There’s only one option. Win, and win soon.
I throw several jabs, hoping to find some opening. Anything. Legrand just dodges and blocks, then returns a powerful hook which I’m able to catch with my arm, preventing it from connecting with my face and breaking my jaw, but it still hurts. Bad.
Legrand follows up with two roundhouses, each one I narrowly avoid with my unique reflexes. But while my attention is on his bullet-fast feet near my face, I miss a back kick he ends the succession of kicks with. I sidestep, but his heel still caches me on my side, and it hurts like hell. It must be where he got his name from. He spins and slices like a chainsaw.
“Face it, you’ve lost. Just give up, Hawes,” Legrand says. His voice is low and direct. It sounds educated, but in the kind of way that makes your hair stand on end. It’s unsettling.
“Oh, so it speaks?” I reply sarcastically, my hand on my side, trying to ease the pain of the blow my poor oblique just took.
“You can be as sarcastic as you want. But by my predictions, you only have about ninety seconds left in the ring before I break your arm. After which I’ll then break your skull.”
“Ha ha ha. Yeah I get it. You’re the evilest, biggest bad wolf of all. I’m shaking in my boots.” I lunge at him with my palm. I know he’ll probably deflect it, but hey, I could get lucky.
He sweeps my hand to the side, and his fist connects with my nose. Damn, that hurts. Probably not broken, but I can feel blood running down my face now.
“You have an odd way of coping with facing your imminent death.” He stares at me, arms posed and positioned to attack at a moment’s notice. “Shall we raise the stakes, then?” he turns and looks at the audience for a short moment, and looks back at me. I swear he smiles, but it’s such a small expression that I barely catch it. Or my vision is getting blurry. Maybe both.
Oh, hell. Rose.
I look down at where I last saw her sitting, and she’s not there. But in the aisle, not far from her chair, I see two figures walking hurriedly toward a small exit door. One is probably Josh, the other has to be Rose. Not far behind them, nearly on their heels, are at least a dozen men following them.
“What the hell is going on?” I reply, trying to keep my cool.
“Don’t you see? You’ve all walked willingly into my trap,” he says, voice low and without affect.
“What do those two have anything to do with this?”
“Well, aside from being Tribunal lackeys that I would be more than happy to do without, I recently came upon some information saying that Rose is an unmated alpha female. Pure alpha.” He licks his lips. “I’m thinking she’d make the perfect mate.”
I throw several low kicks, hoping to catch Legrand’s knee. I would really love to break it right now. He throws his elbow up at me and catches my jaw squarely in the middle.
Shit.
I see Rose and the guy that looks like Josh exit through the back doorway, but only seconds later the goons follow after them.
“What do you plan to do with them?” I ask, hoping to keep him talking with the off chance that it will give me an opening, though it seems unlikely.
“Well, once they’re captured, I’ll kill the suit first. I despise guys like that Josh. And Rose, I’ll take to a nice little penthouse suite I own a few blocks from here and make her mine. After that, I might even make her put in a good word with her father for me, see where that goes,” he says, as if his plan were completely logical and not at all insane.
“You’re crazy. Just putting that out there,” I reply, wiping the blood from my battered jaw and wiping it on my shorts.
“I’ve heard that before. The people who said it are now dead.” Legrand goes on the offensive, lunging for my core, probably hoping to knock the wind out of me. I try to put my training to use, keeping light on my feet and looking for an opening to retaliate, but I see none. The second I miss, his arms are up, defending the very place I’m attacking, as if he’s anticipating my every move.
My back is next to the exit of the arena now. And even though it’s held with a chain and a small lock, I try to guess how long it would take me to rip the lock and bolt for Rose. Every second with this madman, something terrible could be happening to her, and I have to stop it. I have to.
