Page 17 of Raven Blackwood (Cyborg Guardians #2)

Hannah

The room smelled of stale cigar smoke and sweat, a choking combination that made my stomach churn.

Callum Jenkins sat behind his massive oak desk; his boots propped up as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

The lamplight cast long shadows across the walls, but even in the dim glow, his smirk was sharp as a knife.

“Well, well,” he drawled, flicking ashes from his cigar onto the floor. “Aren’t you a pretty little bargaining chip?”

I clenched my jaw, refusing to let him see even a sliver of fear. My wrists throbbed where they were tied behind my back, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing pain either.

“I’m no one’s bargaining chip,” I spat.

Jenkins chuckled, the deep, gravelly sound of a man who thought he’d already won.

“That’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart.” He leaned forward, his beady eyes locking onto mine.

“See, that cyborg of yours has been really bad for business. Coming in here like some kind of knight in shining armor, turning folks against me. You’re going to fix that. ”

I narrowed my eyes. “And how exactly do you think I’m going to do that?

He grinned, flashing yellowed teeth. “Simple. I send word to Raven Blackwood—either he gets out of Brislow and never looks back, or he watches you suffer.”

A chill ran down my spine, but I refused to look away. “You really think Raven will just walk away?” I laughed, shaking my head. “You don’t know him at all.”

Jenkins’s smile faltered for half a second before he covered it with a sneer. He stood, walking around the desk until he was in front of me. “I know he’s got weaknesses. And right now, you’re the biggest one.”

He reached down, gripping my chin in his calloused fingers. I yanked my head back, fury blazing through me.

“You touch me again, and I swear to God, you’ll regret it,” I hissed.

Jenkins just laughed, stepping back. “Fiery little thing, aren’t you? No matter. By the time I’m through, Raven will be long gone, and you— well, you won’t be much good to anyone.”

Fear curled in my stomach, but I shoved it down. I wouldn’t let him break me.

Raven was coming.

I just had to hold on until then.

Raven

I sent a quick message to the team to let them know someone kidnapped Hannah, and I started my sky cycle.

The thrusters on my hovercycle screamed as I pushed it to its limit.

Jenkins’s men had taken Hannah and dragged her off while I’d been busy cleaning up the town.

Rage burned through me, white-hot and vicious.

But rage alone wasn’t going to find her. The nanites would.

I called up the tracker, letting my nanites lock onto hers. A faint signal pulsed in the distance, miles away from Brislow and growing fainter by the minute. They were hauling her out somewhere remote. Somewhere, they thought I wouldn’t find her.

Fools.

My HUD displayed the coordinates, the numbers flashing in sync with my pounding heart. I opened a comm line to my team. Orion’s voice came through first, followed by Steele and Trinity. They were still sweeping Brislow .

“I’ve got her location,” I said, my voice tight. “Jenkins’s men took her to an old mining site mansion twenty miles northwest. I’m sending you the coordinates.”

“Understood,” Orion replied. “We’re thirty minutes out.”

“I’m not waiting,” I snapped. “Catch up when you can.”

“Raven—” Steele started to argue, but I cut the line. Every second spent talking was another second Hannah remained in danger.

The hovercycle’s thrusters roared as I pushed them harder, the landscape blurring beneath me.

Hannah

The hours blurred. Someone called Jenkins from the room. One of the guards posted near the window stepped outside to smoke, while the other leaned in the doorway, as if he had nowhere better to be.

I glanced toward the open window, moonlight spilling across the wooden floorboards. And that’s when I saw it.

A flicker.

Something—or—someone—moved between the trees just beyond the edge of the clearing. I froze, eyes straining in the dark.

There.

The glint of green scales. A sinuous tail vanishes behind a tree.

I blinked, stunned. What the hell was that?

A trick of the light. It had to be. Or maybe my mind was playing games with me, cracking under the pressure. I didn’t have time to question it because the sound of an engine roared in the distance, drawing closer by the second.

The guard in the doorway tensed. “What the hell…?”

Raven

It took less than ten minutes to reach the location, a sprawling old house that must have once belonged to a mine owner. The place had seen better days, but it was sturdy and well-defended—exactly where I’d hole up if I were a coward like Jenkins.

I dismounted, blasters in hand, nanites surging through me with the urgency of a predator unleashed.

The front entrance was locked, but that didn’t matter. I blasted it apart and stormed inside. The first two guards didn’t even have time to reach for their weapons before I dropped them with stun blasts.

I swept through the house with lethal precision, led by the beacon of Hannah’s nanites. A few of Jenkins’s men tried to slow me down, but none succeeded.

When I reached the parlor on the second floor, I found her.

Hannah.

Tied up, bruised, but alive. My chest squeezed. I crossed the room and cut the bindings with my blade.

“You’re safe now.”

Her eyes were wide, but relief flickered across her face. “Raven. I knew you’d find me.”

“I always will.”

We moved through the house, my weapons drawn. I kept her close, shielding her with my body. We reached the grand dining room and found Jenkins waiting.

He had two thugs with him, but they barely mattered. His smirk faltered the moment he saw us.

“Come to play hero?” he sneered.

“Your game’s over,” I said, voice low and lethal. “Surrender now, and maybe you’ll live to see a prison cell.”

His laugh was a sharp, ugly thing. “Prison? No, I don’t think so. Not when I can kill you—”

He raised a gun, but I was faster. A single shot from my blaster left his weapon sparking and useless. His eyes widened with shock, then fury.

“You won’t get away with this,” Jenkins spat. “I own Brislow. Everything and everyone in it.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “And you’re out of time.”

My blaster hovered inches from his chest, and I gripped his throat with the other hand. Every instinct screamed at me to snap his neck and end him. Or simply squeeze until he couldn’t get air and slowly suffocated. He had hurt so many people, including my precious Hannah. I wanted him to suffer.

But something held me back. Hannah’s presence. She had faith in me to do the right thing.

I lowered the weapon and loosened my grip, but my gaze remained cold. “You’re going to Penta Prison, Jenkins. We send the worst of the worst there to fight for their own survival. Maybe you’ll last a week. Maybe a day. But you’re done here. ”

Jenkins’s expression twisted with fury, but there was fear there, too. Real fear. Good. That was enough. I released him and bound his hands behind his back with a zip tie. I set him in a chair and warned him not to move. I took Hanna with me to secure the other men I had downed.

Strangely, someone had already bound them with rawhide laces. Koha’vek. Sometime in the future, I’d stop by and thank him.

Meanwhile, my focus was on Hannah.

As I wrapped her in my arms, I felt something shift, as if the last piece of me had clicked into place.

“It’s over. Let’s go home.”

Hannah looked up at me, eyes still flicking to the window where she’d seen something. “I… I thought I saw—never mind.” She shook her head and smiled. “Now we can resume our life together.”

I figured she must have seen Koha’vek. She’d never seen a ‘Saark, so she probably thought she was seeing things. Someday, when the time was right, when it wouldn’t endanger Koha’vek and Ava, I would tell her the truth.