Page 31 of Feral Mate

“I don’t have time to argue with you. Did they leave a key?”

“No. They took it with them,” he lied. “You need to get out. You need to get that information to the Resistance.”

“Don’t be a pain in the ass. I’m not leaving without you.” The whole time she was talking, she was searching for the key. She spotted it on the pegboard and glanced back over her shoulder. “Liar.”

“Emery, listen to me.”

“I will. Just as soon as you have something worth listening to.”

God, she is stubborn and brave and intelligent and beautiful, and I love her more than anything else in my life. She may deserve better than the man I was in my past, but I will spend the rest of my life becoming worthy of her.

She snatched the key from the pegboard and returned to him, quickly inserting the key in the manacles around his wrists and ankles and unlocking them. When he reached for the collar, she stayed his hand. She handed him a pair of sweats, which he pulled on. With what little strength he had, he dragged her into his arms and held on. It was the first time they had actual physical contact, and he could feel his cave lion reach out to hers.

“Now go. I’ll hold them off,” he said gently, pushing her away.

Emery rolled her eyes and glanced at her watch. “I don’t have time to argue with you. There’s an escape tunnel at the end of the hall. We have four minutes to get there and through that door before all the security systems come back online.” Grabbing his hand, she pulled him toward the door.

“You won’t leave me, will you?”

She stopped, turned, and looked at him. “Would you leave me?”

He nodded. “Right. Let’s go.”

Emery attached a leash to the collar around his neck. “If anyone looks up, all they’ll see is a scientist taking a test subject to another lab. There’s a tunnel at the far end of the hall that leads to a spot outside the complex, a dock on the harbor, and a place in an alley in town.”

Picking up a couple of tablets, she slipped one into her lab coat pocket and held the other in her right hand, grasping the leash in her left.

“Don’t get too used to this,” he teased.

She grinned, and he could feel her relief. Cracking open the door, she stuck her head out and then led him, walking swiftly and with purpose, toward the end of the hall, ducking under a small window in the door at the end of the hall.

“There’s nothing here,” he said as they ducked into the alcove.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” she said with a grin, grasping a lever built into the wall—a lever he hadn’t even noticed.

She twisted it, sliding a panel within the wall. Cold, damp, but fresh air assailed his nostrils. As Emery slipped inside, they could hear shouting. Mason poked his head out.

“Find him! Find him now!” shouted Perkins. “Half of you take the stairwell; the other half head to the tunnel. Somehow that little bitch accessed the blueprints. There!” Perkins was pointing at him.

Emery grabbed the front of his sweatshirt and jerked him inside, sliding the panel shut, locking it from the inside. “We’ve got to go now.” She grabbed his hand and started down the tunnel, glancing at her watch. “Three-two-one.”

With the audible click of the lever mechanism latching shut and dim lights within the walls turned on; she grinned at him. He reached up and sprang the locking mechanism on the collar, opening it and tossing it to the ground. Taking her hand in his, he sprinted down the tunnel, Emery hot on his heels.

CHAPTER 16

EMERY

Emery had never felt more alive, jubilant, or terrified in her life. She ran hand-in-hand with Mason, trying to keep up with him. Her DNA seemed to have done him a world of good. She could feel his strength returning as they ran along the passageway.

“We should shift. We could make better time and cave lions are formidable opponents,” she said as they ran.

“Can’t. There’s iron rebar throughout the building.”

“But we aren’t in the building…”

She could feel him start to slow down. Before they stopped, a bullet whizzed by them grazing Mason’s arm.

“This way,” he said, pulling her down an offshoot of the tunnel she didn’t remember being on the map.

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