Legrand watches me, reading my expressions. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Don’t worry though, I’ve given strict instructions for her to not be harmed.” He throws a straight kick, which I’m able to absorb most of the impact with my forearms, but the force throws me into the cage behind me. I quickly sidestep, narrowly avoiding another powerful kick from Legrand which lands on the cage. He turns back to me. “So you’ll get to die knowing she was safe while you were still alive.”
“Beep boop boop,” I say, imitating robot-like sounds. “All I hear is ‘I’m a psycho madman, please punch me in the face now’.”
Legrand rushes at me, and I put up a block, anticipating a strike from him. But instead he lunges at me, bringing me to the ground. We shuffle, me trying to avoid being pinned, and he trying to move into an advantageous position. He’s fast, and still has a lot of strength left though, and he’s able to come on top of me and pin me down. I try to buck him off, but he has a good hold on me from where he’s at.
“Joke all you want, Hawes. You’re just wasting breath. And you’re down to about thirty seconds.”
I’m coming, Rose. I just have to kill this asshole first. I’m just not sure how to do that yet.
And at this rate, Legrand might not be wrong about how much time I have left.
Chapter 4
Rose
“Mission abort. I want you out of here, now.” I hear Josh speaking over his headset to the other agents that were with us at the fight.
“What are you saying?” I ask Josh, not wanting to hear the answer.
“We have to get out of here, now. None of us are safe,” he replies.
“But what about Hawes?”
“I can’t risk a whole team of agents in the off-chance that we might be able to do something for him. Once the team is out I’ll…figure out something.”
It’s cold, but the harsh reality of the matter is that Hawes is locked in a cage with Legrand, and none of us could get him out if we wanted to. I just want so badly to help him right now. I feel like all of this is my fault. If only I hadn’t…
“This way,” Josh says, opening up another door for me. I go through and he follows. It feels like we’re under the arena now, winding through a series of maintenance tunnels and hallways.
“We should almost be at the southeast underground exit,” Josh says methodically.
The door is only thirty or so feet from us at the end of the tunnel. I can hear Josh radioing in for backup, but all I can think of is Hawes back in the ring. My mind wanders to earlier today, back in the gym at the mansion, and the things we said. I wish I could take it all back. Maybe then things would be different. Maybe the outcomes would have changed. I want to be back at Hawes’ side.
We’re almost to the exit, a large steel door that opens from the inside. Josh swings it open quickly, and the first thing I feel is a gust of cold night air from outside.
The next thing I notice is that we’re staring down the barrel of a sawed off shotgun that’s held by a woman with long, raven-black hair, and accompanied by a handful of men with guns.
“Going somewhere?” she asks. It’s Alexis, the other person our informants told us was involved with the mob. We didn’t expect her here though. Our only target tonight was Vincent.
Josh tries to reach for his pistol, but she fires a warning shot at the ceiling right above our heads, and Josh drops his pistol on the ground and puts his hands up.
“No funny business. I know you’re thinking you’ll save the day and all that, but don’t think I won’t plug you like a clay pigeon if you try to pull something,” she says, voice sounding dead serious.
Alexis kicks the pistol on the floor out of the way, and motions with her gun for us to
turn around, which we do. She pokes Josh with the barrel of her gun.
“Vaya,” she tells us. Go, in Spanish.
We walk back down the hallway we came down, and not far from us I can see a large, rusted steel door we must have passed by, but I didn’t notice.
In this sort of situation, I know Josh would normally have just rushed into the melee, relying on shifter reflexes and speed to disarm the enemy. We can be a lot faster, and a lot more coordinated than even exceptional humans. But Alexis isn’t a human. And she has us outnumbered and outgunned. Josh can’t risk someone getting shot.
“Rico, get the door,” she says, probably to one of the men behind her. He walks in front and swings the heavy door open, revealing a small back room. All I see inside is a table, a couple of chairs, and a heavy steel frame bolted to the wall with chains dangling from it. Probably a back room put to use by the mob for interrogations, or even torture.
“You.” She points at me. “Empty those pockets of yours, and go sit over there, but keep your hands where I can see ‘em. This one…” She pokes Josh in the chest. “Chain him. I don’t want Mr. Heroic to get any ideas.”
