“I took out one of the guards. I’m not sure where the other one is.”
Vixen. Jeremiah hadn’t seen her since she followed him down the stairs earlier. “Main floor,” he grunted, his Glock kicking in his hand as he pulled the trigger. The man in front of him dropped to the floor, the gun falling from his hand. Scientist his ass. If that bastard was a scientist, he would eat his own balls. The large bastard had come at him, holding the revolver like he knew how to use it.
“That bitch put some of her own men down here,” he snarled. “These aren’t scientists.”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Vixen agreed, a sai appearing in her hand, and then it soared through the air until it was embedded in the throat of another threat headed their way.
He heard Anya scream, and took off at a run down the long hallway. “Get them out of their cells!” he yelled, not looking back.
He found her in her office, her hands raised as she slowly backed away from one of the male scientists. “What are you doing?” she cried.
“You are a traitor,” the man said, leveling a gun on her. “I’ve seen how you look at those abominations. As if you care about them.”
“I do care,” she admitted. “They are human beings, too. They don’t deserve what you are doing to them.”
“They are animals. And you, are a traitor. Which is why you will die.”
Not hesitating, Jeremiah raised his gun and unloaded it on the asshole. “Let’s go!” They needed to get out of there quickly. Shit was hitting the fan, and they had to get topside. “Anya, now!” he hollered, trying to get her moving, but she stood staring at him in shock. When she looked around her office in confusion, he closed the distance between them, and frowned at the small circle of blood on her side that was slowly becoming larger and larger. “Shit, you’ve been hit.”
Anya bowed her head, her hands going over the wound. When she raised her eyes to look at him, his beast growled at the resolve in them. “Go. Save them.”
“Screw that,” he snarled, crossing the room to pick her up in his arms.
“You can move faster without me, Jeremiah.” Her breathing was becoming labored, shock kicking in. “Please, they need to come first.”
“I will not sacrifice your life for theirs.” Ignoring her pleas, Jeremiah cleared the office and ran down the hall to where Vixen was coming out of the wolf pup’s room, the tiny furball cradled in her arms, shaking with fear. His gaze went to Jasmine, and the wolf and lynx who waited impatiently at the top of the stairs. “Jasmine, I need you to take the pup so Vixen can fight. I won’t be able to since I’m carrying Anya.”
“Dammit, I told you. Leave me behind. Their lives are so much more important than mine!”
“No,” Jasmine said, rushing forward to take the pup from Vixen. “I wouldn’t have survived here without you, Anya. None of us would have. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“You have to!” Anya argued, crying out in pain when she moved in Jeremiah’s arms. “Your family needs you. I have no one. I won’t be missed.”
“You have us,” Vixen vowed, stalking past them to the top of the stairs. “We aren’t leaving you behind. End of discussion.”
Tears fell down Anya’s face as she glared at them stubbornly. “Then, at least let me walk. I can do that!”
Jeremiah hesitated, indecision crawling through him. He needed his hands free to fight, but he didn’t trust the woman not to sacrifice herself for them. She didn’t seem to see that her life mattered, too. “You sure you can?”
“Yes,” she snapped, beginning to struggle in his arms. Her face went white with pain, but she smacked him in the chest. “Put me down.”
Slowly, against his better judgment, he sat her on her feet. She swayed slightly, but then seemed to get her bearings. “Go,” he ordered, pointing toward the stairs.
Anya began to move, slowly at first, but with determination. The lynx broke away from the others and came to walk beside her, the wolf right behind him.
“Vixen and I will go first,” Jeremiah told them. “All of you, stay right behind us. I have friends above that will be watching for us.”
“They are busy taking care of the shit ton of soldiers Ebony sent,” Vixen said, keying in the code in the pad next to the door. “That bitch wasn’t playing around.”
Jeremiah held his breath, letting it out when the door opened. Until he saw Rena standing at the top of the stairs, her gun pointed at them. Rena’s gaze went past them to where Jennings lay in a heap, blood pooling around his body. “Shit.” Her arm was steady, but he could scent the fear that enveloped her. “Get back down those stairs.”
“Rena.”
Her wild-eyed gaze on him, she shook her head. “No! Back down the stairs, now!”
“If we go down those stairs, we all die,” Vixen said quietly. “Ebony wants everyone in this facility dead. That includes you.”
“No.” Rena shook her head in denial. “Why would she do that? You’re lying!”
