Sole Survivor

by Dana Lyons

  “And next, we have the ineffable Felix. Poor man, he really should have left a bigger tip.”

  In the video clip, Felix rose from an outdoor restaurant table. After placing money on the table, he walked to the corner, glanced at the light and stepped off the curb. A black SUV slammed into him and knocked him out of view.

  “Stop it!” Quinn screamed. “Stop.” The fear he’d never known in his invincible life rose and squeezed his heart. “No, no, no,” he chanted, but another incoming video waited for him.

  This one showed Anika’s front doorstep where a plain Special Delivery package rested on the stoop. Her door opened. She spotted the package.

  “Should she open it?” Ivanov taunted. His voice hissed from the burner phone like a snake. “I wonder what’s inside.”

  “No, no, no, no,” Quinn cried. “Don’t open it, Anika, don’t open it.” He frantically texted Stop to her number.

  She removed her phone from her pocket, smiled and swiped across to open it.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” he prayed, hunched over the video.

  “You are still watching, yes?” Ivanov asked.

  Quinn suddenly realized Ivanov played him. “No!” he screamed, reaching out, but it was too late.

  Anika tapped her phone to open the text message. Her phone exploded.

  The video went dead. He shrieked and threw his phone to the ground. Searing pain hit his eyes and sinuses as tears flooded his face. He staggered into his apartment and went to his knees, still holding Ivanov’s burner phone.

  Rage engulfed him; the desire to rip Ivanov limb from limb rushed tingling to his fingertips. A long-range shot wouldn’t do, he wanted to feel the life drain from Ivanov’s body with his bare hands.

  “Big man, are you there?”

  At the sound of Ivanov’s voice, Quinn closed his eyes, focusing on every word, every nuance, every syllable, committing it to memory.

  “So, Kingston, what you need to know is you never cross me. But then you’ll never get another chance.”

  Quinn came up off the floor at a dead run and tossed the phone into the toilet just as he dived toward the living room and the couch.

  A muffled ‘boom’ sent shock waves through the air. Shrapnel from the shattered toilet blew through the wall to pepper the room with deadly shards. Several pieces embedded into his chest and abdomen, but a piece of 2X4 knocked him unconscious.

  He toppled backward with the vision burned in his mind: Anika’s smiling face as she took his fatal text.

  3

  Washington DC, 2019

  At the compound in Washington, when the image of Lazar with Ivanov appeared on the monitor, Dreya nearly dropped her phone. An adrenaline shot slammed through her body leaving her with weak knees.

  No! Not Lazar!

  She scrambled to control this reaction when an emotional pressure blasted into her mind. She stepped back, but still staggered under a suffocating weight of pure hatred. A quick glance and she saw Rhys and Simon holding their hands out as they, too, staggered.

  What is this?

  It’s Quinn! came a double shout from them.

  Quinn stared at the image on the monitor. His lips had pulled into a wolf’s snarl, baring the teeth on his human face, and his fingers curled into claws, the tendons extended into painful-looking ridges.

  She pressed fingers to her temple against the emotional shriek of rage slicing through her mind. She sought out Rhys, but his eyes were closed as he leaned against the wall.

  Jarvis’ voice came from eons away, distant behind the cries of pain and anger echoing in her mind. “Love, are you there?”

  I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating under this pain.

  Even in the presence of Martin Nash, a destroyed human being who killed for love, nothing she felt from him assaulted her like this.

  Quinn’s face had turned dark red; she feared he was going to stroke out. She pushed away from the wall and aimed for him. They collided, and the break in his focus brought relief from the tremendous emotion.

  He turned his tortured gaze on her, and for one second she thought he’d strike her. But he blinked, his eyes cleared, and his fingers relaxed. He looked down at his hands as if just waking from a coma, mystified at his surroundings, at her, at himself. “Dreya?”

  In her peripheral vision, Rhys and Simon moved towards her and Quinn. She held up a hand to stop them. “Quinn?”