I put the few things I have stowed away in my hoodie pockets on the table like she asks, then sit at the far end of the room. One of her lackeys comes and stands a few feet away, gun pointed at me. I want to fight back, but I also know that Alexis probably won’t hesitate to kill either of us if we resist.
Her gaze is intently focused on Josh right now, her gun pointed at him while the others chain him to several steel bars embedded into the concrete wall. For a second I think I see her licking her lips, but I figure it must be my imagination.
Once Josh is restrained with the thick, heavy chains secured to the wall, Alexis pulls up a chair a few feet from Josh and sits in it, propping her legs up on the table. She positions the shotgun in her lap, pointing in my direction.
“Ok, you guys can leave. But close the door behind you, I’d like some privacy,” she says. With a wave of her hand, the other men filter out of the room and close the door on us. She picks up a glass from the table and drinks from it. By the smell of it, it’s probably something alcoholic. She turns on a small TV resting on the table and glances at it.
“Bad night for your friend Hawes. Hope you didn’t put any money on him,” she says nonchalantly. All I can hear from the TV is the sound of the crowd. It must be a direct-feed from the arena.
Looking bored, Alexis turns from the TV and begins eyeing Josh hungrily. He replies with a look of disdain, which doesn’t affect her at all. His size is more apparent, chained to the wall like that.
“What do you want with us?” I ask. I can’t just sit here and wait. I can’t stop thinking of Hawes.
“Don’t talk to her, she’s a snake who has betrayed her own kind,” Josh tells me, looking at Alexis.
“Hey, as I see it, none of ‘my kind’ ever gave me any break. So I made my own way in the world,” she replies with a shrug back at Josh.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You’re all full of BS. Talk about duty and protecting the pack and helping protect our way of life and all that crap. But take a kid from the streets that happens to be shifter, someone from the other side of the tracks, and all of a sudden all the doors are closed. All those morals mean nothing. Sorry, kid, nobody wants ya,” she says, her voice nonchalant and unaffected, despite the fact that it’s clear what she’s talking about.
“What does all of this have to do with us?” I reply.
“Mostly you, really. Not much for him,” she nods informally at Josh, “Except the fact that I like seeing guys like him squirm.” Josh looks at her uncomfortably, frowning. “Though this one is particularly fun to watch.” She licks her lips openly this time, slowly running her tongue over her upper lip while she gawks at Josh. Josh shifts a little where he’s standing, and just grimaces back.
“What do you need Rose for? It’s me you want,” Josh says, interrupting Alexis’ reverie while she watches him.
“Well, it’s not really about what I want,” she replies with a wave of her finger. “It’s about what Legrand wants. He’s not into dudes. But an unmated alpha female…” She leans her head lazily and looks back at me over her shoulder. “He’s definitely in the market for that.”
Josh and I exchange glances, and I see horror in his face.
“So that’s what this whole setup was for?” Josh yells, his voice demanding.
Alexis settles farther into her seat, leaning back and balancing on the two back legs of her chair.
“Maybe,” she says, with a smug look at Josh.
“Why would you even help someone like Legrand? He’s terrible,” I ask, hoping to see some sort of humanity from her.
“Legrand gets it. I may not like the fact that he came into the mob and basically ruined years of work for me trying to claw my way to the top. But he follows the golden rule. Always look out for number one,” she says, pointing a finger to the ceiling.
“Why would you try to kill me then?”
“Oh, the car bomb.” Alexis pauses and chuckles to herself. “Yeah, that. My guys watching the lot waiting for you fell asleep on the job. They were supposed to blow the car when you reached the lot, not when you were next to the car. Then they were supposed to tranq you from the window and nab you then. I guess they panicked when they saw your boy Hawes though. Sometimes they’re real bozos.”
Josh and I exchange glances of confusion, then look back to Alexis.
