by Amelia Jade
“Kierra,” he said to her now, his voice low.
“Yes?” Her voice quivered in fear, but it did not break. It seemed like an odd thing for her to be proud of at that moment, but she was.
“I’m going to go for back-to-back championships,” he said cryptically.
At first she had no idea what he was talking about. Championship? What had he played that she knew? Played and won, even. And how did that relate to now? He was telling her to be ready for something, she knew that much. The question was, what? He obviously expected her to understand that he was trying to repeat something. She straightened abruptly as her mind crystalized, flashing back to the morning when Uriel had effectively run as a blocker for her, opening up a path between her and the truck.
“Okay,” she said hesitantly. They had purposefully left the keys in the truck this time, and it was already facing back down the road to make an escape easier.
But there were four of them this time instead of two and they were all prepared for an attack. He might manage to create room for her to escape out the door, but she knew that there was no way he would be able to accompany her. He was sacrificing himself for her.
The four men were rather close together, having yet to spread out too far. They were confident, however, because the furniture arrangement and floor layout meant that the two of them had to go past the intruders to get anywhere. They had plenty of time to spare.
She saw Uriel tense. The shifter exploded into action. He still had his left arm, and it was as powerful as ever. She followed behind him as he aimed for the shifter second from the left. His arm snapped out, grabbing the shifter and unexpectedly hauling him closer to Uriel. Using the weight and momentum of the falling shifter, Uriel spun and all but flung himself and his victim at his original target. The movement caught the attackers off guard, and all three shifters went down in a pile.
A pile that also happened to be right between Kierra and the other two shifters, leaving her a clear exit for the door.
She took it, darting through the door and—
Right into the arms of another shifter.
“Let me go!” she screamed as he picked her up off the ground, her feet kicking uselessly against his powerful legs. She managed to wriggle around so that she was facing away from him, but nothing more she did had an effect. Instead, the figure held her still while yet more bodies piled inside the cabin.
She watched as Uriel tried to fight his way through, using his three remaining limbs as best he could. It was clear from the start though that he was outclassed and unprepared to fight with one arm only. The shifter holding her swung her away, his steps carrying him back toward the waiting vehicles, but not before she saw her rescuer go down under a pile of black-clad bodies.
“Uriel!” she shouted, tears streaming down her face.
“Shut up,” the shifter holding her grunted.
“Fuck you,” she swore, doing her best to kick him in the crotch to no avail. He brought her alongside a big cargo van and handed her off to another shifter on the inside. The door slid closed and the van rumbled back down the road.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, still struggling to get free. There was no give in the iron grip on her arms, however, which was keeping them pinned behind her back with ease.
“You’ll see,” a voice said from somewhere else in the van. Very little light filtered into the rear, but as her eyes adjusted she could make out four—no five—different bodies.
She opened her mouth to say more, but the sudden cursing of the driver interrupted her.
“Who the fuck—”
His words cut off as he made an angry noise and slammed on the brakes. Kierra went tumbling forward, hitting her head hard against the metal that separated the cargo area from the driver’s seat.
She cried out with pain from the impact, and tried to focus her blurred vision. Then the van began to roll. It went over onto its side, depositing her rather uncomfortably on her ribs. Thankfully it didn’t continue to roll.
Looking around, she realized that the men in the back had all exited the vehicle except for one, who was climbing to his feet now.
From outside the sound of fighting reached her ears. Men grunted, and what she could only surmise was the bellow of a bear echoed through the cabin.
Darren! She didn’t know who else might have intercepted the vehicle.
“Time to go,” the shifter with her proclaimed, kicking open the rear door and hauling her out with him into the cold biting wind.
Chapter Eleven
Darren
His fingers drummed against the dashboard.
The driver looked over at him and smiled reassuringly. “We’ll be there shortly.”
Darren jerked as if he had been shot, the words interrupting his internal thoughts. “Sorry,” he said absentmindedly, sitting back into his seat and trying his best to refrain from fidgeting.
Gabriel smiled, his hands smoothly guiding the truck through another turn as they raced up the mountain road.
“Believe it or not, I actually know exactly how you feel,” the leader of the Stone Bears said with a gentle smile.
Darren looked over at him, seeing the pain in the other shifter’s face. Although his Caia was now safe and sound, there had been a time when her life had been in doubt as well.
“I’m getting really sick and tired of these assholes going after our mates,” he snarled.
“Me too,” said Gabriel, his voice colder than ice. “Me too.”
Although the other occupants of the truck hadn’t experienced what the two in the front were going through, he heard the shared agreement.
Both Ajax and Raphael were close friends to those who had run into said troubles, and they also realized the risk if they found someone they loved as well.
He only hoped the four of them would be enough for whatever waited for them up on the mountain. They had come to a silent consensus that something had to have gone wrong. Otherwise they would have found a way to contact Darren by now.
The three of them had come and broken Darren out of jail after Gabriel had sent off his remaining Sentinels into the mountains. The simple way they had broken the law and put themselves into harm’s way for Kierra—and him, he supposed—had touched Darren. Knowing that he had friends willing to go to such lengths was extremely humbling, in a way he couldn’t find words to describe.
