by Odessa Lynne
Mason hadn’t wanted Marcus to bang Jordan’s head into the floor so many times, but Jordan had not reacted well when Mason had started fumbling with the ties to Jordan’s boot so he had access to the tendons between foot and calf.
It was a crippling injury, but if Jordan didn’t heal on his own, it was an easy fix with the wolves’ medical technology.
That’s what Mason kept telling himself, anyway. At the end, it had been obvious Jordan wasn’t thinking straight. He’d been under the influence of Mason’s and Marcus’s human scent, and even as weak and injured as he was, he’d been willing to fight to get what he wanted.
Mason had had no choice.
“I can feel the bone in my elbow where his claws got me,” Marcus said. “Doesn’t hurt unless I touch it but it’s still freaking me the hell out.”
Mason lowered his arm so he could wipe the pocketknife’s blade clean against his thigh before forcing it to close.
He handed it back to Marcus awkwardly, then spent several seconds trying to wipe as much blood off his hand as he could. There was just so much goddamn blood everywhere; he could even taste the metallic tang of it on the back of his tongue.
He clamped his hand around the railing and pulled himself upright. “Let’s get out of here before he heals enough to come after us.”
“Maybe you should be back here. That way he won’t have to go through me to get to you.”
“Fuck you.”
Marcus laughed quietly. “Let’s get moving before someone realizes where all that goddamn roaring was coming from.”
“Assuming anyone heard it from up here.”
“Somebody heard it,” Marcus said. “My ears are still ringing. I tried to muffle him, but those fucking wolf teeth aren’t just for looks.”
“You okay?”
“Been better.” But Marcus bumped his fist into Mason’s back, his way of telling Mason he was okay despite what he was saying.
“Couldn’t let him die,” Mason said.
“I get it. Go on. Lead us out of here.”
Mason started climbing the steps. He wasn’t sure how far up the stairwell they’d gone before running into Jordan but the landing had to be near. He could still see the faintest pinprick of light ahead.
So Mason climbed, step by step, sliding his hand along the rail and fighting against the desire to let go when his fingertips brushed thick, clingy spider webs he couldn’t see.
The landing surprised him, his foot coming down on the flat surface where he expected another stair to be that wasn’t there. He let out a startled puff of breath and rebalanced quickly.
“Found it,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Watch out.”
“About time. Get us out of here.”
Mason leaned forward, eyes tracking the faint light. He almost bumped his nose into the door as he realized he was looking at a narrow crack between the door and the frame.
He fumbled for the knob and found a panel instead.
“Oh, fuck,” he said on a breath of panic.
“What’s the—”
“There’s no way out. Just a lock.”
“Are you serious? Shit. We’ll have to go back.”
A low groan came from below them and sent Mason’s heart thudding into his ribcage.
“Oh fuck,” Marcus said.
Mason rested his forehead on the cool surface of the door and closed his eyes. “We can’t go back.”
Marcus shoved at Mason’s shoulder. “Move out of the way. I’ll find that goddamned failsafe by feel if I have to. If I can short it out…”
“You can’t see in the—” Mason raised his head, a sudden surge of adrenaline making his mind race. “The other panel. This one is probably just like it.”
“Exactly.”
“You really think you can remember it in enough detail?”
“Only one way to know,” Marcus said, pushing carefully around Mason.
Mason moved aside and let Marcus go to work.
The creaks and clacks and pops that came with him tearing into the sealed panel echoed too loudly in the dark stairwell, but it drowned out the occasional groan from below. Mason eased himself a few steps down and sat with his back to Marcus, staring into the pitch black and listening for any sign that Jordan might be recovering enough to come for them.
He tried to imagine doing what would need to be done if that happened, but something about submitting to Jordan felt wrong. So goddamn wrong. He didn’t know why it hadn’t felt that way with Five, but it hadn’t.
He didn’t want to submit to Jordan, and he couldn’t see himself doing it, not even to save all their lives.
But why?
Why?
God. He exhaled roughly and started to rake his hand through his hair. His breath caught as pain shot through his right arm, and he realized what he’d tried to do. But his arm had responded, even if only a little and even if he’d paid for the move with a jolt of pain that shot all the way from the base of his neck and into his fingertips.
He twisted on the step toward Marcus, who was mumbling under his breath and making small noises that told Mason just how hard he was concentrating. He turned back to the stairwell. He wouldn’t interrupt Marcus just to tell him his shoulder might be healing already.
He frowned and strained his hearing. Why couldn’t he hear Jordan breathing anymore?
Other than the sounds of Marcus behind him, all he heard was a strange clicking sound.
Click, click, click…
Screeeech.
Every muscle in Mason’s body tightened. He sat up straighter, then eased to his feet, staring into the utter darkness below.
His chest tightened, then tightened some more, and his hair stood on end.
He didn’t know what—or who—was down there, but it wasn’t Jordan.
He remembered the heavy body blocking their access to Jordan. He’d assumed… human. He wasn’t sure why, but he had.
“Marcus,” he said, his voice taut with concern, “you about done?”
“This goddamned—umph—fuck—” He sounded like he was talking through gritted teeth.