She’s looking at the small screen next to her, and talking to herself.
“Ouch. He’ll feel that tomorrow. If he sees tomorrow, that is,” she says. “A real pity. Hawes has a great bod too. Not really my type though…” she trails off.
I can’t bear to think of Hawes getting beaten senseless in that ring. I want to go back to the mansion with him, do things all over again, change how we ended things, change the choices we made and not come here at all.
I can feel Josh watching me, my head buried in my hands, trying to think of a way out, while simultaneously wishing that I could change things by simply wishing them away.
“Rose,” I hear Josh say, his voice sullen. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
I look up at Josh and see sincere sadness in his eyes. His armor is finally cracking, the heavy burden of his decisions finally wearing him down.
“No, it’s not your fault…”
“It is. I’m the only one who should be held responsible for this. I treated Hawes badly, and when I found out you had feelings for him it made me even angrier, more cold toward him. But I’m so sorry, I didn’t think it would go this way. That things would turn out so bad.” He hangs his head limply, eyes sad and brooding. There’s silence for a moment, only the quiet sound of the tiny TV from the table heard in the room.
Then I hear clapping. A slow, intentional, rhythmic applause coming from the woman leaning back in the chair. I look up and see Alexis, her dark red lips turned up at the corners, staring at me.
“Wow, you can’t make this shit up. This is better than a telenovela. Bravo.”
Josh perks his head up and looks with shock at the source of the slow clap. Alexis looks over and raises an eyebrow at Josh, then turns back to me.
“Well, how about we make a deal?”
“A what?” I reply, stunned.
She plops her chair legs back onto the ground, picks the shotgun up from her lap, presses it onto the table, and then leans over the table, her forearms crossed. Her eyes are serious now, an intense chocolate brown color, staring at me across the table. They’re cunning and intelligent.
“How’s about I let you go. But on two conditions.”
“What?” I reply.
“Don’t listen to her, Rose, she’s a criminal. It’s probably a trap,” Josh says from his place on the wall behind her.
“You. Cállate. Shut up,” she says, putting a finger up in Josh’s direction, but still looking intently at me. “I’m talking to her.”
“I can tell this guy Hawes is important to you. From where I stand, he’s a silver spoon-fed brat, but apparently you see something more in him.” She pauses, collecting her thoughts, but not blinking, her focus still squarely on me. “As I see it, I’d just as soon see Legrand dead so he can’t encroach on my turf.”
“Wait, you want Legrand dead?”
“Yeah, he’s only been in the mob a few months, and already the higher ups are basically his bitches. I’ve been a part of this organization for a long time, and I’m not going to just roll over and see him run it when I’ve worked so hard to make a name for myself. That, and the guy’s a real asshole,” she says plainly.
“What’s the other thing?”
“He stays.” She points at Josh behind her.
“Why?” I ask, confused.
“I need collateral. I know this place will be crawling with cops and with Tribunal brass any minute now. I want him here in case I need a hostage to make a break with.”
“Do it, Rose,” I hear Josh call across the room.
“Hey, what did I say about you talking?” Alexis raises her voice and turns around to glare at Josh. Josh doesn’t move, just glares back.
“What will happen to my partner?” I question.
“I can’t make any promises, I’m sorry,” she replies, raising her hands with a shrug.
I’m not sure I can do it. I know if Josh was in this position, he’d never put me in danger to save himself. And I don’t even know yet what I’ll do to help Hawes. But I know I’ll do whatever it takes.
“Rose, I know what you’re thinking,” I hear Josh say. “Just go, don’t worry about me.”
Alexis throws a glass at the wall in Josh’s direction, purposefully missing him, but making her point all the same. “I swear, I’m coming over there when I’m done!”
I look up at Josh, whose face is resolute. I nod at him, and he nods back, a wordless exchange between us. In that moment, I’m grateful for a partner like him.
Ultimate Alpha Boxed Set: A BBW and Wolf Shifter collection Page 33