Most of his life he had been alone, on the outside. But now he had friends, true friends, who would do whatever it took to help him rescue his mate. Strange how sudden things could come together, he thought with a mental snort.
Then he sobered. They hadn’t rescued Kierra yet. There was still time for something to go wrong.
“Uhhh,” Gabriel said aloud, slowing the truck rapidly. “Everybody out!” he exclaimed.
Darren was already jumping from the still-moving vehicle, not having needed the command. Across the road in front of them were several sprawled bodies.
“Down there!” Ajax shouted. Darren followed his outstretched arm. The ground dipped away suddenly on that side of the road, quickly becoming infested with trees and bushes. Twenty feet or so down lay a black cargo van, resting on its side.
“Stay here,” he told the others, all but launching himself down the slope toward the vehicle, moving uncontrollably down the steep incline, his boots sliding through the unpacked snow. Reaching the side of the van he bent his knees and launched himself up.
His hand closed on the door handle and he wrenched it open, all but taking the door off with it. Peering in to the darkness his shifter eyes saw immediately that it was empty. A quick peek into the front told him the same thing.
“Empty!” he called back up to the others.
“Darren, get up here,” Gabriel called.
Needing no further encouragement, he took a deep breath and prepared to jump off the van. As he did, a tendril of scent slithered up his nose. He froze, taking another sniff, testing the air again.
“She was here!”
he yelled back up the ridge, searching around for tracks, hoping he would see those and not a body. But there was nothing.
“There are tracks leading away,” Ajax called back down, using his arm to motion Darren back up to the road.
Knowing how hard the snow might be for him to slog through, Darren leapt from the van. In mid-air he released his bear. It ripped from his skin with a growl, landing on all fours. His thick, powerful legs churned, sending him flying up the hill, snow practically spraying behind him.
He joined the others much swifter than he could have managed with two legs. Shifting back he stood up, looking around wildly.
“Over here,” Ajax said, leading him on.
The bodies, he noticed, moved farther away from where the van had gone off the road.
“What happened here?” he asked. “Who attacked these guys?”
“The air,” Raphael said, speaking for the first time.
Darren frowned, then tested the air again. “How?” he breathed, jerking upright in surprise. “They shouldn’t be anywhere near here.”
“I don’t know either,” Ajax said. “But Garrett and Russell were here. The tracks lead off the road.”
“Maybe they went back up to the cabin?” Darren suggested.
“If nothing is there, we’ll come back and follow the tracks,” Gabriel said in agreement.
They piled back in to the truck. Gabriel’s cabin wasn’t much farther up the road, and less than five minutes later it came in to view.
“That’s Uriel’s truck,” Raphael said, pointing to the white truck parked next to a twin of the cargo van they had found in the ditch earlier. “And the door is open.”
Gabriel killed the engine and the truck rolled to a halt, the four of them exiting it slowly. The presence of both the truck and the van meant that someone was likely inside. They just didn’t know who, so caution was mandated.
As they crept closer, Darren realized that the door was not open, but actually missing. A quick peek through the opening told him of what was inside.
Using his hands, he held up four fingers, and pointed at the cargo van. Four enemies. Then he pointed at Raphael and Gabriel, and held his other arm behind his back. Uriel, he mouthed.
The others nodded. At even odds, with two full Stone Bears on their side, the men inside didn’t stand a chance. Gabriel’s eyes had gone flat as he realized that the men inside were beating up on his junior colleague.
The leader of the Stone Bears rose, quiet as a shadow, his face a grim specter of death. Without waiting, he strode forward, moving more smoothly and deadly than Darren had ever seen. He shivered as he rose and followed. Gabriel rarely descended into such a state, and he preferred not to be around when it did.
The Stone Bear all but flowed inside the house. Darren followed, his eyes immediately recognizing the four men and taking an alternate path than Gabriel, though out of the corner of his eyes he saw Gabriel reach the first man, who hadn’t yet recovered enough to put up a fight.
The big shifter wrapped his thick arms around the man’s neck and hauled both backward and down in one motion. He went to a knee, pulling the unfortunate man in black down with him. He used his knee as a guillotine, half of the shifter landing in front of it, his head still wrapped in Gabriel’s arms landing on the other. The unknown shifter gurgled and died as his neck broke, his spine severed.
Darren reached his target, grabbing the man and throwing him backward off balance into the waiting arms of Ajax and Raphael, who quickly broke his arms and snapped his legs, before a heavy left from Ajax knocked him out cold.
Gabriel was busy dispatching a second shifter, leaving only one more for Darren to deal with. This one was prepared though, and he came at Darren, trying to overpower him. He was in for a rude surprise though, as Darren ducked down to the side out of the way of the incoming right hook and rose up, using his shoulder to drive the shifter’s jaw into his head.
The man was dazed by the blow, and unable to avoid the vicious left that Darren slammed into the side of his head, dropping him in a heap.
He shook his fist briefly and watched as Gabriel and Raphael rushed to cut a bruised and beaten Uriel free from the thick lengths of rope that had been used to restrain him.
