by Paige Tyler
His mind was moving at a hundred miles an hour as they approached the heavy steel door designed to seal off the concrete bunker. If Adriana hadn’t destroyed the safety systems, the computers would have already slammed and locked down the door. He supposed the fact that the door was still open could be viewed as some kind of silver lining—if it hadn’t meant Harley could walk through as easily as he could.
“We need to close the door behind us,” he said, catching her arm and tugging her to a halt outside it. “If we can’t stop the meltdown, it might give everyone else a few extra minutes to get away from here.”
Sawyer could hear the way fear made Harley’s heart pound faster. Far more than the running ever had. But she nodded, reaching out to grab the edge of the door. The thing had to be at least four inches thick and would look right at home in any bank vault.
“Crap,” she said with a grunt as the door barely moved. “This thing is heavy.”
“You push from the outside and I’ll pull from the inside,” he said. “Once we get it moving, slip through.”
Harley didn’t hesitate to follow his instructions, which only made Sawyer feel worse when he gave a savage yank and the door closed far quicker than she probably thought it would. She barely had time to realize what was happening before it clanked shut with a solid thud, the metal rasping as he ripped the bolt on the inside way past the point of no return.
“What are you doing?” she screamed, her voice muted by the thick metal of the door and the concrete surrounding it. There was a small glass port near the top of the door, the clear material as thick as the steel itself, and Sawyer’s heart clenched in his chest at the sight of her starting to panic as she yanked on the handle outside, fighting to get the thing open again. “Sawyer, open the damn door!”
Maybe his imagination was messing with him, but being this close to the reactor, it seemed like the sirens were wailing even faster, as if they knew the radiation was getting out of control. Even if he was wrong about that, he couldn’t stand there the rest of the night and stare at the woman he loved. He had to move.
“I love you!” he shouted, making sure to enunciate clearly so she could read his lips as he said the most important words he’d ever uttered. “Now, run!”
Turning, he raced toward the reactor. He heard Harley pounding on the door behind him and he prayed she’d do as he told her and get the hell out of there.
The reactor room looked no different than it had when he saw it on the monitor in the security office earlier. Well, except for the twenty or thirty large drums set up on the tiles in the center of the room, each with a thick cable coming out of the top and disappearing off into the far reaches of the room. A distinctly high-pitched humming came from each of the drums as they pulled the control rods out of the reactor buried under the tiles.
He charged forward, noting in passing that every loose piece of metal in the room had been dragged to the center—chairs, tools, pieces of lifting equipment, random bits of chain. Everything was frozen to the side of the drums. His weapon flew from his thigh holster, slamming into one of the drums so hard the clang filled the room like a gong, making his teeth ache.
Dr. Jones was in his ear, telling him to stop the magnets and shut down the power that made them work, but Sawyer was suddenly having a hard time thinking clearly. He knew there was no way he could feel radiation passing through him, but nevertheless, it felt like every cell in his body was vibrating, making movement next to impossible.
His original plan had been to disconnect the power cables from the top of each drum. Either that or trace the spidery collection of them to their origin point and pull the plug that way. But when his head started getting fuzzy, he gave up the complicated plan and, instead, swung his claws at every cable he could reach. Sparks and chunks of melting insulation flew everywhere, zapping the bloody hell out of him. He ignored the pain, flinging whole drums aside as he moved across the room.
Sawyer kept going long past the point when his vision blurred and faded, until he was kicking and slashing purely by feel. And when that became impossible—when he stumbled and fell to his knees and then onto his face—he still continued shoving drums aside as hard as he could.
Until he couldn’t move at all. And everything around him faded to black.
Chapter 20
Harley couldn’t believe it when Sawyer slammed the heavy door closed, with her on the wrong side. She thought for a second he’d simply pulled too hard by mistake. But when she heard him twist the handle until it would be useless, she realized he’d done it on purpose.
“What are you doing?” she screamed, pounding on the metal door and yanking on the handle, starting to panic as he gazed at her through the small glass portal. “Sawyer, open the damn door!”
But all he did was say I love you, then order her to run before turning to race down the corridor, leaving her behind.
Like hell he will!
She wouldn’t let Sawyer do this alone. Thinking about him going into that room full of God knew how much radiation—by himself—made her heart beat so hard she thought it might jump out of her chest. The more she imagined the pain he might be in, the worse it got, until she swore she could feel his emotions washing over her. She didn’t understand how it could be possible, but she could feel him getting weaker, feel everything starting to close in around him.
Harley yanked on the handle, but the door was so heavy it barely trembled. She attacked the steel door, pounding on it as snarls of rage echoed in the hallway. When the handle broke away, she tried to wedge her fingertips into the gap between the edge of the door and the frame, tearing her nails in the futile attempt. The frustration and fear continued to build, making her whole world spiral out of control as she pictured Sawyer dying in the reactor room all alone.
She didn’t realize she was shifting until her claws sprang out. By then, the muscles of her arms and shoulders were already twisting and tearing, reshaping themselves in ways they hadn’t since her last true change in what felt like a lifetime ago.
