“No females,” I warned him.
“Yes, yes, they know your little rules.” He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Shall we? I have plans this evening.”
“Fucking demons,” Hawke muttered.
“Same plan we discussed,” I said just as a bright flash of light went off in the windows toward the end of the first, windowed building. “What the hell was that?”
“Our cue,” Xavier answered.
The army split up as we’d planned, Xavier and a few of his larger demons coming with us, while our vampire commanders took their squads to flank the building. We weren’t going in locked and loaded at one entrance this time. We were hitting them from every side.
“You don’t want to lead your men from the south?” Ransom asked Xavier as we snuck through the shadows, avoiding the rotating spotlight.
“My men know what they’re doing, and besides, I figured it would be much more entertaining to go with you.” He shrugged, walking directly through a beam of light without throwing a shadow.
I envied that asshole’s glamours.
We paused at the closed door, weapons in our hands. “Ransom,” I nodded at the locking mechanism.
“On it—”
“Move.” Xavier stepped forward and placed his hand on the panel. Sparks flew, and the door clicked, unlocking.
“Remind me never to invite you to the estate,” Ransom muttered as Xavier threw open the door.
“What makes you think I haven’t already been there? Vampires have such a finite grasp of time.”
I was first through the door.
What the fuck?
Keeping my weapon centered straight ahead, I threw out my other arm to block Ransom in case he decided to speed by and run straight into the backs of our enemies.
There were at least a dozen guards in front of us, all outfitted in tactical gear and carrying the nauseating scent of perverse excitement as they leveled their weapons toward the center of the hall where our females stood, facing down another dozen guards at the end of the hallway.
The bond flared, bright and strong, and I heard Valor’s gasp.
Concentrate on the mission. One good look at her, and I’d lose my shit, which wasn’t something we could afford right now.
“I only count three,” Hawke hissed under his breath.
“There’s at least two dozen,” Ransom whispered so low that no human ear could hear.
There were more beyond them throughout the compound, thermals had shown me that much, but the small confines worked in our favor here. There were only so many soldiers they could fit in the space, and with Valor’s group drawing all of the focus, we’d managed to slip in virtually undetected.
“Women, fucker. I only count three women.” At the note of panic, I counted, too.
Valor’s red hair was up in a warrior’s braid, keeping the auburn strands from becoming a liability. Olivia’s was done up the same. There was a delicate blonde between them, wearing nothing but a pair of pajamas and slippers. Has to be Daphne.
“Like I wouldn’t see this coming?” a man shouted at Valor. Her brother.
“Feel free to speak. I can hold the glamour as long as that door is open,” Xavier said in that bored tone of his. “Though I do think we might need to act quickly, seeing as those humans have their guns pointed straight at your mate’s head.”
Move. Move. Move. My instincts roared to rip the throats out of the guards and dispatch the threat to Valor. To get her in my arms and wend her out of danger.
But my duty…that was to the one woman I didn’t see.
“Where the fuck is Avianna?” Hawke growled.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Should we maybe do something?” Xavier asked, leaned up against the wall behind one of the soldiers. “Or would you like to see how this all plays out?”
“We can’t risk the bullets without knowing where the princess is,” I answered. Did one of these scumbags already have her? My stomach heaved at the thought.
“You bit off more than you can chew this time, Kyle,” Valor replied, her voice a hell of a lot stronger than I was feeling right now. My fear for her was a bitter flavor in my mouth, stuttering my heartbeat and crippling logical thought. All it would take was one bullet, and I’d lose her forever.
She was human. Frail. Breakable. There was only so much my blood could do if she was injured, and she hadn’t even had one exchange, let alone the three it would take to make her immortal…if the drop of vampire blood in her lineage would even allow it. She might very well die in transition—stop.
Next to me, Hawke shut his eyes and lowered his blades, leaning his head back toward the ceiling and breathing deeply.
“Now is not the time for your anger management techniques,” Ransom whispered.
