Furever Loyal

by Riley Storm

  Haley grinned. She was making progress. Now if she could just figure out a way to get down there, she could maybe find a way out. A way to freedom. To Kincaid. There was only the one door. It was locked, and she wasn’t strong enough to break the solid metal obstruction down.

  “I did not get this far just to lose now,” she pronounced, looking around the room with a fierce stare, looking for anything. She could probably break the windows, but where would that leave her? There was nothing she could use to climb down. Jumping and breaking her legs wouldn’t exactly improve her predicament. No, there had to be another solution first.

  A slow survey around the room, waiting for the flickering light to illuminate it for her as she moved, produced only one option. There was a large air ventilation inlet against the one wall. It was tight, but if she could just get to the other side of the door, maybe she could get out of there.

  Haley spent a few minutes fiddling with the screws, trying to undo them with her fingers, and having no luck.

  “Why are you trying to do it that way?” she growled to herself, sitting back and kicking the shaft with her foot. She’d not had any time to grab shoes before being abducted, but she did have thick, warm socks on, and those provided a bit of cushioning. It hurt like hell, but the grille gave way on a corner.

  Grabbing it, she grunted and yanked, finally tearing the metal free at last. It was going to be dark and scary in there, and she would be going entirely by feel, but there was simply no other option. It was either that or jump at least thirty feet to the ground below.

  “I’ll take the dark claustrophobic tunnel please and thank you.” Decision made, she crawled headfirst into the air shaft, sliding forward slowly.

  Bits and pieces of ragged metal scraped at her stomach, her back, her sides, and especially her hands and feet as she slowly moved herself along, but she fit, and that was the important thing. The shaft came to a t-junction, going left, right, and also down. It was a tight squeeze to maneuver herself around the corner without plunging who knew how far down, but she made it.

  Twenty minutes later she sliced her palms open bashing in a grate that led into another room. It was dark again.

  “This is getting really tiresome,” she complained, forced into feeling her way around the room again. She found light switches, like before. This time though, one of them worked.

  “Yaargghhh!” she yelled as bright light flooded the room, blinding her. “Shit, that’s bright.”

  It took her at least a full minute to adjust before it stopped hurting. When she finally could open her eyes, she realized that it wasn’t even that bright, it was just light. Actual light.

  She was in a hallway. Stairs to her left went down, and she took them without hesitation, emerging onto the factory floor. Some of the light from above filtered down the stairs, but also through several windows in the hallway above where it ran past the office she’d been trapped in. It wasn’t much, but enough to guide her to the exit. She could see the beautiful sign above it, unlit, but reflecting enough of the light to be visible.

  To Haley, it was the equivalent of a fifty-foot high flashing sign that said Exit Here. She’d never seen anything so wonderful before in her life. Stumbling forward, she tried not to feel too excited. She wasn’t home free, not yet. Still, she was proud of herself. Proud of what she’d accomplished, of getting herself free without anyone’s help.

  It was so unlike her, so unlike anything she’d ever done in her life. Haley was terrified, but truthfully, she also felt like a bit of a badass, like one of the heroes from the movies she’d been thinking about earlier. Captured and at the mercy of her enemies, she was now free, ready to link up with her allies—Kincaid—and stop them from doing anything like this ever again.

  “I think in the future, I’ll let Kincaid handle that part, but damn—I’m good,” she said, mentally patting herself on the back as she reached for the bar to push the door open.

  “I’ll check it out.”

  Haley froze as the door opened before she could get there, letting a voice—and a damn cool blast of air—inside.

  “It’s probably just a short of some kind. The whole place is screwy, it’s so old. I—Hey!”

  The huge figure, visible only as a hulking shadow outlined by the not-quite-pitch black background, jerked in surprise as it saw her standing there.

  “She’s free!” he shouted and lunged for her.

  Haley threw herself to the side, trying not to panic as she darted through the barely-lit factory, moving around, under, and in one case even over the machinery, hoping there was nothing that would slice her open and kill her accidentally.

