by Leia Stone
I nodded again. A handful. Who should I bring? Max was strong, but I needed him to stay back and look out for the pack. Diya would want to help her brother, but Kai would never forgive me if she got hurt.
I turned the corner and Sadie was standing there with Shamus.
“Sadie! Shamus! What are you still doing here?”
Shamus gave me a hug. “A few of us stayed overnight after the wedding. Woke up to all this drama.”
“Yeah, I saw your video.” I glared at him.
He shrugged. “Sorry for not telling you, but Kai thought it best.”
Sadie’s eyes were red like she had been crying. “Is it true? Devon’s dead and Kai ...” She didn’t finish. This was her pack for years. She was close with Devon and with Kai.
I had a crazy thought then. Sadie was a good fighter. She cared about Kai as much as I hated to acknowledge it.
I lowered my voice. “Sadie, I’m going to get Kai back. I can only take a few people. It has to be a low key rescue and we need to leave now.” I didn’t finish my sentence. She looked at her Alpha. They were conversing in silence. Finally he nodded. She looked at me.
“Let’s go get him.”
“Your mate?” I queried.
“Is coming too.” Brett rounded the corner. She must have told him through the mate bond. He didn’t look pleased, but he wasn’t about to let her go alone.
‘I’m going to get Kai back.’ I told the entire pack.
“I‘ll be right back.” I ran to my house and packed some things quickly, then I buried the black arrowhead Nahuel gave me.
Kai
We were the last people I would expect to mount a rescue mission on Kai.
“Remind me again why I’m helping you rescue your ex-boyfriend?” Brett asked Sadie jokingly.
“Because you love me.” She flashed a smile.
I couldn’t believe I was in a car with Kai’s ex-girlfriend, her mate, an Ex RAIDOS employee and a Shaman. I had left Max in charge and had told Emma I would be back as soon as possible.
Raj and his high up dominants had to go back to India and deal with the chaos there. All over the world, people were either standing to fight with the werewolves or trying to kill them in a mass panic.
I squeezed Nahuel’s forearm. “Thanks for coming, I really appreciate it.”
He nodded stoically. “I’m glad you thought to ask for my help. Sometimes we forget to ask for the help that is offered and try to do things on our own.”
I huffed. “And I here I thought we might get through a car ride without your philosophy.”
He cracked a smile.
Suddenly, I felt a tug at my chest. The mate bond. Kai was awake. Then a blinding pain ripped through me. I screamed. Luckily Brett was driving or I would have crashed the car. I grabbed my head and closed my eyes.
‘Kai? What’s happening? Where are you?’ I wasn’t sure how the mate bond worked or if we could communicate so far. I went into my mind’s eye and found myself in the woods behind our house. Kai’s energy was there, it was a dim ball of light. It was flickering. I grabbed the ball, Kai’s energy, and was sucked into a vision.
Kai was strapped to a metal table in a large cement room. It was an industrial building. I could smell burning ash, metal, death. The room held tables and tables of laboratory equipment. A man in a white lab coat had Kai strapped down with silver shackles. His wrists were bubbling with red blisters. His breathing was ragged. They were cutting pieces of skin off of him and watching in fascination as it grew back. They tucked the skin pieces inside of a glass tube and capped it off.
‘No!’ I screamed into the vision. I calmed my breathing like Sylvia taught me and imagined a thick cord binding myself to Kai. We were soulmates, we were one. He was my mate. I chanted this in my mind and imagined all of my silver immunity was shared with Kai. We were one. We were one. What was mine, was his. I became aware of a pain on my arms, at the same time I saw Kai’s wrists begin to heal. His breathing evened out. He opened his eyes on the table and gave a weak smile.
“Meri Pyari,” he whispered.
Then I was sucked out of the vision. Nahuel was shaking me.
My eyes snapped open. “What are you doing? I need to go back. He needs me!”
Nahuel looked concerned. “No, Aurora. You stopped breathing for a few seconds. Look at your arms.”
I looked down and gasped. My wrists were bubbled with silver blisters and my forearm had a two-inch square of missing skin. It was healing but slowly, very slowly, like I had silver poisoning. Mist was hovering in the car from my leftover spell.
“You gave Kai your immunity. All of it,” Nahuel said in amazement.
“Good. Then he has a chance.”
I held my left hand over my injured forearm. “Heal,” I whispered as mist seeped out of my palm and coated my arm. It was helping. It was still slowly healing, but that had given it a kick start. My eyes found Sadie’s, she was looking at me in shock.
I shrugged. “Witch stuff.”
“Incredible,” Alexa commented. I kept forgetting she was a new werewolf. I should check in with her and see how she was doing.
“How are you doing with all this?” I asked her.
She smiled. “I’ve seen a lot in my ten years at RAIDOS. I’ll be fine.” And that was that. No need to worry about her. It was time to get Kai.
I stared at the scorched skin around my wrists. I felt Emma’s sorrow turn into a dark depression; all of this boiled up inside me and any notion I had of trying to be nice, was gone. If Earth needed balancing out then I was going to do it. I would purge every last one of the people against us. Human or vampire.
