Page 93 of Fae Devoted
At Anand’s grating insistence, King Alexander ordered Jeremiah to remain with Tucker at all times. The brothers’ priority was to find and remove Jo and Charlotte from the premises by any means necessary. A dictate the brothers accepted without argument.
Tucker hurdled the fence in tandem with Jeremiah, ignoring the bite of iron stinging his skin as he crossed over. The instant he touched down, he picked up Jo’s trail despite it being over a day old. In wolf form, a shifter could find his mate in a rainstorm if pressed.
Jeremiah stayed on his six as they passed a guard face down in the yard, the man rendered unconscious by a sleep spell. Jo’s faint aroma led to the farmhouse’s porch and up the worn wooden steps. Tucker padded through the open doorway, past the empty living room, and into the kitchen, where a large mandressed in jeans and a baseball cap was knocked cold. Rose’s handiwork.
Tucker didn’t give a shit if he was an off-duty soldier or the fake owner of the make-believe homestead. The human was merely another obstacle to be removed to get to his she-wolf.
Ethan and the queen waited for them in a narrow elevator shaft in what should have been the kitchen’s pantry. Their faces were uncovered, telling Tucker the Anwyll had disabled the house cameras upon entry. The audio and live sentries would remain an issue until Samuel and Remington secured the control room, or the witch-vampire duo took the unsuspecting soldiers stationed underground out of the equation.
“We need his thumbprint,” the battle witch mouthed, incapable of sub-vocal speech.
Ethan bent to grab the man laid out at Rose’s feet, but the queen beat him to it. She yanked the two-hundred-pound human up by his wrist, almost popping his arm out of its socket. Twisting his forearm, she pressed his thumb to the electronic pad then tossed him at the kitchen island. His shoulder hit the marble edge hard before collapsing into a heap on the tile floor.
Tucker heard bone crack.
The queen lifted a deceptive delicate shoulder and a single eyebrow, utterly unrepentant at inflicting injury on the facility’s employee. Rose considered anyone who messed with the people under her protection fair game. Whether this particular Untouched harmed Abby in the past or Jo in the present was irrelevant. He was guilty by association and deserved swift retribution.
Tucker and Jeremiah shifted to human form to fit inside the elevator, then moved to stand behind Ethan and in front of the queen. They descended, and the witch’s lips moved, reciting an incantation over the red cube he pulled from his shirt pocket. The shiny object illuminated, and the smell of anise and blacklicorice saturated the air. As the elevator doors opened, the box flashed once, the compact square changing to the color of wet clay. The guards monitoring the video feed would now see an empty corridor; the cameras within a hundred-yard radius on freeze-frame.
Ethan reactivated a privacy ward to hide the echo of his boots on the concrete flooring and left the elevator. A Dádhe didn’t require a spell to move soundlessly—and neither did a Ferwyn wolf.
Tucker joined Ethan in the deserted hallway, then converted to four legs. Jeremiah did the same, their noses lifting in unison, seeking direction. Citrus and woodsy rose combined with the smell of human sweat, chlorine, the barest hint of witch vanilla, and…charcoal?
Rose cocked her head and sped to the end of the T-shaped corridor, flattening her lithe body against the side of the left wall. She held her palm up flat, telling them to wait. A Dádhe’s hearing was unmatched by any other Fae Touched race.
The tattoo beneath Ethan’s ear flared to life, long seconds passing before Tucker heard the clomp of heavy footsteps approaching the tunnel’s intersection. Once the sound’s owner was in range, the queen flew into action.
The soldier never saw her—or her fist—coming.
Rose’s arm shot out like a bullet, knuckles striking the man on the side of his neck. The strength-controlled jab connected with his carotid artery, and he fainted from the abrupt drop in blood pressure. She caught him before he hit the ground, her pupils glowing scarlet.
Ethan grinned and soundlessly cast the spell that would keep the human asleep for hours. Every alarm in the building could blare, and he wouldn’t awaken.
The queen stuffed the soldier into the first empty room they came across, then she and Ethan strode back the way they came while Tucker and Jeremiah headed in the opposite direction.
The faint scent trail of orange blossoms and pink peppercorns led him to a room where Jo’s fear spiked, and her pain still lingered. Samuel felt Tucker’s rage through the unblocked bond, and a question streamed through the link. Tucker answered his Alpha with a ferocity that left his soul bare.
They hurt my she-wolf.
Although no words were spoken, the understanding between them came through loud and clear. Bloodwouldbe shed that night. Tucker could almost hear Samuel’s answering grunt and thedo what you have to dotolling like a bell in his head.
Maneuvering his gray’s bulk into the hallway where Jeremiah paced, Tucker continued in pursuit of his mate. Anger and worry clouded his vision, and he grasped onto the remnants of his bond with Jo, searching for a semblance of reassurance in its gossamer strands.
The smell of pool water and burned briquettes heightened as they prowled the stark tunnel in total silence, the harsh overhead lighting making him squint. Stopping to listen at every doorway and finding them all empty, they hurried on. No humans crossed their path after the one Rose cold-cocked. The facility’s nightshift was running on a skeleton crew. Their sloppiness raised the chance of the mission’s success, but Ethan would have to expend an excessive amount of magical energy to spell the soldiers once he and the queen reached the compound’s sleeping quarters.
Tucker lowered to his wolf’s underbelly as they approached the next intersection, his ears and tail twitching. A pair of human males were around the corner, discussing women and overdue furloughs. He sniffed, and his chest rumbled with a sub-vocalgrowl. The need for violence heated his blood, and he shifted, the scent of his she-wolf’s agony striking him like a bolt of lightning.
Exploding into motion, he charged the unsuspecting sentries, grabbing the closest guard by the skull with both hands. He pulled his head down and viciously kneed him in the groin. The second soldier’s eyes only had time to widen before Tucker’s foot hit him square in the chest. The brutal kick tossed the human across the hallway where he slammed into the far wall, bounced, and crumpled to the ground. Still holding onto the first soldier as he gagged and wheezed, Tucker spun him around and slammed his forehead into the concrete block. He dropped like a stone.
“Feel better, brother?” A converted Jeremiah leaned on the corner wall with a smirk on his face, arms crossed as if he’d been waiting for hours instead of seconds.
“No.” And he wouldn’t until the Director paid for every hurt done to his she-wolf.
Worse for wear but still breathing, he left the humans where they fell and faced the last barrier between him and his mate. He inhaled and listened. Jo was alone inside.
“Stay calm.” Jeremiah’s voice wolf-low, expression sober. A slight push of compulsion crept into the order. The sensation a familiar comfort despite the decades spent as another Alpha’s beta. “Your female needs you to keep your shit together.”
Nodding, Tucker clasped the steel handle and twisted, busting the lock with a muffled click. The minor burn of iron on his palm unworthy of notice, but what he found inside almost caused an involuntary conversion.