  “Come back here, you bitch,” the man snarled, closing on her with every passing second.

  “Absolutely not,” she shot back, finding a loose piece of metal on some conveyor belt or another and hurling it backward in the general direction of the sounds.

  It clanged into something, and she heard a stream of curse words. She’d hit him!

  More doors opened and other men came inside. A half dozen, maybe, there could be a few more or a few less, she wasn’t sure. Either way, they all immediately began closing on her position. Overhead lights started to come on, slowly illuminating the space as they warmed up. Most were burnt out, but a few still worked. Before long, she’d have nowhere to hide.

  “Stop running!”

  “Why the hell would I do that?” she spat, trying to avoid all her pursuers. They were quickly closing the noose around her, though. There was nowhere she could run, no lucky sewer grate to flee into or hole in the wall to jump through that only she could fit. Haley was well and truly trapped. Shit.

  “We’ve got you now. There’s no point in trying,” one of them said, coming around a large piece of machinery. It was the same asshole who had lifted the bed off her at the safehouse.

  Haley set her face in a grim line and raised her tiny hands in fists. She wasn’t going down without a fight, however useless it might seem.

  “Your courage is admirable, but it won’t…” the man said. No, she corrected herself, he’s a shifter. A Canim. A werewolf.

  She was so busy thinking, that it took her an extra second to realize he’d stopped speaking and was looking around. Haley was momentarily lost until she picked up on what was going on.

  “Why the hell is the ground shaking?” she asked.

  A split second later, the far wall exploded inward in a hail of brick, wood, and metal as a bone-white behemoth came barreling inward, announcing its presence with an ear-shattering roar.

  Kincaid had arrived.

  37

  Seven figures scattered as he made his entrance, diving for cover behind any sort of machinery they could find. Kincaid didn’t care about six of them, he had eyes only for the seventh.

  Haley!

  His bear translated that into a bellowed roar. She might not understand, but the Canim in the room certainly would. It was doubtful that another reminder was needed of who he was and why he was there, but Kincaid wasn’t leaving anything to chance. This was his mate, and he wasn’t leaving without her.

  Charging forward, he crashed into the closest piece of machinery that he knew hid a shifter behind it. The massive metal construct ripped free of its anchors and slid backward against the floor, crashing into another hulking pile of steel, pinning the werewolf between them. It must have caught the shifter mid-change because the scream that filled the warehouse was neither wholly human nor wholly animal.

  There was no time to gloat though, because he heard the scrabble of claws on the cement floor and knew that at least one of the others had finished shifting. Five on one was not ideal odds, but it would have to do. Kincaid hadn’t waited around for Melanie to give up any more information. The instant she’d uttered the location, he’d taken off, ignoring both Kaelyn and Kvoss’ protests. There was no time. If they showed up, they showed up, but he wasn’t going to wait on them.

  A white wolf leaped onto a workbench nearby, snarling at him,
lips pulled back to expose the three-inch-long canines. Saliva dripped from its jaws as it snapped and challenged him. More shapes moved in the darkness—he only belatedly realized his entrance had killed the power to the building.

  “Kincaid?”

  Be quiet! He sent the mental command knowing Haley would not hear him but hoping she’d understand. Staying quiet was her best bet now. If the wolves were distracted from his presence, they’d realize all they had to do was go after her to get him to surrender. Kincaid was banking on their long-seated hatred of his kind to keep them focused on fighting his bear, but he feared it wouldn’t be enough.

  And it won’t be if you just keep sitting around doing nothing. You have to attack. Keep them on their heels.

  Kincaid swiped at a loose metal box, a toolbox perhaps, and sent it flying at the white wolf. Before he was even done with that, he was charging to his left, at a wolf as black as night, a huge beast even bigger than the white. It had to be nearly five hundred pounds of lethal killing machine. If he let it get around to his rear, Kincaid would have a hard time holding it off.

  The wolf waited as he bore down on it, only dodging aside at the last second. Kincaid knew that was going to happen, it was a standard tactic for a wolf when a bear was coming at it. Which is precisely why he flung all his body to the left a fraction of a moment before the wolf engaged its trigger muscles.

