching intohis pocket where I know he has a gun of his own. This guy is an alpha, but the older man standing beside him is a beta.

I feel a cloud that weighs heavily over my shoulders. The blood in my veins practically roars in my ears. Every single cell in my body is pumped up with so much adrenaline that I’m ready for anything.

“Your boss’s brother, now let me the fuck in and things won’t have to get ugly,” I growl, my dominance filling the air around me.

“Shit, I forgot how scary Madden can be,” I hear Chase whisper behind me.

I ignore them, but the two guys in front of me seem to agree with Chase, even the younger alpha.

I’m never really one to let my dominance run free. I don’t want to feed into the crazy, violent stereotypes of Southside alphas if I can help it.

There’s no need to hide anything down here.

“You—” The older beta’s eyes go wide with recognition. “You’re the traitor!”