“At any second, the vampire army will be at your door, brother, and there will be no place for you to go,” Valor continued, tugging Daphne under her arm. “If you let us go now, chances are you can save your men, but the longer you wait, the more certain it is that you’ll be slaughtered just like you deserve.”
An evil laugh lifted the hairs on my neck.
“If Avi’s out of the hallway, she’s out of danger as long as we keep them from firing into the walls,” I noted. “We’ll have to move quick and that’s one thing we’re not in this place.” The iron saw to that.
Xavier rolled his eyes and flicked his wrists. The shadows moved from the corners, twining around the guard’s feet.
“She’s here,” Hawke determined, opening his eyes. The fucker looked downright scary. “I can smell her.”
Ransom lifted his brows. “I say we let him finish his villain’s speech and then go for it.”
“I’m not leaving her in there one second longer than we need to. Hawke, if you can scent her, fucking find her.”
“On it.” Hawke’s eyes scanned the hallway. Thank God for the glamour, since he was easily a head taller than the tallest human here.
“You think I didn’t plan for your monstrous boyfriend to come after you?” Kyle snapped, reaching for his weapon.
Icy rage spread through my veins. If he so much as touched her, I was going to—
“You think I didn’t cause a distraction to ensure they’d protect the weakest of their kind? You might be worth something to their second, sister, but I somehow doubt you warrant the protection of their full guard. Not when there are” — he let out a fake gasp — “children at stake. Not that I’d call their kind children. They’re just tiny little scourges, waiting to grow up and become bigger scourges.”
“You attacked younglings?” Valor spat at him, surging forward, but Olivia held her back.
Hawke turned toward the center of the hall, his gaze pinned on a spot where a poster hung on the wall. “No. Fucking. Way.”
“I did what was necessary! Don’t you see what they’ve done? They’ve turned you, Valor! They turned you from an honorable woman with a bright future to a traitor who got her own father killed! Look at you!” He waved the weapon haphazardly, making my heart clench.
“Work faster, Hawke.” I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold back much longer, and if my need to protect my mate got the princess killed…well, that wasn’t an option.
“Look at you!” Valor fired back. “Attacking children! Keeping our cousin hostage for what, Kyle? So she can be a child bride? What happened to you?”
“You want our cousin to leave?” A smile played across his face. “Fine. She can leave with your little fangy friend here. I won’t touch either one of them. But you have to stay, sister. I need the secrets locked inside your head more than I need the cooperation of another family.”
I sucked in a breath, my chest cranking tight because I knew what would happen. It was what she’d planned all along.
“I agree.” She gently pushed Daphne into Olivia’s arms.
“Excellent.” Kyle’s eyes danced with glee.
Valor stepped forward, and Kyle took her wrist.
“
No!” I shouted, already moving forward.
“Stay away from the right side of the wall,” Hawke hissed somewhere behind me.
The room went pitch dark, but I saw it all.
Shadows flew up the soldiers’ limbs, wrapping around their throats and dragging them to the ground around me as I stormed through the squad.
Gunfire erupted in the buildings next to us and at the end of the hall.
“Damn it!” Kyle screamed, his face turning a mottled red.
“Get her out!” Valor shouted, then cried out as her arm was yanked behind her back. The distinct sound of the joint separating hit my ears and sickened my stomach. He’d dislocated it so he could use her as a shield.
Hawke braced himself against the wall, his arms spread wide, and his body jolting as a bullet hit him in the back.
Olivia pulled Daphne into the shelter of her arms and—
“Hawke!” Ransom yelled as he fired round after round at the guards behind Valor.
“Vest,” he grunted, holding his position against the wall like he was under arrest, taking another shot.
I squeezed off three shots, hitting the humans closest to Valor in their exposed, weak throats. Blood sprayed as they went down, and I kept moving. A battering ram hit me in the chest, just left of my heart, but I breathed through the pain and dismissed it.