Click, click, click…
Mason carefully stepped up onto the stair behind him. “Somebody else is in here with us, and it ain’t Jordan.”
Chapter 31
From the sound of things, Marcus was working furiously to remove the panel, but Mason could already tell he wasn’t going to be fast enough. The tight pull of dread in his chest intensified. He thought about how he’d left Jordan, helpless, defenseless.
He hesitated, then said, “You get the door open. I’m going down.”
Something clattered to the landing, ringing with the sound of metal. “Don’t do it, you fucker. Don’t you do it.”
“It’ll give you time—”
“I’ve almost got—” He cut off with a hard yelp and a stagger, bumping into Mason’s back.
Mason grabbed the rail with his right hand out of habit and his shoulder screamed in pain at the sudden pull. His hand didn’t have enough strength to hold him, so he stumbled sideways into the wall, but he didn’t fall and Marcus’s weight shifted off him quickly.
“Sorry, sorry,” Marcus was saying behind him, hands patting at Mason’s back before taking a grip on Mason’s waistband.
“I’m okay. I got it.”
His balance, he meant, although his voice came out breathless because of the stabbing pains in his shoulder that were taking too goddamn long to ease up.
Marcus stopped apologizing and released him. Mason stayed put for a moment while he listened to Marcus’s feet shuffle across the landing again.
Somewhere in the dark below, the click, click, click became a click, click, clank, click, click, clank and Mason found himself holding his breath in anticipation of whatever might come next.
His position was unsustainable though, so he pushed away from the wall, grimacing as he did. His arm throbbed and his shoulder screamed and his hand shook with fine tremors. His shoulder was undoubte
dly healing and his pain was under more control than he had any right to expect, but that didn’t mean he could use his arm. Every time he forgot that, he felt like he was tearing the muscles and tendons in his shoulder apart all over again.
The air was stale and dry and unmoving and there was no way whoever was below didn’t know Mason and Marcus were there.
Wolves couldn’t see in absolute darkness—he didn’t think—but they could still hear remarkably well and their sense of smell—well, there was a reason running wasn’t the answer when a wolf caught your scent. Wolves were supreme trackers and they did most of that tracking with their goddamned noses.
Something shuffled behind him, fabric rubbing against the floor—Marcus, on his knees, resuming his work on the panel, his breath coming fast enough to tell Mason he was pushing himself, working as fast as he could.
“I’m almost there,” Marcus said. “Just hold off for a minute, okay?”
“It’s not Jordan,” Mason said again, even as that sense of dread tightened inside him. He couldn’t know who was making those sounds below—click, click, clank, click, click, clank—if it was human or wolf, and he couldn’t know if that human or wolf was friend or enemy.
But it didn’t matter what he couldn’t know, because he knew.
There was a wolf in here with them, someone who wasn’t Jordan, and that wolf was not a friend.
“I can’t,” Mason said, and he started down the stairs before Marcus could stop him.
“Dammit, Mason!”
But the crack of sound that followed told Mason that Marcus wasn’t going to try to follow him. He was working as fast as he could to dig his way deep into the panel’s insides and save both of them.
Mason eased his boot onto the next lower tread and gripped the rail until his knuckles ached. As he closed the distance between them, Jordan’s dread thundered like a heartbeat in his ears.
He couldn’t understand it, why it was such a physical thing.
He hesitated before taking his next step.
Jordan was awake. His silence had tricked Mason into believing he was still unconscious, but he wasn’t. A sense of Jordan’s feelings pushed hard at him, like the wind in a storm.
Shame. Determination. A surge of need and want. A desire for—
Something. What? He couldn’t—
Betrayal.
Earlier, Jordan had feared giving in to Mason’s human scent, because he had believed it was a betrayal of his duty to his alpha. How strong would that sense of betrayal be if Jordan couldn’t stop one of his pack’s enemies from claiming his alpha’s mate?
As soon as the thought solidified, Mason knew he’d hit on the reason for Jordan’s dread. His loyalty to his alpha was everything to him. His alpha’s mate was his to protect. His weakness was a shame he couldn’t escape and his need to fulfill his duty to his alpha a burning rage he couldn’t satisfy, just as he couldn’t satisfy the heat running through him.
A growl cut through the suffocating silence, much too close. Mason stopped in place, afraid to move a muscle, wishing he’d been counting the steps. He didn’t know how far from Jordan they’d climbed and he didn’t know how close he was now.
Too close, that was for sure.
The other body had been a few steps down from Jordan. He remembered the feel of denim under his palm and the cool skin. Wolves didn’t have cool skin. Maybe that had been what tricked him into believing the body was a dead human. He remembered the brush of hair against the side of his arm and the weight of the body, unmoving and heavy on the stairs when he’d scrambled to regain his stability while digging those bullets out of Jordan.
Not soft.
The wolf would be big. Male. More likely to be attracted to human scent.
You can distract him, the ever-present voice in his head told him with unsettling calm. Get right up on him and all he’ll want is to fuck. You don’t fight and you don’t cringe. You just do it, and maybe Marcus will make it out and find a way to stop those monsters from infecting the whole goddamned world and Jordan will have time to heal.
