Queen of Death

Ace

Nothing is ever easy when you lead the lives we do. But that fact notwithstanding, we are very good at what we do. The alarm sounds milliseconds after I teleport back into the facility. It’s interesting that it would sound on my way in and not on my way out. You’d think they’d have systems in place in case someone escaped, like just now. I don’t have time to overthink it, so I tuck that little piece of information away to analyze later.

A loud boom thunders over the noise of the alarm like an explosion followed by footsteps pounding their way down the stairs. My first thoughts are of Solana, Tate, and Hunter, sneaking through the corridors. Logically I know they’ll be okay, they can hide and Hunter is a weapons master. It’s my wolf that will always need to know that they’re safe and need to protect them when necessary.

Where are you three? Are you still with Solana? I link to Hunter.

My relief is immediate when Hunter’s voice comes through the link. We found the control room. Tate is combing through their computers now.

I grab my handguns, going through the motions of releasing and reloading the mags to keep my hands busy while I focus on what’s next. “The others are safe,” for now, I tell the guys. “Let’s buy them some time.”

Armed and ready, Dean leads us out of one of the laundry rooms into the hallway. The door to the stairwell behind us slams open, leaving a hole in the concrete wall behind it, and out pour at least a dozen guards who open fire.

I draw a ring of flames in the hallway behind me, hoping that it is enough to slow some of them down if not deter them from following us altogether. Half of the guards behind me do not brave the flames, while the other half step through my flames as if they weren’t even there. Their uniforms are equally unaffected. Either everyone here is wearing flame resistant threads or we’ve got both draconic and lupine guards. The latter is far more problematic than the former because it would mean that this operation is much larger than we initially suspected.

We’re moving quickly in the opposite direction as the guards, coming up on another corner and another stairwell when that door slams open too. I throw up more flames if only to conceal which way we turn. Eli leads us into the adjacent laundry room and we both bunker down in one of the large floor drains, pulling the grate back into place overhead. I’ve lost track of Dean in the transition and can’t mindlink him. It doesn’t worry me though. Even without shadows like his brother he can move seen and unseen when he wants to. Right now he’s either tunneling through the drains, up in a vent, or hiding in plain sight.

“Did you see where they went?” one of the guards asks.

“No but it can’t be far. Blue team head north for the command room, red team go south in case they tried to back track,” a different guard says and by the certainty with which he speaks I’m guessing he’s an authority figure here. The floor rumbles with the departure of the two groups of guards. “We’ll find them eventually, we’ve called in every guard we have and more reinforcements are on the way.”

“How many are we looking for?” The first guard speaks again.

“Three of them came through here,” the confident one responds, his voice getting louder as he stalks through the room looking for us. “But there could be as many as six. Five males and a hybrid female.”

“All this for one hybrid?” The first guard scoffs, half-heartedly kicking over boxes and lifting up sheets looking for us.

“Not just any hybrid. She’s the one with the bounty,” the second guard growls. “So make sure none of these trigger happy idiots accidentally shoot her.”

Hunter, it’s time to get the fuck out. There are guards everywhere and they know where you guys are. They’re coming for her. Eli warns Hunter through our mindlink.

Eli freezes the hands of the guards above us, guns and all, then lodges a perfectly aimed bullet at their frozen appendages, shattering them into a million shards. He pops up and out of the drain and embeds another bullet into each of their skulls while I climb out to join him.

We double back the way we came, firing bullets around corners and down halls as we approach our exit. There are more guards surrounding the perimeter when we open the door to the outside and we throw everything we can at them. Ice, fire, bullets, knives, anything to distract or debilitate them from getting to Solana and the others.

When all of the external guards are eliminated or incapacitated we take cover behind the tree line and watch the building for signs of the others. It’s not protocol. It’s actually the exact opposite of protocol. I’ve trained them to get in and get out, protect yourself first and if everyone does that then we can trust that we’ll all make it back home. Hesitating for even a second could be the difference between coming home and getting killed.

And yet here I am, waiting, hesitating.

Two lifetimes lapse in the span of several minutes as I wait helplessly in the trees until finally I see Solana’s black and purple dragon form blasting through a window in the far building. Hunter has shifted too and is running into the trees. Once I see the tips of Tate’s and Dean’s wings I don’t hesitate to grab Eli and teleport us both back home to await my mate and the rest of the pack.

— — —

Solana

I stare at the molten, glowing door like it’s some sort of crystal ball that holds all the answers. Molten metal on the door, how much more must I endure?