  Gotcha, he thought triumphantly, only to sail past the huge beast as it went the other direction.

  Kincaid hit the empty ground and slid for twenty feet before hitting a big metal storage cabinet of some sort. The metal side panels crumpled inward under his impact. Quickly getting to his feet, he spun and met a leaping wolf with a meaty paw. The hapless wolf had misjudged his speed, thinking it had time to jump onto his back and hurt him.

  Claws dug to open the skin, blood spraying from the grievous wound as Kincaid flung the shifter down. The wolf bounced off the concrete and rolled out of his grip, very slow to get to its feet. Blood matted the stone-gray fur, swiftly running down its face and chest. Kincaid had time to see its legs wobble and the wolf go down, leaving a huge red mark on the floor as it tried to get up again. It might survive, but it was out of this fight.

  Two down. Four to go.

  He was reminded of that fact as another wolf lunged in from one of his blind zones and ripped a chunk of meat from his hind leg. Kincaid whirled instinctively, but the wolf was already done, ducking back out of range as it spat its prize onto the ground.

  The wolves were organizing. Another came at him as he’d turned, but Kincaid was ready for that one, kicking out with his other hind leg, forcing the wolf back unless it wanted its skull crushed in.

  Staying on the defensive would ensure his doom. A wolf was no match for a bear, just like in the wild, but that was why the wolves didn’t run alone. They moved in packs. Kincaid needed to go on the offensive. The one thing that differed between him and his feral cousins, besides the size difference, was that he was powered by a human brain. He could think of things that normal bears could not.

  Using his strength, he grabbed the entire metal cabinet, puncturing it with his claws to get a grip, and spun, tossing it in the direction of two wolves. The huge canines yelped in surprise and ducked out of the way of the half-ton of flying metal. Tools spilled out of it as it whipped through the air, striking the wolves.

  The wrenches and other implements didn’t do any damage, but they did serve to distract the Canim. Exploiting that to its fullest, Kincaid charged forward. The metal machinery limited the directions the wolves could use to get out of the way, and he had one of them now trapped between two rows. There was no time for the obsidian creature to turn and run. Its only option was up. It would have to jump onto the assembly line if it wanted to escape, and Kincaid knew this. He was planning for it.

  The instant the creature jumped, he altered his direction and slammed into the conveyor-belt-like apparatus. The entire thing jumped and heaved just as the wolf landed, spilling it back off to the side.

  Kincaid hit it like a dump truck. They went down in a tangle of paws and jaws. The wolf might be tough and quick, but this was a fight Kincaid won every time. His massive foreleg batted aside the feeble defense of the upended shifter, and a second later he ripped its throat out in a welter of blood and gore.

  The wolf was dead and didn’t even know it, trying to get to its feet to follow as Kincaid kept going, only pausing to clear his mouth of the nasty fur.

  Three down, three to go.

  A huge creature leaped onto his back out of nowhere. Kincaid trumpeted in pain as claws dug deep into his fur. Shaking violently, he managed to dislodge the beast, realizing then that the wolf he’d just killed hadn’t been the massive black wolf from earlier, but a smaller one.

  The white wolf that rivaled the huge midnight furred beast came at him from the side and worried at his flank. Kincaid spun to drive it off, but the third and final wolf hit him from the other side, staining its brownish-gray coat with his blood.

  The trio worked flawlessly. No matter what Kincaid tried, they were ready for it, always one step ahead of them. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds within seconds. In his haste to dispatch them all, he’d inadvertently moved into an open area on the floor. That was a killing zone for the wolves.

  His eyesight penetrated the dark, picking out the nearest machinery. The massive off-white bear moved as fast as he could make it, but his strength was fading, aided by the trail of thick red liquid he left behind as he moved, his blood spilling onto the floor, making it slick.

  “Kincaid you had better not lose!” Haley called out from her hiding place just as he made it to the relative safety of the machinery. He wasn’t safe, but it provided him shelter from their constant attacks, buying him a respite as he sought to recover, to come up with a plan for dealing with this last trio.

