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Which is when I realized where the node was. Not here, at my feet. Here below my feet. Down in the subterranean living quarters I’d spent days locked within.
Now I was the one swearing, using Ryder’s words to warm the hollow pit of my belly. Butch and I alone couldn’t storm the walls of Rowan’s compound. It was doubtful if all of our allies together could do so, not with the defenses I’d seen during my tour.
But a single thief might make it past those defenses. If she was subtle. And skilled.
“I need a distraction.”
I expected Butch to push for more information. Instead, he half-bowed, the gesture almost toppling him. “Any particular location or duration?”
“Away from the compound. As long as you can last.”
Then I fell back on my strongest skill—innocuousness. Sheathing my sword and dropping my gaze, I prepared to make a break for it.
Something exploded behind me and I ran. Past McCallister shifters, who were shouting and panicking. Whatever Butch was doing, it had certainly attracted their attention.
And I was a lone female. Apparently unarmed and overtly submissive. The macho McCallisters were hardwired to let me past.
I made it to the treeline before dropping the act. Heard battle rematerializing behind me and winced as I imagined Butch crumpling during his distraction’s grand finale.
Because he wouldn’t have given up so soon unless he’d run out of energy. Or unless someone had forced him to stop.
Had Ryder backtracked to help him? Had Lupe come to his assistance? I wouldn’t be able to tell at this distance, so I didn’t even look.
Instead, I curved through the woods until I reached the back face of Rowan’s mansion. The whole thing had been security alarmed up the wazoo, from what I remembered during the day Jasmine walked me through it. But I suspected they hadn’t had time yet to fix the window Ryder had broken during our escape....
Sure enough, an expanse of plywood met my fingers as I pushed through the final line of shrubbery and straightened. Tensing, I waited for motion-activated lights to come on. For sirens to blare. For the guards Rowan must have left behind to arrow in on my hiding place.
But nothing happened. I’d gotten lucky. This location had no external security. And the internal security, I hoped, had been disabled during our hurried retreat.
Now, finally, the weight in my pocket came in handy. I drew out the battery-powered drill I’d bought before meeting with the alphas. Made short work of a dozen screws.
The plywood fell to the ground as I attempted to lower it. Splinters bit into my palms. But I was smiling.
Or maybe my wolf was smiling. When I ran my tongue across my teeth, they were remarkably sharp.
And it was a good thing my inner wolf was present. Because lupine eyes saw the movement inside the darkened room before human eyes would have.
As suspected, Rowan hadn’t taken all of his fighters with him. Someone left behind had heard my drill and come to investigate.
I shoved myself through the windowless cavity, tackling my enemy to the ground.
***
THE OTHER SHIFTER DIDN’T struggle. Instead, she lay there beneath me, scent heavy with annoyance. After a moment, she put that emotion into words.
“If you’ll let me up, we can deal with the problem in the harem.”
“Jasmine?” I recognized her voice. Still, she’d been the one who led Tank into what appeared to have been a trap. So I rolled sideways but kept my hand clamped down on her wrist. “Where’s Tank?”
“Is that really relevant given the bigger picture?” She was blustering. I could tell because her shoulders slumped when I squeezed her wrist bones together.
“Where,” I repeated, “is Tank?”
“He’s fine,” she assured me. “I hid him in the harem yesterday just like he asked me to. But one of the younger girls saw him and shrieked so loud half the pack showed up. If it wasn’t for those scars....”
My own patience was fleeing quickly. I shook Jasmine, or rather my wolf shook her. So this was why alphas turned so brutal. If I’d been in wolf form, I might have given her a little nip to speed the story along.
The shake, luckily, was effective at getting Jasmine back on track. “Rowan locked him in the barracks,” she explained before my wolf could entirely take over. “I don’t have the key and we lack the time to look for it. The sounds from the harem are getting stranger....”
That was where the node was. I knew in my gut.
Still when I released Jasmine and sprinted down the stairs, I didn’t head toward the harem. Instead, I retraced the far more familiar path to the room I’d been locked within.
