Escaping Death

Ashes - Stellar

Now that I got a taste

I think that I’d suffocate

For every second that you aren’t by my side

But now I’m stuck at the gate

Of Lucifer’s estate

I fell in love with a girl I met in Hell

— — — — —

Ace

The last hour has gone by in the blink of an eye. Our guys had an extraction last night so today the four of us went in to help with processing while Hunter closes out the yacht job. Tate is scouring the Underdark channels on at least three different things so really it’s just Eli, Dean, and me getting a dozen girls processed and housed.

We’re nowhere near finished but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to focus on my task. My mind keeps wandering to Solana and Hunter, wondering if they’re at each other’s throats or if they’ve finally cleared the air. There’s a noticeable tension constricting my chest. It began at first only when I’d think of them, but now it’s constant. But then again my mind is now constantly thinking about them. Either way it doesn’t feel good.

I rub at my chest hoping to soothe the ache but it’s relentless. The hand that’s not kneading my chest reaches for my phone to call Hunter. Maybe if I check in with them and confirm that they’re fine I’ll stop thinking about them and this ache will finally loosen its grip on my chest.

Hunter picks up on the third ring. “Yeah?” Hunter sounds exasperated.

Before I can say anything there’s a loud bang and a crash in the background, followed by a heavy thud. “What the fuck! Solana get back here!” Hunter’s voice sounds distant, like he dropped the phone.

For fuck’s sake. I really can’t leave these two alone. I sit on the phone listening for their voices but all I hear is Hunter cursing to himself. The sound of footsteps on gravel becomes louder and louder until there’s some shuffling while Hunter picks up the phone he dropped.

“All good?” I ask Hunter when I hear him sigh into the phone.

“No, Sol took off. Fuck!” Hunter growls and I can hear him slam his hands against the car.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath before I completely lose my shit. “Took off where?” I manage to growl out without fuming.

“If I knew that, don’t you think I’d be following her? She fucking flew off!”

“Watch it, Hunter.” I snarl at him through the phone. By now Tate has taken note of my conversation and walks over to me when I nod at him. “I’ll get Tate to track her phone.”

Tate’s eyes roll to the back of his head and he walks away muttering something insulting about Hunter and his babysitting skills.

“Don’t bother. It’s sitting in my car.”

“What the fuck happened this time?” I bark into the phone, my tightening grip threatening to crush it in my hand.

“I told you to keep her at home,” he seethes at me lowly. “Reef wanted her in exchange for the girls we intercepted.”

Rage burns white hot through my veins so fast that all I see is red. “He put his hands on her?”

Hunter lets out an animalistic growl. “No one will ever touch her.”

On that we can agree.

“But it threw her, she’s been through this shit before when she lost our…”

He doesn’t finish his thought, but I know what he stopped himself from saying. It’s something I’ve tried not to think about after realizing how she knew him.

He pupped her.

As painful as that is to swallow, imagining her grief over losing that pup makes their history seem so trivial by comparison. I have no right to be mad at the choices she made before she met me, but I sure as hell can be furious at the people who hurt my mate.

I sigh heavily, my fire doused by his explanation. “Go home, H. I need you there in case she shows up. I’ll have Tate see what he can do about locating her.”

“I don’t need her phone to track her, she only ever goes to two places,” Tate says from behind his computer as I hang up with Hunter.

He’s right, there are only two places she would have gone, places where she feels safe— feels free. “Caligo is on the other side of town. You’ll have to fly. Text me if you find her.”

I teleport out of my office and over to the grounds of Shadowmoon. I came here once with Hunter when he first joined us. He had left some things behind from when he’d spent time here with Sol, so while he got whatever he needed I had wandered into the back garden where a giant Magnolia tree stood proudly.

I stare up at that very tree right now, nothing about it has changed. It’s still growing strong.

Solana’s scent is easy to identify, though it’s faint and it’s everywhere. Nature has begun to reclaim most of the buildings and structures around the property but the pack house looks pristine.

I search the entire house but there’s no sign of her. Just empty rooms. I don’t like thinking about her living here all on her own with absolutely no protection. No border patrol, no warriors or guards, not even a fucking alarm system on the house. Just her.

My phone vibrates with a text from Tate saying she’s not at the club either and her coworkers haven’t seen her since the night she first came to us.

My fingers thread through my hair as I once again find myself completely out of control when it comes to this woman. Part of me wants to go home and hope she comes back, another part of me wants to scour the city and rest only when she’s found. But Solana won’t be found unless she wants to be found.

With that aggravating truth I begrudgingly go back to work, hoping that it can keep me busy and distracted enough that I don’t lose my mind wondering where she is.

***

The work took me three times as long as it should have. Mostly because I spent most of the time pissed off that she was nowhere to be found, and the rest of the time imagining all the ways to kill Reef for what he suggested about taking Solana.

Dinner was silent. I think they could feel how tightly wound I was and how fine the thread was that Hunter was hanging on by. He picked at his plate before pushing it away completely and heading outside to chop more wood, like he always does when he needs to burn off steam.