“Right now, she has several of her soldiers outside, trying to get in to kill what’s left of us,” Vixen told her. “Keaton and his men left, Rena. They are gone. We are all that are left. She wants all of us dead.”
Jeremiah saw Rena’s jaw harden, her eyes going cold. In that one moment, he knew she would never listen to what they had to say. Never trust them. “I don’t believe you.”
“Then she’s already won.”
“As she should.”
Vixen sighed, shaking her head. “No, Rena, she shouldn’t.” So fast, Jeremiah almost missed the action, Vixen slid a knife from her pants, stepped forward, and slid it across the guard’s throat. He heard Anya’s soft cry of alarm from behind him, but didn’t turn around. There was nothing he could do for her now. He agreed with Vixen’s decision to take out the imminent threat. It was her or them, and he would choose them every time.
“Which way?” he asked Vixen, knowing she was connected psychically with RARE. They would tell them the best way out.
“The front door is as good as any,” she said with a shrug. “Your mate says if you get one scratch on you, she’s going to go ballistic.”
Jeremiah grinned, making his way down the hall to the door. “If I do, she can kiss them better later.”
“I’m not telling her that.”
“You afraid of my sweet wolf, Vixen?”
“Sweet is not a word I would use to describe her,” Vixen said dryly, then paused. “Shit! I forgot you were wearing that damn microphone.”
Chuckling, Jeremiah glanced back at her. “Chewed your ass out, didn’t she? She’s amazing.”
Vixen glared at him, shaking her head and flipping him off. He laughed.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
Jeremiah froze, his eyes going down the hall, beyond where the others stood waiting. His eyes narrowed in confusion, and he cocked his head to the side, inhaling deeply. What the fuck? “You look like Ebony, but you definitely aren’t her.”
The woman walked toward them, her long black hair in a high ponytail, lips painted a dark red to match the top she wore. Black leather pants covered her legs, black boots on her feet. She was a fighter, another assassin, that much was plain to see. Her eyes were cold, hard, deadly. She was there to kill them, and wouldn’t stop until they all took their last breath.
“No, I’m not. Name’s Envy. She’s my sister, which I’m sure you’ve figured out. Same daddy, different mom.”
“But just as evil.”
The woman laughed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Eyes that were almost a pure black in color. “Call it what you want. I get the job done.” Leveling her gun at the wolf, she squeezed the trigger. A deep growl left the wolf’s throat, and then a quiet whine, as he collapsed to the floor in pain.
“No!” Anya cried, dropping to her knees beside him, holding her hands to his wound to try to stop the bleeding.
“Seems to me you should be worrying about your own problems instead of his,” Envy said, grinning darkly, motioning to Anya’s side. “Maybe you can bleed out together.”
Anya glared at her. “Go to hell.”
“Been there, done that, got the tee shirt.” A low growl filled the hallway, and the lynx bared his huge fangs at her. “Awe, such a pretty kitty. Wonder how you will look dead and stuffed on my wall?”
Anya moved in front of the lynx quickly when the woman pointed her gun in his direction. “Enough!”
Grinning, Envy tilted her head to the side. “Are you willing to die for an animal?”
“He’s not an animal.”
“Seriously? Look at him? He’s a fucking cat.”
“He’s also a human being!”
“I’ll ask you one more time. Are you willing to die for him?”
Anya didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“No!” Jeremiah roared, springing forward at the same time the lynx slipped past Anya. Neither of them were fast enough. Ebony’s sister pulled the trigger, her mouth twisted up in an evil grin.
Rikki heard her mate’s loud roar, felt his rage, and then heard the loud pop of a gun firing… twice. Her hand on her rifle, she took out two more soldiers before grabbing hold of a tree branch and swinging down, dropping to the ground. She knew Jeremiah and the others were in the front of the building, so she ran to the side door hoping to sneak up behind them. Skirting around the fighting, she leaped over dead bodies that littered the ground. She flinched when there was the loud screeching snarl of a lynx in her ear, and then Jeremiah’s voice, low and deadly. “You are a dead woman.”
“We all have to die sometime.”
Rikki keyed in the code she remembered from Connors and slipped into the side of the building. It took her a moment, making her way down two wrong hallways, before she found them. The lynx stood over a woman who was bleeding out all over the floor, her long mass of hair tangled around her, her eyes staring unseeing down the hall in Rikki’s direction. There was blood dripping from the lynx’s front shoulder, but he didn’t let it stop him. A wolf lay next to them, his breathing labored as he fought for his life. Vixen stood, legs apart, a sai in each hand, her eyes never leaving the woman in front of her who held her gun on them. Another woman, smaller than the rest, held something close to her as she seemed to try to fade into the walls behind her.