Nahuel gave me a strange look. I stared straight.
The drive to the holding facility in Seaside was surreal. We passed small scuffles of looting and panic. It was daylight out so the vampires were not yet out in full force. A few of the elite vampires had sun immunity thanks to some witches, but not all of them. Layla had it. When the sun went down tonight, all hell would break loose.
Alexa opened a duffle bag and handed out uniforms and badges.
“We’re going in as security, bringing in a wolf. That will get us into the room where they will be keeping Kai.”
Genius! “Where did you get this stuff?” I asked her as Brett crept the car along a thick wooded back road.
Alexa smiled. “Working ten years for a highly secretive government agency will garner a healthy amount of paranoia. I’ve always had multiple exit plans, in case I wanted to leave the agency. I’m still tapped into their computers. They haven’t figured it out yet. I can print high clearance, all access badges.”
I squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you’re with us.”
She lowered her eyes. “Me too.” I could feel genuine feelings of her gratefulness for my changing her. She also felt guilt for pushing me to do it, but it was the only way she felt she could be strong enough. I sent thoughts of forgiveness to her and she smiled.
Is this what Kai dealt with all the time? He knew what every member of the pack was going through and had to keep the peace within each one of his wolves at all times? It’s exhausting! I could still feel Emma’s grief and Diya’s concern and everyone else’s lingering panic. It made me want to drink myself into a coma.
Alexa opened a map application on her tablet.
“Pull over,” she told Brett.
He pulled off the road and hid the car deep in the woods.
She indicated the map. “Through this dense patch of forest is an entry point for receiving. With the latest news, I have to assume they will be capturing and bringing in any wolves they can.”
My anger flared at that. She lowered her eyes and continued. “They have facial recognition software. They will know my face and Aurora’s. We should go in as captured wolves. Sadie and Brett can be guards. They won’t be looking for them.”
I looked at Nahuel.
“What about him?” I asked her.
Alexa cleared her throat. “He doesn’t exactl
y blend in as a typical guard. He can be our back up outside.”
I scanned over Nahuel, he had a long thick braid with pieces of turquoise and silver hanging from the tips. His chunky jewelry and thick leather cuff bracelets dotted his hands. I eyed the jaguar tattoo on his arm. Yeah, he didn’t look the typical RAIDOS employee.
Nahuel cracked a smile. “Once you make a scene inside, I will use the distraction to sneak in and cover your backs.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.” I looked at my wrists, they were still red and I was feeling tired. I hoped giving Kai my silver immunity meant he was okay. I felt pain and anger through the mate bond, but he was trying to hide most of it from me.
‘We’re here. Hang in there. We’re coming.’ I felt a spike of fear and shame through the mate bond, but he didn’t respond. What the hell?
“Let’s go! We need to get him out of here,” I told everyone.
Alexa stared at her hands. “Hang on, I want to try something. Give me the tablet.” She took a deep breath and her hands glowed blue. Nahuel and the others looked on with curiosity.
I handed her the glowing tablet with the map application open. The second it hit her blue glowing hands, it made a zapping sound and turned off.
Alexa smiled. “I know what this new power is.”
Sadie had come up behind me; she smelled amazing, of vanilla and mango. Damn her.
“You can control electricity,” Sadie stated the obvious, sounding unimpressed.
Alexa grinned. “Not just that. I can make an EMP. An electromagnetic pulse.”
“I know what an EMP is.” Sadie gave her attitude. Good old Sadie. Leave it to her to be bitchy in a stressful time.
“I wonder how big of one you could make. Could you black out a whole building?” I asked her trying to divert the tension, as Alexa gave her a glare.
Alexa shrugged. “We’ll find out.”
Wait until Kai found out about this. Alexa was a very valuable wolf. Should I be protecting her better by not letting her go inside? What would Kai do? I needed all the help I could get.
Sadie and Brett loaded up on guns and weapons while Alexa and I shifted into wolf form and they tied us with silver collars and muzzles. The second the silver hit my skin I felt like it was on fire. It burned. I could see Alexa struggling as well.
Nahuel chanted. He closed his eyes and took in deep breaths through his nose. I was about to look away from him and follow Alexa into the woods when I noticed his face changing shape. He quickly undressed. Spotted fur began to burst out of his skin. His fingers transformed to claws. What the hell! The sound of cracking bones filled my ears and suddenly Nahuel pierced me with a blue cat-eyed gaze. When he was done, he was on all fours; a beautiful and deadly black-spotted Jaguar. He approached me. I knew it! I knew there was something different about him. I knew he wasn’t human! Hadn’t someone told me that some Shamans could shapeshift? That’s why they were allowed knowledge of our kind.
He showed me his teeth in a big cat grin. His fang teeth were two-inches long and thick. If I didn’t know it was Nahuel, I might have been scared. I nudged him with my muzzle and he purred.
‘See you inside,’ I tried.
‘Stay safe,’ he told me.