And when Jordan healed, Mason would have two wolves fighting over him on a stairwell where one wrong step could send him plunging down the stairs.
He’d break his goddamned neck.
Not good.
Possibly better than the alternative.
It shouldn’t have been funny, but he bit back a desperate laugh anyway and took another cautious step forward.
But what choice did he have? He couldn’t leave Jordan to die, and he couldn’t fight—not without leaving Marcus at risk once Mason was dead. He didn’t doubt for a minute that the fight would be over before it had started. Definitely not long enough to benefit Marcus.
As if to prove his point, Marcus let out a string of curses and banged hard enough at the door that the reverberation seemed to travel down the rail and into the palm of Mason’s hand.
Time for that distraction.
“Hey,” he said. “You want to tell me who you are? Are you hurt?”
The only response he got was a quiet grunt.
Maybe he’d been wrong, maybe—
“You should have submitted,” a wolf’s grave and deep voice echoed in the dark, scattering Mason’s thoughts like leaves in the wind. “Because now, human, all I want from you is to satisfy my heat before I tear out your throat.”
A rush of wrong wrong wrong smacked into Mason with all the weight of a fifty pound block of ice. He took a hurried step backward before he could stop himself. Oh shit. Oh, shit.
It was a goddamn curse. There was no other explanation for the trouble he kept finding himself in.
Mason clenched tight to the rail, the darkness suffocating him. His voice shook. “How’d you get here? I thought you had a broken neck.”
Screeeeeech.
An unpleasant tingle raced down Mason’s spine.
“I followed your scent,” the wolf said. “Paetinishikid should not have interfered, but I’m not foolish enough to stand against him when he chooses a path. So I chose retreat instead of death. And now I’m here to follow my fate.”
Something shifted heavily not that far from Mason. He strained his eyes trying to see into the unrelenting darkness but it was impossible. He couldn’t see a goddamned thing.
Mason’s dread started to spill over. “What are you doing?”
Click, click, clack…
“Stay away.” Jordan’s voice echoed weakly off the walls as he finally made his awareness known.
Was he talking to Mason—or the wolf?
“Jordan?”
“No.” Jordan’s voice was barely more than a rasp. “He isn’t yours. He belongs to… Weketekari.”
Fear ate at Mason’s stomach. Something was going on just a few feet away from him and he had no idea what.
The noises shifted so close Mason thought he could reach out and touch them. His fingers flexed on the railing, but his common sense was telling him not to make that mistake.
“This one will try to interfere. I can’t allow that. It’s unfortunate his loyalty to his alpha is so strong. He would have made me an excellent beta.”
Click, click, clack, clack, clack, clack…
Mason took a step down. “What are you doing? Tell me, goddammit.”
A loud thud echoed in the stairwell.
Jordan screamed.
Mason jerked, the sudden wash of—of—
Rage. Not his own, not Jordan’s, but so overpowering it consumed him.
He threw himself into the darkness toward the sound of the wolf. His shoulder slammed into something big and solid that fell back under his sudden weight.
Mason’s stomach lurched with what promised to be a long, painful fall.
But the wolf grabbed him and slammed him sideways into the wall, roaring so loud that it vibrated Mason’s eardrums. He flinched just as the wolf dropped him to the stairs.
“Mason!” Marcus yelled. “What the fuck’s going on down there?”
Mason couldn’t answ
er. He tumbled down three… four… maybe five steps with his hand scrambling for purchase and his shoulder stabbing him with a fiery burn so bright and hot he thought he might vomit right there. His knees thudded against the next step down and his descent stopped as suddenly as it had started.
“Jordan?” His voice came out high and tight, his concern a fierce pressure in his chest. “Jordan! Are you—” Dead.
Something heavy bumped into his shoulder and he realized Jordan wasn’t laid out on the stairs any longer. His body moved, twisting—
“What the fuck have you done?” Mason yelled into the darkness. He grabbed for Jordan, pulling, while something cold brushed the outer part of his arm.
What the fuck was it?
Clack, clack… hard against the wall.
“Jordan—Jordan—Answer me.” Mason yanked and heard the whish of something slide along the railing. His fingers brushed a rough fabric, thick and—
A fire hose. A goddamned fire hose had been wrapped around Jordan like one of those spider webs, binding him tight.
“Leave him,” the wolf growled as he hauled Mason upright by the back of his shirt.
Mason scrambled to keep his feet under him at the sudden shift in position. He struck out with his fist and his knuckles connected with a dull thud against unyielding muscle.
An arm? The wolf’s chest?
Still, the wolf didn’t seem to have the same trouble figuring out where Mason was and how to subdue him. He caught Mason by the throat and forced him onto his toes.
Choking, Mason grabbed at the wolf’s wrist with his left hand. His right arm refused to move more than a few inches, and even that caused a burning pain to tear through his shoulder. His vision narrowed and everything around him spun in a dizzy rush.
Or maybe that was caused by the fact that he couldn’t breathe. Claws bit into his skin, sending warm blood trickling down his neck.
“God…damn…you,” he gasped out.
The wolf pulled him forward and sniffed deeply, his breath hot, the hard line of his nose raking across Mason’s cheek.