“Stay where you are!” Kyle yelled, putting a gun to Valor’s head in a scene that felt eerily familiar.
“You don’t want to do that.” I froze, the feet separating us feeling like miles.
“Lachlan,” Valor whispered, pain overwhelming her usual bergamot and lime scent and twisting it sour. Her eyes met mine. Worry, apology, pain, fear…love. It was all there in those gorgeous green eyes.
“Seems like I have the power to do whatever the fuck I want.” Kyle walked backward slowly.
“Seems like it,” I agreed as Ransom fired off two more shots, taking the guards out as they rounded the corner from another hallway.
“Stop it!” Kyle shrieked. “I’ll kill her!”
“No, you won’t,” I countered. “You need her.”
“You’re supposed to be at the school!” He slammed his shoulder back against something in the wall, and a small, metal door whooshed open behind him. Escape hatch.
I shook my head slowly. “No. I’m supposed to be wherever she is. You underestimate the importance of a mating bond. There’s no law we won’t break, no oath we won’t betray to keep our mates safe.”
“Maybe I underestimated you.” He shuffled sideways, fitting himself—and Valor—into the small space the door had created. A few more steps and I wouldn’t be able to reach her.
I chanced another look at Valor and locked eyes with her, sending the urge to fight down the bond. She wasn’t some helpless human who had stumbled into our world. She was trained in hand-to-hand combat by humans, then vampires. She was a fighter, through and through.
“Maybe. But you definitely underestimated her,” I snapped.
Valor slammed her head back against Kyle’s throat, then punched upward with her good hand, knocking Kyle’s grip loose on the weapon.
By the time he cursed, I was already there, yanking the gun out of his reach as Valor spun, pain blasting through the bond as she wrenched her dislocated arm free. Her knee came up, and she kicked at her brother, sending him sprawling into the cavernous space behind them.
He scrambled for the wall, pressing another button, and I dove, barely grazing the edge of the door as it slammed shut, repelling my touch.
That shit was made with traces of iron. No doubt.
“Shit!” I slammed my hand against the door, then jumped to my feet, my weapon already raised at the hallway. “Stay back!” I ordered Valor.
“Lachlan!” she called after me, but Ransom and I were already moving through the compound, taking out any guards foolish enough to raise their weapons. Xavier walked at our side, casually flicking shadows and deflecting bullets with the smallest moves of his wrists.
“How the fuck do you do that?” I asked as we cleared another room—the cafeteria.
“Just be thankful I can,” he answered, choking out the guards that raced in from another hallway. Heavy footsteps followed them, and Ransom and I braced ourselves.
The demon army flooded the space, and I heaved a sigh of relief.
The plan had been to meet in the middle of the compound, which meant they’d already cleared the rest. Kyle may have escaped, but the facility was in our hands.
“Learn what you can,” Xavier ordered his troops. “Don’t eat the humans.”
Ransom looked sideways at Xavier.
Xavier shrugged.
“Take every piece of technology you find,” I ordered our squad commanders, smiling slightly when I saw Corbin and Thorne alive and well in the ranks, both flush with the exhilaration of having won their first real battle. “Leave any guards alive for questioning.”
Valor’s pain beat down the bond, overcoming every other sense of obligation and duty. With the soldiers dispersed to their tasks, I quickly holstered my Glocks and headed back down the hallways to the prison ward—at least that’s what it had looked like—where I’d left Valor, Olivia, Daphne, and Hawke…who I found still leaned up against the wall, muttering something.
“Has he lost it?” Ransom asked.
Valor cursed at the keypad nearest the escape hatch, entering in numbers and cursing again when the door didn’t open. Her arm hung at an unnatural angle, and yet she was still fighting to get at her brother.
The pain streaming down the bond was countered with something hot from my side—anger. She’d gone off in the middle of the night. Chained me to the bed. Nearly gotten herself killed and had succeeded in getting herself injured.
“Try this one,” Daphne said in a soft voice, adding her own touch to the panel. Nothing.
