Layla’s POV
The panic room didn’t feel safe anymore. It felt like a tomb. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, blood, and the sharp bite of gunpowder that had followed the men back down the tunnels. The silence was worse than the sirens had been. It was the silence of exhaustion, of loss, of counting costs.
The men moved like ghosts in the low light. Spider was stitching a gash on Chains’s forearm without a word, his face set in a grim line. Bullseye sat slumped against a crate, a fresh bandage wrapped around his head, his eyes closed. Riley was quietly handing out bottles of warm water from a supply locker.
And Jax.
He sat on a metal stool in the middle of the room, stripped to the waist. In the harsh fluorescent light, he looked like a map of a long, violent war. Old scars for