The metallic taste of blood was jarring as fangs filled her mouth, but the urgency to reach Sawyer only continued to grow, forcing her to keep pushing, smashing, and slashing at the door over and over. Her claws gouged deep grooves in the metal and the concrete around the edge of the jamb. She kept going, the muscles of her shoulders and arms singing in exhilaration at the strain. She refused to believe she might not make it in time.
She would save Sawyer.
He was the only thing that mattered.
He was her world.
Harley was so caught up in the repetitive motion of digging and tearing, she almost missed it when her claws exposed the edge of the doorframe where it was buried in the concrete wall. She focused her efforts on that area, ripping away concrete in fist-sized chunks. When she’d made a big enough gap, she shoved her hands in and got a firm grip on the doorframe.
Not letting herself dwell on how impossible it was, she tugged at the frame, snarling and growling, wondering if this was how Caleb felt when he lost control and became more animal than human. If so, there was a part of her that could see the attraction. It was freeing to give up control like this.
With a shriek of metal and a crack of concrete, one whole piece of the wall came out. That only drove her to pull harder, and a few heartbeats later, she was through the door. Ignoring the red and blue lights flashing overhead, she pushed even harder, running faster than she ever had in her life.
When bones cracked under her skin, Harley realized she might have pushed too far. She glanced down to see her arms elongating, her fingers merging as fur erupted through the skin. The sensation was painful, but surprisingly, not as terrifying as she thought it probably should be.
The popping and cracking as her head and back reshaped itself was unnerving for sure, but it didn’t hurt any more than anywhere else. She shook her upper body violently, fighting to get out of
her uniform top and tactical vest before she could become trapped. Amazingly, the worst part of the whole ordeal was trying to grow a tail while still wearing her pants. She swore the long, bushy appendage was being twisted into a knot in its efforts to break free.
Following her instincts, she lowered her head and tore at the web belt and pants hanging loosely around her middle, noting in the exhilaration of the moment that her teeth were incredibly sharp as they ripped right through the material. It was only after the fact that she wondered what the hell she was going to wear now that she’d destroyed her clothes.
She pushed that thought aside. Save Sawyer first—worry about clothes later.
Having only a general sense of her wolf form, the first few running strides she attempted once the change was finished were incredibly awkward. But within a few feet, she was running at full speed, all four legs moving in concert, the wind created by her passage ruffling her fur. Damn, she was fast!
From her lower perspective, it took a second to find Sawyer once she entered the reactor room. In that short time frame, she was nearly overwhelmed with grief and terror, fearing the worst. Then her nose took over, leading her to the center of a jumble of ripped-up drums. That’s when she finally saw him slumped over on a bizarre-looking tile-covered floor.
She realized then the drums must be the electromagnets. Given the way they were toppled and tumbled around, the heavy cables coming out the top of each one sheared away, Sawyer must have been able to get them shut down. The fact that the klaxon alarms weren’t ringing as loudly seemed to support that theory. Not that it mattered very much for Sawyer. His skin was pale and sweaty, his breathing slow and labored. Her big ears told her his heart was beating far too slowly.
Was she too late? Had he already absorbed more radiation than he could survive?
She forced herself to stop thinking and latched her teeth on the shoulder of his tactical harness, tugging violently as she started backing away. It was a cumbersome way to rescue someone, her paws slipping on first the tiles and then the slick concrete flooring. She fell over on top of Sawyer more times than she could count, but she kept pulling, dragging his body through the gap she’d made in the door until they somehow ended up outside the building entirely.
Harley collapsed on top of him on the damp grass, the cool evening air blowing through her fur, her large snout nuzzled against him, breathing in his scent while she prayed he’d be okay.
She had no idea how long they lay there. She absently heard Jake’s voice coming through the earpiece Sawyer was still wearing, asking if the two of them were okay. The voices of their other teammates soon followed, words urgent and worried. There was nothing Harley could do. It wasn’t like she could talk, and she sure as hell wasn’t leaving Sawyer to find any of them.
She allowed the slow but steady beating of his heart to lull her into a state of relaxation. She guessed a person could only go for so long on pure adrenaline and fear. Even werewolves crashed at some point.
It was as Harley was lying there, draped across the chest of the man she loved, that the change occurred. Maybe shifting wasn’t as painful in this direction or maybe she was simply too exhausted to care. Either way, one moment she was a four-legged furry creature with a long, bushy tail; the next she was naked and human, draped half on Sawyer’s chest and half on the wet grass.
Sawyer’s chest was much more comfortable, even considering all the tactical gear he was wearing. But Harley forgot all of that when she looked up and found him gazing at her, his beautiful eyes making her think he was fully aware, but also somewhat baffled.
“Was there a wolf sitting on my chest a minute ago?” he murmured, one of his hands coming up to caress her bare back, his touch making little sparks skitter across her skin.
“You’re alive!” she squeaked, shoving herself upright to get a better look at him She knew how stupid that comment sounded, but she couldn’t come up with anything better.