“I don’t have to see you to feel you!” Hawke shouted, and my head snapped his direction.
“Building’s clear,” Ransom said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You can stop protecting that poster now.”
Hawke shoved off the wall, then crossed his arms and glared at it. “I’m not leaving, and I can smell you, Princess.”
One second, the space was empty.
The next, Avianna stood there, leaned against the wall, her arms folded across her chest, tapping her gloved fingers against her bicep as she glared at Hawke.
“Happy?” she asked.
His mouth dropped open for a second before his jaw clenched. “I fucking knew you were there.”
“Whoa,” Ransom muttered. “How long have you been able to do that?” He spun, pinning Olivia with a glare. “And did you know?”
“Since I matured at twenty-two, and yes, she knew,” Avianna answered.
“You never told us!” Hawke roared.
“Why would I?” Avi challenged. “You’re so busy telling me I’m useless! What harm did it do to let you believe it?”
“I never said you were useless. Pain in the ass? Yes. Spoiled, pampered, aristocrat? Definitely. Trust me, Princess, I can think of plenty of uses for you—” Hawke’s voice rose with every word.
“Hawke,” I warned. He might be right, but he was overstepping.
Hawke stepped back, and shook his head, then fingered the bullet holes in his vest.
“Are you hurt?” Avianna reached for him.
“Don’t.” He evaded her touch.
“Because I can keep a secret!” Olivia said behind me suddenly.
Ransom burst into laughter, earning every stare in the room, including Xavier’s.
“What?” Olivia snapped.
“I’m just thinking of your mother’s face.” He nearly doubled over, then tilted his head. “Oh, Mother, it won’t be dangerous being the princess’s bodyguard! Mostly tea parties and balls!”
“Shut up.” Olivia rolled her eyes.
“Now you’re out looking for fights that didn’t even involve you in the first place. Whatever would your lady moth
er say?” He covered his mouth.
“Tell her, and I’ll put snakes in your bed, I swear it,” she countered.
“You vampires have strange mating rituals,” Xavier muttered as Valor let out another curse.
We both turned as she gave up, cradling her injured arm and leaning against the wall. She swallowed when she saw my expression. I had enough conflicting emotions going on to wonder what exactly it was, but my bet was on fury.
Daphne saw us and gasped, plastering herself against the wall next to Valor.
Side by side, the similarities were easy to see. They both had the same delicate facial features, but Daphne’s wide eyes were blue. She was shorter than Valor, too, but I had no doubt she’d grow another few inches to match her cousin.
But there was a delicate vulnerability in Daphne’s eyes that I’d never seen in Valor’s. The girl had seen too much too young.
Next to me, Xavier stiffened, and every shadow in the room seemed to retreat as Daphne looked at him.
“Are you a vampire, too?” she asked, her voice strong if not for the slight tremble at the end.
“Oh no, I’m something far more dangerous,” he answered as his gaze skimmed down the girl’s frame, landing on her hand. A blast of heat exploded from his body, rocking my balance.
Daphne jolted, her eyes flaring as the ring on her finger melted away, sending the diamond skittering across the floor.
“Daphne!” Valor clutched her cousin’s hand, glaring our way momentarily before sucking in a breath. “She’s not burned.”
“Of course, she’s not burned.” Xavier scoffed, but he didn’t look away from Daphne. “And in my world, we don’t enslave young ladies with jewelry.”
Ransom stepped in front of him and clucked his tongue. “No.”
Xavier cocked a brow.
“She’s sixteen. No.” Ransom shook his head.
Xavier grinned and bowed his head slightly, turning toward me. “You owe me no favor for tonight, Lachlan.”
“I don’t?” My eyebrows arched high, and I fought against the tug that demanded I pull Valor into my arms.
“Not one.” His attention shifted back to Daphne for a second longer than I was comfortable with. “As long as I’m correct in assuming that you’ll be the human’s guardian in our world?”
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