Aurora Champions Box Set

by Ophelia Bell

  Val chuckled after him. “Yeah, it’s like that with all of you and there’s no way in hell I’m turning my back on it. I don’t care why she brought us together. Gerri Wilder is a fucking genius.”

  26

  Val

  Val resisted the urge to crawl back into bed with her, instead letting Javin wake the pair and bundle them into Astra’s shower so they could get on with their plan. By the time they all finished breakfast, he’d reviewed the data and done some research into the lab his dad had hired to produce the drug.

  “We’ll split up to cover more ground,” he said. “Javin and Simon will hit the outside facility, sabotage their production and destroy their data and the stock they have on site. While you two do that, Astra and I will head to my lab. I can prep the counteragents, then purge all my research.”

  It hurt like hell to even suggest such a thing and Astra gave him a worried look. “Are you sure about that? It’s your life’s work.”

  He swallowed thickly and nodded, giving her a grim look. “Yeah, it has to be done. Too much damage has been caused by this drug. It isn’t worth the risk anymore.”

  Astra rose from her seat and came to him, slipping her arms around his neck and settling on his lap. He held her close, breathing in her peachy scent to calm his tumultuous heart. No amount of research was worth the risk of losing her, even if she never chose to mate him.

  At sunset they departed, Javin and Simon riding off on a pair of motorcycles while Val drove himself and Astra to his lab. Once the job at the outside lab was done, they’d regroup at his lab, then drive together to confront Val’s father once and for all. He planned to create a counteragent for his dad at the same time he prepared one for Astra and Simon. He hoped like hell the old man would see reason enough to take it once he understood how much damage he’d caused.

  * * *

  The sleek, low-profile glass facade of Val’s lab came into view, nearly invisible in the twilight. All he could see was the reflected remains of the sunset past the hills to the west, a dark, jagged edge bordered by a purple-bruised sky that reminded him of the remnants of Astra’s wound.

  He pulled into a parking spot near the entrance and jogged around to open Astra’s door. She stared at him in irritation.

  Val laughed. “I’m old-fashioned. This is what old-fashioned guys do for women.”

  “Where I’m from, you open my door because I’m a champion, not because I’m a woman,” she said, climbing out and stepping close enough for him to feel her breath. “Or because you’re my mate, which you are not.” She clenched her jaw and turned away, leaving his panther bewildered by her hot-and-cold treatment. Hopefully she would come around once she was healed.

  “How long will it take to create the counteragents?” she asked, already heading toward the door. Val caught up to her quickly, swiping the security badge and opening the door for her again. He gave her a narrow-eyed look of challenge, his lips quirked in a cocky half smile. She glared at him but he didn’t back down.

  “A couple hours start to finish.”

  Astra sped up, forcing him to increase his stride to keep up with her. Her urgency was understandable, but he had hoped this added time alone with her would give him a chance to gain a deeper understanding of what she wanted. It seemed she was a much tougher nut to crack than he’d thought.

  Once in the elevator he turned to face her, bracing his hands on the wall on either side of her head.

  “I’m not letting this go, Astra. You may not be in sync with your animal so it isn’t as clear to you, but it’s clear as fucking day to me and Javin. The four of us belong together. I don’t care how we make it work, whether you mark us all or we just carry on a ridiculous affair on the side, but I want this.”

  She gave him an incredulous stare. “You realize I have to go home soon, right? After this is over, we’re all heading back to Nova Aurora. Don’t tell me you’re planning to leave your entire life behind to be our fuck buddy.”

  Val winced at the reminder of how inaccessible they were. She was right though. He couldn’t just leave. EG-Alpha might have been his pet project, but it was far from his only project, and he took pride in the work he oversaw for the company.

  “You know it isn’t like that,” he said. “We’re more than that, and whatever we have is worth making a bigger effort to hold on to. I just need you to know I’m willing to make that effort.”

  Her gaze softened, and she lifted a hand to his face. “Why would you want something so uncertain? You’ll wind up alone most of the time.”

  “I don’t see it as uncertain. I want you and Javin and Simon however I can get you. I’m a workaholic so it’ll be easy for me to distract myself when we’re apart. But the time we spend together is too perfect. Don’t you agree?”

  He could sense the gears in her mind turning and knew he had her. Maybe she’d never agree to mating, but if she agreed to something official, that was a step in the right direction.

  “I have summers off,” she finally said. “Assuming your counteragent works and I get back in shape for competition.”

  Val found it hard to resist smiling and whooping for joy, even though what she offered barely scratched the surface of what he really wanted. He would take it.

  “It will work. I promise you that.”

  27

  Javin

  Javin loped through the shadows toward the rear entry of the secluded facility. He wished he could shift. His wolf was far more adept at stealth in his true shape rather than being trapped behind his human eyes. But he needed pockets and he needed to be able to remain stealthy for the entire mission, and naked men were decidedly not stealthy. Simon would have had an even harder time of it, though the big hyena shifter was surprisingly agile and silent.