Sawyer’s mouth edged up. “Yeah. I’m tired and it feels like I was hit by a truck, but I’m alive. I guess I was right about werewolves being able to recover from radiation exposure. But back to my question, why are you naked and did I really see you shift back from a full wolf?”
Harley stared at Sawyer for a moment, finding it impossible to explain how relieved she was he was okay. She should probably be worried about long-term effects of the exposure, but at that moment, all she cared about was that he was alive.
And that he’d scared the hell out of her!
Moving to straddle him, she smacked her fists against his chest in frustration. “Don’t you ever do anything that stupid again for as long as you live! You selfish idiot! I love you and you could have died. And that would have killed me, too!” Tears blurred her vision and she was on the verge of hyperventilating. “You have to promise to never, ever, do that again.”
Sawyer sat up and shucked his tactical vest, then his uniform top, leaving him in the T-shirt he wore underneath. Slipping it on her, he buttoned it up. The thing was so large it draped down to midthigh, and she imagined she looked ridiculous. But she couldn’t care less as he caught her hands and pulled her against his chest. This was much better. No MP5 magazines poking into her breasts. Only nice, strong, muscular pecs.
“I won’t ever apologize for loving you,” he whispered, brushing his warm lips across her jaw all the way to her right earlobe. “And part of that means doing anything I have to when it comes to keeping you safe, even if that isn’t what you want. With this soul mate thing, I get the idea that protecting you is hardwired into me now.”
Harley pulled away, ready to tear into him as rage reared up inside her. “So, what? You think I don’t feel the same way? That I don’t love you just as much? That I won’t risk my life for you without a second thought?”
He hugged her close again, his big, warm hands on her back calming her, and almost against her will, she turned to Jell-O and relaxed against him. “I’m sorry for scaring you, and for taking away your freedom to make your own decision about the risks you’re willing to face for me and for your job.”
“You can’t ever do that again,” she whispered, running her fingers through his hair and burying her face in the junction of his neck and shoulder. “I won’t let this thing be one-sided. If we’re going to do this together, you have to accept that.”
There was silence for a time, the sounds of sirens in the distance and people murmuring in excitement somewhere on the far side of the complex, intruding on their moment.
“I know.” He sighed. “I doubt it will be easy, but I promise I won’t do anything like that again. But you’ll have to keep me straight, okay? Having a soul mate—having you be The One for me—is all new. It might take me a little while to get it right.”
She nodded against him, loving the way one hand slid lower to settle possessively on her hip. “We have all the time in the world to figure it out.”
More silence followed, but the sound of sirens was getting closer, and Harley could smell several of her teammates moving closer to them. She guessed her nose was working better now that she and her inner wolf knew each other better. Or maybe it was finding her soul mate. Someone who would always accept her—fangs, claws, and all.
“So how is this going to work?” she asked. “Are you going to join STAT, or should I see if MI6 is hiring?”
Sawyer chuckled. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
She waited for him to finish that thought but was interrupted by the sound of heavy boots treading on concrete, followed by a snort of laughter.
“Seriously?” Caleb said from behind her. “All of your teammates are out here searching for the two of you, worried both of you are either dead or glowing in the dark, and instead, you sneak out to get naked in the grass? What the hell has this British werewolf done to you, Harley? You were never this irresponsible before you met him. I think he’s a bad influence.”
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br /> Harley didn’t turn around. Instead, she laughed and snuggled tighter against Sawyer’s chest. “Yes, he’s a bad influence, but he’s my bad influence now. All mine.”
Chapter 21
“And this is the mandatory selfie from the top of the Eiffel Tower,” Harley said with a laugh, leaning over the granite island that separated Jake and Jestina’s kitchen from the living room, turning her phone around so the beta werewolf twins, Zoe and Chloe, could see the photo of her and Sawyer. “If you look in the background, you can see the club in the Bastille District where Sawyer and I first met.”
Tall and slim, with long, straight, platinum-blond hair and light-blue eyes, the eighteen-year-old identical twins shared a knowing look as they oohed and aahed over the picture in the same way they had all the others she and Sawyer had showed them as they waited for everyone else to show up for the team party. Chloe grabbed the phone and started flipping through the pics, pointing things out on the screen to her sister without ever saying a word out loud.
From the corner of her eye, Harley saw Sawyer fighting to keep a straight face. She could totally understand why. The twin werewolves Jake had taken into his pack after their parents had been killed were unique. Though no one ever said as much, Harley was convinced Zoe and Chloe could actually talk to each other in their heads, like mental telepathy. And it was scary how fast they picked up on certain things most everyone else missed. Admittedly, it took a while to get used to them. Even Jes, who’d moved in with Jake after coming back from saving half the world from nuclear disaster, admitted the twins baffled her sometimes.
Sawyer was taking it all in stride, even if he was embarrassed with all the oohing and aahing. Even though the twins had met Sawyer about two weeks ago when he and Harley had first gotten back from their impromptu vacation, there hadn’t been time to talk much. But the moment they’d gotten to the apartment, the girls had demanded to see every picture they’d taken on their getaway.