It worked! We could communicate. But he wasn’t pack. Everything was blowing my mind, but I had to go get Kai. I turned to see Brett and Sadie staring at Nahuel’s jaguar form, in shock.
Sadie shook off her shock and clicked a leash on my collar. “Put up a fight at the gates. Make it look real.”
Well, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Rescue
After walking through a thick stretch of trees, we made it back out onto the open road. The armed men in front of the gates saw us walk out of the woods and came running over, guns raised.
“Our van broke down a mile back! We caught these two causing a public disturbance. Our orders were to bring them here,” Sadie said. She immediately handed him her badge.
I quickly yanked the leash out of her hand and lunged for the guard, growling and showing my fangs. Sadie grabbed the leash and slammed me down hard. Ow! I’ll bet she had been waiting to do that for months. I met her eyes and growled low and deep.
The guard fell back on his butt and handed Sadie her ID without looking.
“Get them inside the holding pen!” he screamed at her. Alexa howled and Brett pulled at her leash causing her to wince. I felt sick and weak from the silver. We walked while the other two guards aimed silver bullet guns at us.
“We have had a lot of drop-offs today. These things are coming out everywhere.” The guard said.
Sadie nodded.
“How many do you have here?” Brett asked casually. The guard looked at him suspiciously but answered him. “About twenty. Half are in the research holding facility and the other half are going to the incinerator for disposal.”
I stumbled and my face hit the pavement. The incinerator! Disposal!
Brett tried to mask his anger. I could see he was pained too.
“All right, well, where do you want these two?” Brett replied and a faint growl tried to escape his throat.
The guard tipped his head to me. “They’ve asked for any dominate or overly feisty ones to go to research. You can take that weak one to the incinerator.” He gestured to Alexa.
I growled and the guard shoved the gun in my face. Sadie pulled on the leash and muzzle. Sadie and Brett shared a look, no doubt communicating through their mate bond, and walked in separate directions. We followed one of the guards, as Brett walked away with the other. I didn’t like that we were splitting up. But I didn’t want ten wolves to die either. After a small walk, we approached a large cement industrial building, “This is research, you know the drill,” he told Sadie and waved his ID card which popped the door open.
‘Nahuel, go to the incinerator and help Brett. Sadie and I will get Kai.’
‘I’m inside the gates. I see you. I will follow them,’ he replied.
Once Sadie and I were inside and walking down the hallway alone, I realized how awkward this situation was. Imagine Kai’s face when he realized his wife and ex-girlfriend of six years are his rescue party? Even though Sadie and I had our past, I was grateful for her help. Sadie lowered her voice. “I hope you have a plan once we walk through these doors.”
I did. She wouldn’t like it, but I was going to use every advantage I had, even if that meant magic.
She took the silver collar and muzzle off of my neck and snout. I could smell burnt flesh. I was very grateful for my silver immunity, I didn’t realize how vulnerable the other wolves were until then. I needed to remember to talk to Alexa about the possibility of getting more of that serum. I hoped that giving my immunity to Kai had given him enough strength to endure whatever it was they were doing. He had buried our mate bond and was in too much pain to communicate with me, so I was going into this blind.
Suddenly, we heard Kai scream out in pain. Sadie’s face drained of color. It was the worst sound of my life. Kai wasn’t the type of man to cry out. I had seen him endure many fights. Searing pain shot through my mate bond and I began to growl. Sadie kicked open the door, gun drawn.
I scanned the room. There were a dozen silver cages filled with wolves that lined the walls. Kai was strapped to an examiner’s table, a silver mesh net was draped over his body that secured him place. I didn’t even take the time to count how many people were in the room or measure my surroundings. I leapt across the room in three strides. No one was faster than me. The element of surprise was all I had. Three of Kai’s fingers were severed and laying on the floor. A man with bolt cutters and a white lab coat stood over my husband’s bleeding hand. It had only two fingers left. He inspected it and was about to make notes in a chart.
The doctor turned to me when he heard the door kick in and my deep growl. I steadied my gaze on the pulsing vein in his neck. I ripped his throat out before he could even speak. Shots rang out from Sadie’s gun and two guards were down.
Kai was p
anting. His body was in human form, but patches of fur had broken out along his torso. He was completely naked. A lab assistant cowered in the corner and Sadie knocked her out with the butt of her gun.
I quickly shifted into my human form and unclicked the net and shackles pinning down my mate and slowly lowered him onto the ground. My fingers burned from my brief contact with the silver. Kai was panting. The stumps on his hands were bleeding freely. I was vaguely aware of Sadie uncaging the other wolves in the room. I took a deep breath and found a quiet place in my mind. I willed the blood in Kai’s fingers to clot and heal. Mist poured out of my palms and surrounded his hands. I could feel my energy draining. I needed to heal myself soon. The silver was seriously annoying me. The stumps on Kai’s fingers slowly stop bleeding and crusted over with dark scabs. I wrapped them in a gauze strip and met my mate’s eyes. They were yellow and full of pain and anger. His energy was dark. He didn’t look like the man I knew and loved. He looked wild.