  They reached the door and Javin stepped back, allowing Simon to take the lead. He gripped the door handle and his muscles bunched beneath the black spandex of his athletic shirt. A moment later something broke inside the door mechanism and Simon yanked, pulling the entire handle free. The door swung toward them, admitting them to the building.

  The hallway they entered was dark, but his heightened senses allowed him to see well enough for what they needed. They’d cut the power to the building before entering, which would allow them to take care of business undetected. However, they only had a brief window to get things done before whoever oversaw the building sent security to investigate the outage.

  “Move,” he commanded in a loud whisper and they jogged down the hall. The door at the end was locked and Simon held up a hand, indicating for Javin to back up. Then Simon took a few steps back and charged the door, aiming his shoulder at the area just above the latch. The frame splintered and the door flew open.

  “You sure you’re not part rhino?” Javin joked, eyeballing the destruction as they strolled into the lab.

  Simon’s laugh echoed through the room, betraying the size of the space they’d entered. “No, but I have trained with a few. The ball’s in your court now, buddy,” he said, gesturing at the tables of equipment.

  This was why the four of them had paired off the way they had. Javin was the one who could identify the drug and who understood how to destroy it most efficiently, but Simon was needed to simply break in. Val and Astra would have no trouble getting into his lab but Val was the only one who could create the counteragents.

  A blinking LED caught Javin’s eye on the far wall. “They must have a backup generator. Do you see any other lights?”

  “No, just that one,” Simon said. “I’ll stand guard. You do what you need.”

  The broad-shouldered shifter settled back near the doorway, relaxed but alert as Javin headed toward the blinking light. It was set in a control panel at the base of a large, cylindrical canister of shiny steel. The container was as wide as his torso and half as tall, its cone-shaped bottom leading into a steel tube. He followed the pipe to another contraption farther down that resembled a mechanical centipede with a dozen legs.

  His adrenali
ne surged when he recognized the cartridges that Simon’s stash of the drug had been stored in. This was definitely the place where they’d been filled. Each little “leg” of the machine was attached to a tube that distributed the drug across the cartridges, packaging them into the sealed vials for distribution.

  Returning to the first small vat, he flipped the switch, killing the light, then gripped the pipe where it was sealed to the valve and uncoupled it with a twist of his hand. It was tight but he was strong. He opened the valve and the pungent liquid began to spill out over the table and onto the floor. Javin stepped back to avoid getting any on him. He doubted it would affect him but didn’t want to take any chances.

  While the vat drained, he headed farther down the line and began to empty any cartridges he found there. But at the end he reached a stack of crates that were filled with them.

  “Fuck. I need your help!” he called to Simon. It would take more effort to destroy these. He darted a look around the lab for a quicker solution and found it on the far wall. A panel labeled Incinerator sat in the shadows. He grabbed one of the crates and headed toward the panel, calling back over his shoulder again. “Simon, here!”

  A snarling growl echoed through the big room, followed by a deafening bang. Javin’s blood went ice-cold and he turned in time to see Simon had shifted, his enormous hyena leaping at a burly man holding a gun. Blood gushed down Simon’s side, staining his spotted fur, but the man beneath him only struggled for a second before Simon ripped out his throat.

  More men spilled in, yelling and pointing guns and flashlights.

  Javin dropped the crate and ducked, lunging for the shadows around one table. He headed toward the fray, tearing off his shirt as he called on his wolf. His pants fell off him when the wolf leaped over a table, straight at the back of one of their attackers. The man’s gun went off, the bullet flying wide and crashing through a window. Javin bit down on his shoulder, careful to aim for the nerve that would knock him out rather than kill him.

  There was no way to communicate don’t kill to an angry hyena, but when he spotted Simon surrounded by four men with guns, he stopped caring.

  Javin charged, leaping straight at one man’s throat, his movement distracting the others enough for Simon to attack.

  The man beneath him let out a strangled yowl and Javin relaxed his bite just shy of piercing the jugular, but held tight while Simon dispatched the other men. The hyena slipped out the door and disappeared for a moment, leaving Javin snarling down at the terrified human beneath him.

  A moment later a naked, bloody, and human-shaped Simon appeared in the doorway, panting and holding a hand against one bloody shoulder. “We’re clear. I have no idea where the fuck they came from. What’s keeping you from finishing him off?”

  Javin shifted out of his wolf form, keeping his knees against the man’s chest. “Hold him,” he said and Simon obeyed, kneeling down to press the man’s wrists to the floor.

  “Who do you work for?” Javin demanded, staring down at the man beneath him.

  The man’s eyes were wide. “C-Carver. He said to be on alert for a breach. It’s only about the paycheck, man. I don’t want to fucking die!”

  “You’re a mercenary?”

  The man nodded, darting a fearful look up at Simon, who held him down with little effort. “What the fuck are you guys? I knew shifters were strong but you two are fucking mutants.”

  Javin snorted. “We’re purebred. Earth shifters are the mutants, though we just call them hybrids. If you want to live, you’re going to help us, got it? I’ll make sure you’re paid double if you do.” He assumed Val would be good for it if he asked.

  “Anything,” the man said, his eyes glinting at the offer of more money.