  His pretty eyes and face crumpled with pain and he threw his head back and screamed while tearing at his clothes. As soon as he was naked, he shifted and ran for the French doors, busting through the glass.

  Simon pulled off his sweater and dropped his pants. “I’ll get him,” he yelled before he transitioned and followed Quinn out through the shattered doors.

  Dreya grabbed Rhys’ hand, seeking the comfort of his steady mind. But he, too, reeled emotionally from Quinn’s reaction to the photo. She clutched his arm, staring at the smashed French doors, stunned at the visceral turmoil.

  “Dreya, are you there. Hello. Is anyone there? Is everything okay there?”

  Jarvis’ voice echoed small and insignificant compared to the violent emotional and physical explosion they’d just experienced. She spotted the phone, dropped when she slammed into Quinn, and picked it up. “Here, Sir.” Her voice wobbled and she still shook inside. “We just had a little distress.”

  “Kingston?” His tone said he wasn’t surprised.

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “There’s history between him and Ivanov. I’ll send you the file. There are events you need to understand.”

  Dreya swallowed hard. She knew Quinn had emotional issues, but she hoped he’d divulge them in his own time.

  Appears the time is now.

  “I’m sending you files on Ivanov, Kingston, and Lazar. After you’ve had time to look them over, call me so we can set up your travel arrangements. And Dreya, Kingston’s file, it’s not pretty. You let me know if he can work this case or not.”

  He terminated the call. She stared at the phone, her mind wandering over the options that could be described as, “It’s not pretty.

  * * *

  Seeing Ivanov’s face brought Quinn to the moment of the Ivanov videos, of Anika’s face exploding in a spray of blood, the boom of the explosion that was meant to kill him, and the many dark months that followed.

  Run! Or die from the pain!

  The transition energy ripped through him like a knife, setting him free, and he ran for his life. The wolf crashed through the doors and bounded into the thirty acres within the compound, wishing he had more room. The vision of Anika as she accepted the message from him, the one that ended her life, came vivid into his mind.

  No no no! I can’t go through that again!

  The pain rolled over him, almost taking him to his knees, but he fought and ran all the harder, wanting something to get in his way so he could kill it.

  Ivanov and Lazar, what abomination could they be up to?

  Anika’s face destroyed as he watched, helpless.

  I killed her.

  He skidded to a stop, threw his head back and howled, again, and again, and again. A noise rattled the brush behind him, and Simon ran up.

  You’re bleeding.

  Quinn looked down and saw several lacerations from the glass. He growled at the big cougar. Go away.

  Not when you’re hurting like this.

  He delivered a snarl full of wolf teeth that would have driven off any other animal, but not his brother. He leaped into the brush with Simon right beside him.

  I’ll run with you as long as you want, brother.

  Quinn took off, hoping to drive away the images of Anika that filled his mind. At this speed, he had to watch for debris and obstacles that might trip him up.

  Air blew in and out of his lungs, powering the muscles. He circled the compound, running against the wall. For how long and how many times he circled the property, he didn’t know, but Simon kept pace with him all the way.


  When the images were driven back, and his lungs no longer able to power the muscles, he collapsed, gasping, and shifted. Once in human form, the tears came, pouring down his face, dripping onto his bloodied body.

  Beside him, Simon shifted and tisked, examining the wounds. “I’ll have to stitch you up. Can you walk?”

  Uncaring and unable to answer, Quinn stared at his hands and cried.

  Rhys landed nearby and shifted. “Let me help,” he said.

  Together, they picked him up and carried him back to the house.

  * * *

  Dreya cleaned up the broken glass and blood after Rhys left to help Simon with Quinn. Behind her, the printer continued spitting out pages as file after file came in from Jarvis.

  She thought crossing paths with Lazar was her most dreaded fear, but this reaction from Quinn brought an even greater agony.

  Quinn, the loner. What makes him so?

  Like Simon, she didn’t know the reason behind his loner status, for they each were each a tightly closed box. Instead of sitting down to read Quinn’s file, she needed to bring out this deeply buried pain.