Tate flew back over to Caligo for a while and I’ve been teleporting over to Shadowmoon every 30 minutes, but still no sign of her.

It’s well past sunset when a gunshot goes off outside the house. Eli, Hunter, and I alert to the sound like the bloodhounds we are and all five of us run out of the front door with guns raised.

That’s when her scent hits me. Solana.

My vision tunnels as I run towards the street where I catch sight of her pinned beneath some hired muscle. Hunter throws an ax at the hand aiming a gun out of the car across the street effectively alleviating the hand from its owner while Dean blows out the back window with a bullet.

The driver floors it thinking he’ll be able to outrun us. That’s his second mistake this evening — thinking he’d walk away with his life. The first was coming after Solana in the first place.

“Get her inside!” I yell out to Eli before following Tate flying after the car. The driver swerves wildly down the road, cutting across corners and lawns, breaking through fences and mailboxes in a futile attempt to get away.

I shoot out another window spooking the driver into crashing into a nearby tree. Two bullets easily find their way from Tate’s gun into the heads of the two guys in the car.

“Check them for any marks or brands.” I tell Tate.

We rip open their shirts and roll up their sleeves looking for anything that links them to a pack or colony.

The driver’s head falls to the other side exposing his neck where his brand stares at me, taunting me.

“Fucking piece of shit!” I roar. “They’re Reef’s guys.”

“How would they know who Sol was and, more importantly, how could they know she was here?” Tate asks.

“He doesn’t want her for the bounty, Hunter said he wants to auction her. He must have had his guys tail Hunter here.”

I didn’t think it was possible to be this angry where I can practically literally feel my blood boiling beneath my skin. My wolf is urging me to get to Sol, to breathe her in, to hold her to me before my rage kills me.

I teleport back to where the group was and find Solana between Dean and Eli, blue with frost, wearing Dean’s hoodie.

It would appear I’m not the only one losing control of their emotions tonight. I’ll deal with Eli’s lack of control later, for now I need to bring my errant mate to heel.

“I.D. the bodies, stage the car,” I say to no one in particular. My focus is exclusive to Solana. She easily steps out of Dean’s hold when I grab onto her shoulders and pull her through the void and into my room.

She’s caged between my arms against the door and I’m fighting like hell to keep my wolf from taking control. I function best when I have complete control over things, so I know what to expect and when to expect it. But with Sol… all that evaporates.

She’s like goddamn entropy — creating disorder where there is order. She’s like a force equal and opposite of mine.

If I have any chance of letting her go when this is all said and done I should practice now. If I were smart I would walk away, let her go, and pretend like the hundred questions I have aren’t eating me alive.

But I guess I’m not smart because with the next bat of her eyelashes my hand grips her jaw and my leg presses against her center pinning her to the door so she has no defense against the way my mouth descends to attack hers.

I brand her lips in a punishing kiss, I bite at her lip with a growl so she knows I’m still proper pissed at her fucking stunt today. She can need space, but she can’t fall off the face of the Earth.

She relaxes into me, moaning against my mouth and whimpering every time I nip at her. It’s a vicious positive feedback loop because the more vocal she is the more possessive and demanding my kiss becomes.

Needing to feel her curves beneath my fingers I release her jaw and slide my hand down the side of her breast, pausing to run my thumb over her perking nipple, before continuing down the side of her body and ending at her hips.

I grip onto two handfuls of her hips, thrusting her closer to me.

A throaty moan rebounds around the room breaking our kiss. I nip and bite at her jaw as she drapes her arms around my shoulders and ruts against the leg that’s still pinning her to the door.

I can feel her wet heat through her leggings against my jeans. She slides her pussy over my leg again and again, her eyes roll back and her breathing turns into panting as if she were in heat.

The corner of my mouth twitches up in a smirk when I realize how close she is to coming. My lips rest against her ear and I whisper, “are you going to come for me, Solana? Will there be a mark on my jeans where your sweet pussy comes on me?”

Solana pulls my face down towards hers so our foreheads rest comfortably against one another. Her breathing halts as she grinds harder into my leg a few more times before gasping in a breath and moaning a garbled version of my name as she finds her release, soaking my jeans through her leggings.

When she finally looks at me, her eyes are a live, burning green flame. I’m stunned into silence and, what little breath remained in my lungs after watching her ride herself to orgasm on my leg, evacuates my body.

I’m so fucked it’s not even funny.

If I have any hope of keeping her safe from predators, both outside and inside this house, I can’t let her have control over me like this. I need to snuff out this growing flame immediately.

“The next time you take off I’ll deliver you to Twilight Grove in a cage, do you understand?”

Hurt flashes in her eyes, literally extinguishing their flame and replacing it with a stern glare through emerald green eyes streaked with a molten hot orange.

I teleport out leaving her alone in my room with my last words still heavy in the air. I can feel her embarrassment and rage through our ever strengthening bond.

Good, I think to myself. It’ll be easier for her to leave if she’s angry. And, with any luck, I can keep these mounting feelings for her from blooming.