“Go with him,” Tate interrupts my thoughts. “You know you want to.”

“I see you’ve moved on from pushing me away to telling me what I want,” I rest against the edge of the console watching him work. “You’re cute.”

He scowls at me like I’ve insulted him on a fundamental level. “Cute?” he chews on the word, testing it out like it’s an adjective that shouldn’t apply to him.

“Cute,” I boop his nose for good measure. More like he allows me to boop his nose because he manages to bite my finger as my hand retreats.

“Maybe I wanted you to go with Hunter because I find you extremely –”

“Watch it,” I warn him with a raised brow.

“…distracting.”

I bark out a laugh, “distracting? How am I distracting? I’m sitting here waiting for you to finish up your nerdy, hacker, whatever,” I gesture vaguely at the console he’s sitting at.

He unplugs his USB and laptop from the server rack, and slips his stuff back into his bag.

“I can’t be the first person who finds you, you know, distracting. Do you mind?” He points at the molten door.

My eyes roll immediately. “You’re seriously that lazy? Walk through it!”

“And ruin my new boots?” He sasses me with an impressive amount of sarcasm.

The door melts into a fiery danger puddle on the floor and solidifies into metal once I let up on the heat.

In the hallway I notice that he’s still visible to me. “Did you forget how to stealth, or…?”

He smiles a beautiful, toothy smile at me as I slip past him and amble down the hallway.

“You know,” he says at normal conversational volume with zero regard for the alarm or the army of guards looking to kill or capture us, “so far you’ve called me lazy, nerdy, cute, and now you’re criticizing how I exit a job.”

At the end of the hall three guards come running around the corner, immediately opening fire at us when they notice us — well, really just him since he’s not shadowed.

We each throw a lethal dagger into two of the guards. “I’m not criticizing you at all, I was simply asking a question.”

Tate distracts the third while I shadow up to him and snap his neck. “Had I known how touchy you were going to be about it —“

“Touchy!” Tate roars with laughter that puts the sound of the alarm to shame. “Please, continue, I’m learning so much about myself,” he says with a shit eating grin.

The stairwell door is locked, but Tate kicks it in easily and gestures with exaggerated flair for me to enter, “ladies first.”

Attracted to the noise of the door crashing open, guards spill into the stairwell both above and below us. “Such a gentleman!” I coo sarcastically. “Who knew beneath that hard, chiseled exterior lives a romantic at heart.”

I blow a dart at the guard rounding the corner while Tate puts a bullet in the face of a guard leaning over the stair railing below us.

I’m almost a full flight above him when I snap my fingers at him to keep up. His eyes darken by a shade and his lip rolls beneath his teeth making goose flesh break out across my skin.

Is he seriously checking my ass out right now?

“Sorry, the view from down here is very distracting.” He steps over the guy I poisoned and takes the stairs two at a time to catch up to me.

“Losing focus could get you killed,” I say breathlessly now pinned against the wall by Tate’s hips. I see the guards approaching from behind him before he does, so I grab the knife he has behind his back and throw it at the front guard.

“Precisely why I told you to go,” he stabs a guard in the neck while I put a bullet in his two friends behind him and then blow another dart at the guy at the top of the stairs.

“Because you find me…distracting?” In his eyes I can see the reflection of my flames flare to life in my eyes.

“Yes,” he growls, kissing my neck and base of my jaw.

I kick the door at the top of the landing open and we both take cover against the wall on either side of the door, waiting patiently for the hail of bullets that come through to end.

“I knew what you meant,” I roll my head to the side to look at him, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “It’s precisely why I told you that you’re cute.”

We both shadow this time, which is useless when he swats my ass sending a loud crack echoing through the prison. I subsequently yelp myself out of the shadows and the guards rush to encircle Tate and me.

“Drop your weapons!” One of the guards barks at us from the other end of a rifle pointed at us.

Tate grabs me by the hips, hooking his fingers in my belt loops, and sighs deeply. “You’re going to be the death of me, do you know that?”

Then he lifts me up and throws me so that I have just enough space and momentum to open my wings and blast through one of the floor to ceiling windows on the other side of the cells.

Chaos erupts behind me — shouting, gunfire, an explosion. But above all that I hear Tate’s wings and someone’s paws on the ground. I think I see Fox, Hunter’s wolf, cross into the tree line just before I lift into the clouds and aim myself homeward.