***
TANK WASN’T IN THE exact same room that had caged me, as Jasmine explained when she caught up. My guide was annoyed by the side trip, but she led me to the proper door anyway. Stood beside me and tapped her foot as I pulled out my lock picks.
“There isn’t time for this. Can’t you hear the fighting?”
I could. And the fact I could hear it through several yards of soil and concrete was a bad sign indeed.
Still, I was more concerned with whether Marina was aware of my proximity. Maybe, if I was lucky, she couldn’t tell the difference between me being here and up above on the battlefield. Or, more likely, she simply wasn’t interested while opening the node.
Either way, there was no hurrying the lock. No hurrying the slow search for the proper tumblers. Ah, there. I grinned as I heard the sound I’d been waiting for. The click of an obstruction drawing back.
The door swung inward so fast I lost my balance and fell forward. Onto Tank. Into Tank. He smelled like home and I wanted nothing more than to snuggle up against his skin.
Instead, I drew back, cocking my head. There was dried blood on his face, as if Marina had tried and failed to force him to do her bidding. His shoulders weren’t stooped, though. And he’d taken advantage of his time in solitary confinement to assemble an armful of something I couldn’t quite make sense of.
“What are those?”
“Slats from the cot. Metal.” His eyes smiled even if his lips didn’t. “Do we know where the node is?”
“Yes, if you’ll let me take you there,” Jasmine huffed, grabbing a slat and turning back down the passage we’d come in through. She was ready to fight, even if she didn’t know anything about the danger we were facing.
Jasmine was clearly coming with us, so I provided the bare minimum of information. “Metal through a fae’s chest will send them back to the other side,” I called after her, even as the fingers of Tank’s free hand slid between mine. His sturdiness was grounding, making up for lack of sleep and far too high stakes.
And even though we should have followed Jasmine immediately, Tank used our joined hands to draw me in closer. Then he kissed me. Or I kissed him. Whoever did the kissing, it was fast and fierce. More like the meeting of wolves than the affection of a man.
My wolf and I responded, curling around our partner. Hot, intense, the rest of the world faded....
Until, abruptly air separated us, all except our interlocked fingers. I’d pushed Tank away at the same moment he’d ended our embrace. Jasmine was still in sight, fifteen feet distant.
“There’s no time...” I started just as Tank promised:
“Later.”
Together, we raced to catch up with Jasmine. The heat between us would have to wait until we closed the node. We were ready to dive into battle first.
Well, not quite ready. I fumbled to exchange weapons without unlocking our intertwined fingers.
“Are you sure?” Tank’s eyebrows rose as I offered him the sword I’d chosen out of Lupe’s stash back at the campground.
“I’ll do just as well with a stake,” I promised, taking the bundle of slats he still held in his hand. “There are a lot of these. Did you expect me to bring an army?”
“From the sound of it, it seems you did.”
This time he did smile, an expression that should have been horrifying with the new streaks of red joining old scars and twisting his face into a Halloween mask. Instead, a burst of joy hastened my footsteps. And Tank sped up to match me until we ran in perfect synchrony. Ran like pack wolves on a hunt.
Ran into air that sweetened ominously. Papaya, then pineapple. By the time the three of us passed through the shower room and turned into a passage I’d never traversed before—the one, I assumed, leading to the harem—it felt like I was racing through a human-sized bowl of fruit.
A bowl of fruit that was already rotting. Rotting into words just loud enough to hear over our pounding footsteps.
“If I help you through, you’ll be indebted,” Marina warned, her voice even more beautiful than it had been previously. Her bell-like tones rang down the corridor, carrying floral odors along for the ride.
“Understood.” The chorus came in at least half a dozen voices. All were equally beautiful, but their combination was so dissonant it set my teeth on edge.
“For one year, you will remain indentured,” Marina continued. “At the end of that time....”
I never learned what would happen on the next Samhain because Jasmine burst through the doorway ahead of us. She wasn’t waiting for backup. Wasn’t waiting for the right moment. Instead, she was bound and determined to squash the danger to her pack.
Tank and I could do no less.