“You were sent by Ebony? She must have known her soldiers wouldn’t make it through.” Rikki saw Jeremiah move slightly, as if to try to cover Anya more.
The woman, Envy, shrugged. “She didn’t have to send me. When I heard what she had planned, I volunteered to come. Sounded like fun.”
“You think killing people is fun?”
“Yes, actually, I do.”
Rikki dropped to a knee, lifting her rifle and sighting it in. Her wolf was pushing at her, trying to get out to protect their mate, but Rikki struggled to stay calm. She had no control over her wolf when she set her free, but this she could control. This was something she had done for years. Something she was good at. She would protect her mate in the way she knew how.
“You are one sick bitch,” Vixen said, slowly beginning to twirl one of the sais.
Envy laughed. “You mean you don’t get excited whenever you pull the trigger, or when you cut someone with one of those things?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I do,” Rikki called out, waiting until Envy swung around to stare at her in surprise before she pulled the trigger. The bullet lodged between her eyes, eyes opened wide in shock, and she slowly collapsed to the ground, her gun held tightly in her hand.
Rikki heard a loud commotion behind her, but she didn’t turn around. Her nostrils flared, and the scents of her teammates washed over her. Her eyes didn’t leave her mate’s. He stepped away from the carnage behind him, his gaze on her, his arms opening wide. She was down the hall and launching herself at him in seconds, his name on her lips as she held him tightly.
Vaguely, Rikki was aware of Nico rushing past her to where the wolf and Anya lay, Jaxson, Bane, and Sapphire on his heels. Lost in her mate, she didn’t get jerked back to the present until she heard one of them say they were losing her. Anya.
“Shit.”
Rikki heard the pain in Jeremiah’s voice, and she held him tightly to her as they watched Nico and Jaxson work on Anya while Bane and Sapphire tried to save the wolf.
“I got the bullet out of him,” Bane said, holding a hand out to his sister. “Need to stitch him up.”
“Got the one out of her side, but the one in her chest is lodged in deep. I’m going to prep her as much as I can, but we need to get her back to Doc Josie for surgery, now.”
Rikki gasped when the lynx who stood guard over Anya shifted, and a dark haired, golden skinned man took his place. Ignoring his own injury, he looked at Nico. “Is she going to make it?” he asked gruffly, reaching over to run a hand down her hair.
Nico wiped at his brow, shaking his head. “I honestly don’t know.”
“She saved my life. Took a bullet that was meant for me.” Rikki heard the confusion in the male’s voice.
“Because she cares,” Jasmine said, stepping forward.
“She doesn’t even know me,” he argued, his hand stroking her hair once again.
“She cares about all of us,” Jasmine insisted, clutching the small pup in her arms. “You have to save her. Please.”
“I’ll do my best,” Nico promised.
“That isn’t good enough,” the man growled, his fingers sliding gently over Anya’s cheek.
“Who is she to you?” Angel asked quietly, but Rikki was sure she already knew.
“Mine,” the man growled, lowering his head to rub his cheek against Anya’s. “She’s mine.”
Ebony stared dispassionately at the feed that played across the screen in front of her. She’d just watched one of her sisters get shot in the head, a sister who actually had something going for her, and it pissed her off. Another thing that had her shaking with unsuppressed rage was watching how disloyal her employees were. Well, her father’s employees. She would pick them better in the future. But all of this did raise a question.
“Jinx.”
“Yeah?” He was standing behind her, close to the door. She didn’t trust him, never had, but he was the best at what he did. She needed him. She was just going to have to figure out how to keep him on a tight leash. Her father had never been good at that. It needed to change.
“How the hell did they find out about what was going to happen at the facility in Virginia?”
“No idea.”
“None?”
“No.”
Ebony nodded slowly, her eyes still on the screen in front of her. “I thought you said Vixen was dead?”
“No, I said she failed.”
It was the truth. But, in his line of work, to fail meant one was dead, because the assassins didn’t keep anyone alive. Ebony stayed quiet for now. She didn’t believe him, but she had more important things to worry about. She had a meeting to attend. At Gavin’s penthouse.