  She winced, remembering the raw emotion that erupted from Quinn when he saw Sasha Ivanov’s face; no words on paper could capture such agony. She only knew one way to reach him.

  “Here,” Simon shouted as they brought Quinn in and set him in a chair.

  The blood was shocking. He’d laid his chest open, and the long run exacerbated the blood loss. But his crushed spirit disturbed her most.

  Cuts can heal, but what about the pain he’s buried inside?

  She kneeled next to him while Rhys dressed. Simon disappeared and returned clothed and bearing a steel tray loaded with bandages, a suture kit, and Betadine.

  Quinn’s pretty eyes were blank, as if all meaning and emotion had been drained from him; he was a bleeding man with a shattered mind. She probed telepathically but found only darkness and emptiness. While his purge of emotion was mentally beneficial, she couldn’t let him stay like this. “Quinn?”

  Simon began wiping away the blood and used tweezers to pick out the glass embedded in Quinn’s chest and shoulders. Through all this he remained non responsive, not even flinching when Simon swabbed his cuts with antiseptic.

  As he stitched, Simon mumbled, “You’re lucky this cut wasn’t an inch to the left or you’d be in surgery.” He cocked his head with an open thought, I wonder how we do under anesthesia; hadn’t considered it before now. But our boy’s lucky he’s not in an ambulance and near dead.

  If Quinn heard, he gave no response. His blank gaze focused nowhere, detached.

  For the deepest cuts, Simon injected a local. While that took effect, he applied butterfly bandages to the other cuts that peppered Quinn’s body.

  Dreya smoothed the hair from Quinn’s eyes and fussed over him. She made small noises and stroked his face, soothing him the only way she knew how, with her touch.

  He gave no response.

  Simon cut the last suture and pushed his tray aside. He swabbed Quinn’s arm with alcohol and injected a sedative. “He needs rest. Rhys, help me get him in bed.”

  They lifted the inert Quinn and carried him into his bedroom. Dreya rushed ahead and pulled back the bed covers in the immaculate room. They got him into bed, and she fussed over tucking him in.

  When she finished, Simon squeezed her shoulder. “He’s going to be out for several hours.”

  She stepped from the room and motioned Rhys and Simon to follow. “I’ll stay with him. You go over the files, and I’ll see what I can do here. We have to fix this.” She slipped through the door and closed it softly.

  In the dim light, she studied him. His face was slack with the effects of the sedative, but his eyes were active under the closed lids. Back and forth they moved as if watching a movie.

  He’s burning alive with memories.

  She removed her clothes and set them aside. How, she thought, do you get into a box closed so tight?

  By getting so close there’s nothing separating you.

  Naked, she crawled in next to him, being careful of his bandages, which were everywhere, even on his legs. Once she got in, she edged closer until they lay skin to skin.

  She exhaled and induced a relaxed brain state, sending out the tethers to his mind. Since the first crushing blast of rage from him, there’d been no contact; he’d closed his mind to her completely. The sedative gave her points of entry. Once she found a place in his mind to settle in, she took one of his hands and brought it to her lips.

  “I’ll be here when you wake up,” she whispered.

  She kept her body in synch with him as he tossed and turned, maintaining the skin to skin contact. In his mind, she waited for the sedative to dissipate and the fog to lift. Gradually, his thoughts came tumbling to life. She perceived emotions connected to another team he worked with, two men and a woman.

  Anika.

  There were happy memories of time on a boat, of them making love, he and Anika, and the swelling of love brightened the darkness in his mind. Then she detected an imprint of a woman answering a phone—and all went dark again.

  He jerked and grabbed her hand, pulling it to his lips. She felt the moisture of tears running down his face. He sobbed.

  “Sshh,” she murmured. “I’m here, we’re all here. You’re not alone.” She tightened her arms around him as best she could without hurting him. “I’m here, I’m here.”

  “That’s what she told me once when I said I couldn’t lose her.”