  I’m working on that part.

  “I didn’t escape and crawl through the damn ventilation shaft like some sort of super-spy just to fall this short of being rescued. Now, you send these rabid pups running, you understand me? Are you going to let these ass-licking motherfuckers take you out?”

  Energy coursed through him anew. Kincaid had never heard his mate talk like that. The anger, the fury was so palpable he could feel it radiating off her.

  I can’t let her down. Winning was the only option, the only way forward. There was no time for games. Haley was still in terrible danger as battle raged all around her. The only acceptable course of action was to take out the trio of remaining Canim. Nothing short of complete and total victory would stop him.

  Because only after he was done with that, could he tell Haley how he truly felt. And that was what mattered most. Her.

  Kincaid bellowed his challenge to the Canim and went on the offensive. He charged at every wolf, scattering them, never allowing them to let up as he chased them halfway across the warehouse. Over machinery, through makeshift walls and even into a sunken pit. There was no rest, no respite. One of them would make a mistake eventually. When it did, he would capitalize on it.

  Plain. Simple. Deadly.

  The first wolf to screw up was the white one, its fur so bright it was nearly albino. Even its eyes were tinged with red. It darted in at Kincaid from the side, but as it lunged forward, it planted its rear leg on something on the floor. The metal tube, perhaps two inches in diameter, rolled back under the weight and spilled the wolf to the floor.

  Kincaid pounced. Literally. His mighty paws came down with nearly a thousand pounds of weight behind them. There was nothing the wolf could do. Its bones collapsed under the blow and it died instantly.

  Wasting no time, he dug the claws of his left paw in deep, gripping the corpse and whipped it around, letting it fly at the tawny beast, the smaller of the two remaining Canim. The corpse missile glanced off the side of the smaller wolf, knocking it back, but outside of Kincaid’s immediate reach.

  It didn’t matter. Kincaid hadn’t been after that one anyway. He was a
fter the huge onyx wolf. It was the leader. He would be thinking of Laurent when he took it down. The former Canim Title Holder would probably go free after all this. It would look too bad on Ursa if they killed him so quickly after stripping him of his position. That bothered Kincaid, and he took it out on the leader of the men who had abducted Haley.

  Or he would, once he caught the slippery fucker. Whoever the wolf was, he was agile, faster than Kincaid and seemed to instinctively know which way to go to avoid the massive bear. Their fight took them all across the factory floor, neither one able to land any serious strikes against the other.

  His break, when it came, wasn’t anything groundbreaking, no huge trap laid by Kincaid that he’d slowly been working toward. Instead, it came from the simple method of Kvoss showing up at the hole he’d blown in the wall and calling his name.

  The wolf’s head snapped around at the sudden, unexpected noise. Kincaid’s didn’t. He kept laser-focused on the matted black fur, and the instant he realized his foe was distracted, he charged right at him. He only had a split second, no time for anything fancy.

  Ursidae met Canim and the pair slammed into a piece of heavy machinery. Kincaid had expected the huge block of steel to give way or slide across the floor like the others, but this one was firmly rooted, and he came to a sudden stop. Unfortunately for the wolf, it was between Kincaid and the metal, acting as a cushion.

  All it took was a casual swipe of his paw to open the wolf up and spill its life fluid onto the floor, a mortal wound the instant it was struck.

  Kincaid backed away, just in time to hear another wolf charge across the concrete. He readied himself to meet the charge of the tawny gray-brown werewolf, but it wasn’t coming at him. It was going at Kvoss. The Assassin saw this, judged the distance, and at the last moment angled himself to the side in a crouch, whipping his sword out of its sheath and around in an arc that followed his body.

  The uranium-coated blade sliced open the wolf from neck to mid-stomach, the radiation emission canceling out the shifter’s altered DNA. The corpse hit the ground in a squishy mess, sliding to a halt just at the foot of the pile of debris that marked where Kincaid had burst through.