  Javin slipped off him and patted him down for more weapons, removing a holstered gun and several knives. Javin handed the knives to Simon, who winced when he reached for them.

  “You were hit,” Javin said, his nostrils flaring to find the scent over the other blood that had been spilled tonight. Simon’s was a sharper, more pungent odor thanks to the toxin in his system, but there wasn’t much of it compared to the blood of the dead men around them.

  “I’ll survive long enough to get the counteragent.” Simon took a deep breath and stood. “Tell us what we need to do to finish up and get out of here.”

  “You two dump as much of this shit down the chute to the incinerator,” Javin said, pointing at the crates and the equipment. “Anything that isn’t nailed down that will fit. I’m going to go find the server where they store the data.”

  He found an office that was miraculously unlocked and proceeded to rip the computer off the desk and carry it to the incinerator. By the time they were finished, not much remained that hadn’t been shoved down the chute—even the vat that had held the drug had disappeared, and Simon and the mercenary were discussing how to dispose of the bodies.

  “I say just leave them for the cleaning team,” the man said. “The assholes who own this lab aren’t exactly on the up and up. They’ll deal with the mess, but you guys are going to want to disappear fast.”

  “We will leave the planet tomorrow if tonight’s a success,” Javin said. “What about you?”

  “As soon as we’re out that door, I’m in the wind.”

  “You’ll want to get paid,” Javin said. “That can’t happen unless you stay with us for a little longer.”

  The man shook his head and reached inside his jacket, producing a brick-shaped package containing a pure white substance. “This is my payment. Found it while we were cleaning up. Better for us to part ways sooner rather than later.”

  “You accept drugs as payment?” Javin said. “Let me see that.”

  “This has nothing to do with the shit you were after,” the man said. “Whatever that drug you destroyed was is useless to me where I’m going. This is currency on the streets. I’ll survive.”

  “Fair enough. Good luck.”

  The man gave him and Simon a quick salute before jogging out the door and into the night.

  “Let’s get you patched up, then go meet the others,” Javin said, clapping Simon on the back. “I hope like hell Val and Astra had a less eventful night.”

  28

  Astra

  “So what do we do, just wait?” Astra asked, pacing through Val’s lab, picking up and putting down the various tools situated around the tables.

  “It takes time,” Val said. “I only have the single sequencer so I need to do each one separately. While yours is in the theta cycler, Simon’s is being analyzed to determine its structure. Then I have to do Dad’s.”

  She had no idea what he’d said, but she didn’t care much beyond the fact that he’d done hers first. “And when mine’s done with the thingy, it’ll be ready to take? I’ll be fixed?”

  “Not quite,” he said, spinning on his stool to face her. “The counteragent has to go through a maturing stage. Basically, it has to steep, but I can put it into a portable capsule that handles that step.” He held up a small silver cylinder that reminded her of the one Javin used for her treatments. A little blue light was illuminated on the top, but the cylinder was empty. “It’ll go in here. In twenty-four hours the light will turn green and you can take it.”

  She grimaced and sat down on the stool beside him.

  Val laughed. “Impatient girl. You do like to have your cake and eat it too, don’t you?” He closed the distance between them and pushed her legs apart, rolling close. She couldn’t help but lean in when he cupped the back of her head and lowered his mouth to hers.

  Behind him, the machine he’d moved her serum to whirred, then went silent and she jerked away and stared at it. “Is it done yet?”

  Val cupped her chin and turned her back to face him. “No, love, it will be a while longer. Will you let me distract you?” His lips drifted along her jaw and she sighed, arching into him as his hand toyed with the buttons at the front of her blouse. He’d insisted she dress like his lab assistants might, i
n the most boring shirt and pants, then teased her with the promise that she actually looked “good enough to eat” in the outfit. As if.

  But now she didn’t mind so much as he began to undress her. Once her shirt was half unbuttoned, he slipped his hand inside and cupped her breast.

  “You’d have been safer with a bra, you know,” he murmured into her ear.

  “When did you ever get the impression that I like being safe?” she asked, reaching down between them to grip his erection.

  He groaned and nipped at her earlobe. “What I’d like to know is whether this means you decided to forego panties too.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” She turned her head to find his mouth again. She captured his lower lip between her teeth, nipping, then sucking. He growled as he took the bait, slanting his mouth over hers and plunging his tongue deep. At the same time, he dropped a hand to her waistband and unfastened the button, slipping his hand inside.

  Finding no other barrier between his fingers and her pussy, he cursed and, in a smooth motion, swiveled and lifted her off her stool and onto the steel table beside them.

  Astra laughed as Val yanked her pants off one leg and pushed her legs apart, then she fell back with a rough moan when he pressed his mouth to her pussy and licked.

  “Holy fuck, this is way better than cake,” she said.

  Val chuckled against her sensitive flesh, hooking a hand beneath her knee and putting her foot on his shoulder as he delved deeper. Within moments he’d pushed her to the edge, and when he reached up to tweak her nipples, she flew over, crying out and bucking against him as the orgasm commandeered her body.