  His voice was ragged, as shattered as his body and soul. He rolled and turned into her arms, burying his face in her neck. More sobs wracked his body; she held him close, stroking his head. Gradually, the tears slowed, and he sniffed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Regret doesn’t exist in the pack. You don’t have to explain yourself to us.”

  Quiet settled over them, a soft background for the roar of their heartbeats. He tensed, holding his breath, then spoke in a rushed exhalation. “So, you know everything?”

  “No. I only know you carry a heavy burden and a great pain.” She rubbed his back and stroked his hair, hoping silence would encourage him to reveal the story, but as the moment to speak drew out, she feared he wouldn’t.

  “My team went after Ivanov. He retaliated. I’m the only one left alive.”

  He carried many scars she’d noticed. There was a crease in his scalp and slashes across his chest and abdomen to accompany the wounds he collected today. His pain was not just emotional, but physical as well. “Yes, you’re alive, and you’re part of a new team.”

  He stiffened immediately. She rushed to finish but spoke softly for emphasis, “A team like no other.”

  “If we go after Ivanov he’ll kill us like he did . . . like he did my first team.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. You don’t know that.”

  “I know what kind of animal Ivanov is.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t know what kind of animal you are. He doesn’t know what we’re capable of. He’s never come across anything like us.”

  “He’s meeting Lazar, so he’ll have some ideas,” he argued. “Whatever they’re up to can’t be good.”

  “Lazar brought us change, a positive change by my measure. I wouldn’t judge him strictly by the company he keeps. He didn’t create Nobility to destroy the human race.” She paused. “Do you still want to kill him?”

  His thoughts churned, his emotions tumbled. “He’s not the one I’m worried about,” he said, hesitant and defensive.

  A surge of wolf power and pride rushed through their connection into her mind. You love being wolf.

  All right, I admit that’s a win in Lazar’s corner.

  He moved closer, snaking his arm around her shoulders and rested his forehead against hers. His inner turmoil created a pressure in her mind. He wanted in, she sensed it, but he carried so much fear. What is it?

  His grief stretched until the silence collapsed. “I shouldn’t be alive.”

  He m
ade as if to roll away, but she tightened her grip on him. Do you trust me?

  He responded quickly in a husky voice laced with desire. “Yes.”

  Her body responded with her own stirring of desire. “Let me in, Quinn. I can’t help you if you won’t let me in.” His hard on pressed against her thigh, and she nudged him with her hips while drawing his face in for a kiss.

  He resisted for a nanosecond before relaxing as their lips met. The touch was soft, tentative, and bittersweet with his pain, but a building heat rose between them. His tears splashed her face; she wrapped a leg around his. “Love me, Quinn. Let my love heal you. Let the pack connection support you. Let your heart be free of pain and loneliness.”

  Another sob ripped through him, and he tucked his chin and hid as he shuddered. “I’ve been so alone.”

  “You’re not alone any longer.”

  “But—”

  “Hey, no buts.” She lifted his face to see his eyes. “Unfortunately, this is a deal you can’t break, we’re genetically connected. Besides, we’ve already made the decision for you. We want you in, but you have to want us in, too.”

  She wrapped her other leg around him, putting them groin to groin with him on top. His heated flesh insistently proclaimed its own answer, prodding her for entry. She reached down and opened her lips for him. He slid in, long and slow.

  Tears burned her eyes. Like with Rhys, the connection between them intensified and sharpened. She moved her hips, rocking him deeper, until her mind and body erupted with her perception of his sensations.

  He gasped. “Oh my God.”

  She smiled into his shoulder and kissed his neck. “Yes. What the body feels, the mind knows. You feel me, and I feel you.” She shifted her hips and took him deeper. “Come to me, we will never be separated, and you’ll never be alone.”

  His thrusts joined the dance, filling her, building the pressure, sending shivers of erotic pleasure through her body.

  “Open you mind, let me in,” she whispered. She brought her lips along his shoulder to his face, kissing, licking, blowing, all intended to send a trail of gooseflesh in her wake. When she reached his lips, she sucked them into her mouth, then explored his mouth with her tongue.