It took them several long moments. The rope was over an inch thick, and had been wrapped very tightly and repeatedly around him, ensuring the shifter couldn’t summon enough strength to break free.
“They really did a number on you,” Gabriel commented sadly as the last strand parted under his efforts.
“Nothing serious, boss. It’ll be healed up shortly,” Uriel said, though his voice still sounded woozy.
Darren knew that his accelerated healing would indeed heal him quickly, so he didn’t mince any words. “Where’s Kierra?”
“They took her,” Uriel replied, his face crumbling as he admitted his failure.
“They still have her,” a new voice said from the doorway.
Darren spun, furious at himself for letting someone sneak up on him. Then the voice registered.
“Garrett?” he asked in surprise as his Alpha strode through the open doorway. “How the hell are you here?”
“I called him,” Uriel said before Garrett could respond. “After Kierra called me, I called him to let him know he should return to town right away.”
Garrett broke in now. “Luckily we were already close, having turned back.”
“You were barely gone,” Darren said. “Does this mean you remember something?”
Garrett nodded, though his eyes were still haunted with the frustration of being unable to remember his past life. “Only one thing, which was jogged—oddly enough—when I saw the ‘Welcome to Noble City’ sign on our way past Bear Bluffs.”
Darren arched an eyebrow, inviting his Alpha to continue. To him that seemed quite a random item to trigger his memory, but who was he to say?
“All I could remember was lying underneath the ‘Welcome to Genesis Valley’ sign, with a face leering over me.”
“Who? Who did you see?” Gabriel asked, joining the conversation, clasping forearms with Garrett in greeting.
“Nash.”
“What?! That puke-eating incestuous bastard!” Darren roared, his temper spurred as much by the fact that Nash still had Kierra as it was by what the asshole had done to Garrett. He spun and started slamming his fist repeatedly into the man he had knocked unconscious, breaking at least one of his knuckles before the others could pry him off.
“I’m going to kill him!” he raged, setting his finger back into place, using his anger to ignore the pain. “He’s behind all this as well,” Darren yelled, shrugging off the restraining grips of his friends as he pointed at the unconscious shifters around them.
The two sides exchanged stories. Darren told Garrett about what had happened in his absence, and Garrett explained how he and Russell, who had joined them by then, had intercepted the first van and attempted to rescue Kierra once they realized she was in it. There had been too many shifters though, and they had managed to hold the two of them off while they took the girl. A big black SUV had shown up, grabbing two of the three remaining shifters and Kierra.
Garrett had ended the last one, providing the trail of bodies that Darren and Gabriel had found.
“We need to track down Nash,” Darren said with finality. The others nodded their heads.
“We should search the LMC offices first,” Gabriel suggested. “I have a bad feeling he thinks he’s safe there.”
“To the mansion then,” Darren said, and headed for the door. They weren’t sure Nash was there, but it was the best guess they had.
He would do anything to find his mate, to hold her in his arms one more time. No matter what it took.
I’m coming, Kierra.
Chapter Twelve
Kierra
They hadn’t even bothered to tie her up.
Kierra sat in a chair. The lone chair, since no one else was sitting. They weren’t even in a room. It was a hug
e garage by the looks of it, though one that had been cut from the very rock of the nearby mountain, that much was easy to see. Veins of unknown minerals ran up the sides and disappeared into the high-vaulted ceiling.
Off to one side crates and metal containers with no discernable markings were stacked. Several large trucks were parked nearby as well. They looked bulky, and though Kierra was no judge of things, she would not have been surprised if they were bulletproof or heavily reinforced in some way.
Straight ahead of her was a cavernous opening to the outdoors. Freedom, only a few hundred feet away. Heck, Nash hadn’t even bothered to blindfold her after he and his goons snatched her away from Garrett just before he and the other shifter with him could rescue her. Although she did not know what purpose the garage served, she knew their exact overall location too.
They were inside the Kedyn mansion complex that served as the LMC’s head office. It all made no sense to her.
“You know, Nash,” she said finally, having thought things through a number of times. The medium-height and slightly pudgy man turned to face her, his expensive suit still looking rather worse for her. “I expected you to be smarter.”
She expected him to yell at her, but the taunt had the opposite effect. The greasy man smiled, displaying all of his teeth the way a predator might. There was altogether too much confidence in that smile she decided abruptly.
“And why is that my dear?” he said smoothly.
“Well, as far as hiding places go, this isn’t exactly the best. You know that Darren’s going to come for me, and he’ll find you fairly easily here.”
Outside a star twinkled in the darkness, barely visible over the tops of the nearby trees. Much of her view was cut off by the trees and the cavern roof, but there was still a thin sliver of the night sky that she could see. She knew Darren was out there somewhere hopefully gathering friends and coming after her.
Hopefully.
“I know,” he said cheerfully, turning to continue his long stare out into the dark.
She wanted to get up and hit him, but the last time she had tried that one of the three goons he had left had hit her firmly in the stomach, driving the wind from her and seating her back in the chair. Not wanting to repeat that unpleasant experience she stayed seated.