Page 58 of Fight or Fly

TWENTY-ONE

Leo

IRAN AFTER Irina andKam, huffing and puffing as I tried not to fall too far behind. Irina had retrieved us from our cell only moments ago. She hadn’t told us anything beyond the fact that they had ‘successfully retrieved the targets.’

Two huge black helicopters sat on the pavement that apparently served as the compound’s helipad. Dozens of people milled around them. Several were gesturing and shouting in Russian. Confusion and chaos reigned.

Irina collared a man in a white coat who was standing next to an empty gurney. “What’s happening?” she demanded.

“He went charging in there after Beckett, but one of the alphas was already inside,” the man replied in clipped tones, gesturing toward the nearest helicopter.

“Who went in? Nikolayev?” Irina said in a tone of foreboding, and the man nodded.

“Fuck!” she cursed, and charged toward the helicopter.

My stomach dropped. Kam and I exchanged a wide-eyed look and followed her up the metal ramp that had been placed beside the chopper’s open side door. Our footsteps clanged loudly.

An idea so improbable that I could scarcely credit it had been percolating through my mind during the course of this endless day of waiting. I hadn’t said anything to Kam, since I had no proof—and more than a hint of suspicion that the stress was finally getting to me, making me see patterns that weren’t there.

But when we skidded to a stop behind Irina and got a look inside the cabin, I knew with utter certainty that I was right.

“Sir!” Irina said, lunging forward and wrapping her fingers around Kostya Nikolayev’s arm. “Sir, please! Just stop for a minute! He’s only trying to protect—”

Nikolayevgrowled.

At the far end of the cabin, Jax stood poised in front of a struggling figure on a stretcher. The alpha’s fists were clenched, and blatant desire for murder lit his blue eyes. A faint hint of mint and lavender wafted to my nose, the pleasant scent overlaid with the sourness of fear and desperation.

“Oh my god,” Kam breathed.

“Jax!” I cried. “Step away from him—you don’t understand!”

Screwing up my courage, I held my breath and squeezed past Irina and Nikolayev toward the front of the cabin. I clamped a hand around Jax’s arm the same way Irina had grabbed the Russian’s.

Jax bared his teeth and tried to shove me behind him, but I set my feet, refusing to budge.

“I’ll kill him before I let him lay one hand on Beckett,” he snarled, his eyes never leaving Nikolayev’s. “I should fucking kill him anyway.”

I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled on it until he looked down at me. “No! Look at him, Jax! Don’t you see? He’s Beckett’s mate!” I said. “Nikolayev is an alpha—he’s the one Beckett’s been protecting all this time!”

Jax blinked down at me, a hint of shock breaking through mindless alpha rage.

“Please, Jax,” I begged softly. “Get out of his way before he decides to go through both of us.”

I could feel the tremor of exhaustion in Jax’s muscles, and I hadn’t missed the red-stained bandage wrapped around his thigh, either.

“Do as your omega says,” Nikolayev ground out, his Russian accent thicker than I’d ever heard it before. “Now.”

Kam darted past Irina to join us, taking Jax’s other arm. “Let’s step into the cockpit for a moment, yes? Unless my nose deceives me, those are heat markers—and while you might be willing to stand between an omega in heat and his mate, I’mreallynot.”

Between us, we dragged Jax step by hitching step around the stretcher and into the pilot’s area at the front of the aircraft. Kam steadied Jax as he swayed, his left leg threatening to buckle. We pressed him to one side of the small area and caged him in with our bodies. His ragged breathing filled the cockpit as he struggled to take this new twist on board.

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