by Leah Blake
“He has his right to think as he wishes.” Nico held Vuk’s challenging gaze. “But I think you’re wrong in this, Vuk. Ever since the ambush on the Creek that left Raul wounded, you’ve been overly suspicious about anyone and anything that leans the wrong way. I have no doubt in my mind that Mikhail will not betray us.”
“He’s your mate, Nico. Of course you’d think that way.”
“Doesn’t matter if he’s my mate or not. If I truly believed he was a danger to us, I’d walk away.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I’d figure something out. I wouldn’t put us in that type of danger.”
Nico returned his attention to the party on the patio. He couldn’t help but smile when he caught Mikhail watching him. The spark that lit his little mate’s eyes warmed his spirit. His humored smile melted into one of admiration and affection. In that moment, Nico wanted to haul him away, tuck him in his bed, and make love to the man until the sun set.
Mikhail excused himself from the table and approached him, each step ramping up his heart rate and heating his blood. Other than their private time together, Nico had not seen his mate look so relaxed. So comfortable. The sight gave him a flood of hope that Mikhail was starting to embrace his world, a world he wanted to share with his mate.
As he came up the few stairs into the dining room, his attention swayed toward Vuk and Ashly.
“Hey there,” Mikhail greeted, holding out a hand. Vuk stared at it until Ashly poked him in the back. Nico caught the action. Mikhail did not. Vuk ground his teeth as he shook Mikhail’s hand. “Listen. I know you don’t like me and you have every right not to. I just hope that maybe, I don’t know, we can start on a cleaner slate. Things have changed.”
“Ahh, listen to him, my wolf. Sounds so very familiar, doesn’t it?” Ashly taunted. Vuk groaned. Ashly flashed him a smile when he glanced back at the vampire. Nico suppressed the urge to laugh. It was a sight to behold Vuk bending so easily to the whim of his mate. “Starting over produces great results, am I not correct?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Vuk turned back to Mikhail. Nico burst with pride at his mate’s strength and willingness to assimilate with the shifters and make the first positive move toward Vuk. “Okay. I’ll give you a chance.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, then, on that note, I’m going to put my conniving vampire to bed.”
Vuk spun around, scooping the vampire into his arms and hustled from the dining room. Nico laughed at Mikhail’s amusement. His mate sidled up against him, slipped a hand to the back of his neck, and pulled him down for a deep, spirit-shattering kiss. Nico groaned against his pliant mouth, filling himself with the taste of Mikhail mixed with spice and beer.
Goddess above, he was falling hard for his mate.
“Afternoon, my beastly wolf,” Mikhail whispered as he tapered off the kiss. “Damn, you taste good. And smell good.” Mikhail nuzzled his face in the crook of Nico’s neck, sending his body into a wild storm of need. “And feel good. Are you coming out to join us?”
“Actually, I was checking up on you. Making sure you’re okay.” Nico ran his hands over Mikhail’s back before pulling him tight into his body. “Mmm, you feel good. Tell me, how did this come about?”
“Ask Marco.”
“Ahh, Marco.” His friend had a knack for shredding tension among guards. They all had a tendency to puff their chests at times. Marco loved coming around and poking pins in those chests to watch them deflate. This must have been one of those pins, and it appeared to work. “He’s quite the mediator.”
“Yes, he is. It was a rocky start, but things have loosened up.”
“How many beers later?”
“We’re still on our first round.” Mikhail rubbed up against Nico’s crotch. “You can take me away, you know.”
“And ruin tea time? Hell no.” Nico gave the lush slope of his mate’s ass a possessive squeeze. “But I’ll join you. I think we all need this.”
“I need you.” Another whisper saturated with a plea. Mikhail grabbed hold of his shoulders and pressed up on his toes. He kissed Nico’s chin. “This is crazy. It’s like every time you pop into my head, my entire body wants to combust. All I care about is being with you.”
“With me? As in using me for out-of-this-world sex? Or be with me, as in partners?”
Mikhail’s brows furrowed. “I thought it was the sex, honestly, but there’s more. Yesterday, I wanted sex. I also wanted you. Today, I wanted to come back to you and lay down in your arms. I wanted to know you were there, whether asleep or awake. I wanted you.” Mikhail’s grin turned sexy. “The sex is definitely a benefit.”
Mikhail’s honest confession squeezed at his heart. He hoped that his mate would come around to him. He held that hope from the first time he laid eyes on him over a month ago and knew one of his greatest enemies was his mate. He hadn’t expected it to happen, and if it did, not so fast.
A matter of days, and Mikhail was smitten. Nico was taken, lost, claimed and owned. He belonged to this little hunter pressing up to place another kiss to his mouth. He was helpless to deny it. He wasn’t falling for Mikhail.
Sweet spirits.
He’d landed head-first into this tricky thing called love.
Chapter Seventeen
The incessant banging against the drum slowly pulled Nico away from the strange building with unseen hands. The building darkened as shadows swallowed it whole, leaving him in a strange suspension of gray…
“Nico, open up.”
Nico’s eyes shot open, the unsettling dream resonating in his spirit. His wolf whimpered, equally disturbed by the essence of the dream, and the fortress-style building.
The banging returned.
“Nico.”
Nico glanced at his sleeping mate beside him. Mikhail’s breaths were even, steady, and deep. His face was relaxed, his eyes still behind closed lids.
Slipping to the edge of the bed, he tossed his feet to the floor and made his way on tired legs to the door. He ruffled his hair, cracked his neck, and opened the door, leaning an elbow on the frame.
Gadge took a step back, dropping his fist to his side. Nico narrowed his gaze on the technological genius of a fox.
“Why are you banging on my door at three thirty in the morning?” Nico growled.
“I need to speak with you. Alone.” Gadge glanced up and down the corridor. He leaned toward Nico, his brows arching. “Get dressed and meet me in my room.”
“Bro—”
“I’m serious, Nico. Shit’s hitting the fan.”
Gadge spun on his heel and took off at a clipped pace. Nico leaned his head out of the room and watched the fox disappear around the corner. Pinching his forehead between his fingers and thumb, he closed the door and groaned. Damn Gadge for waking him up. Seriously, what the hell was so important it couldn’t wait another couple hours?
Nico slipped into a pair of flannel night pants and a T-shirt, opting to go barefoot, and headed to Gadge’s room. The door was left ajar when he arrived, and he took the liberty of letting himself in. He spotted Gadge sitting at one of the four desks, watching an array of monitors.
“What’s so urgent?” Nico asked, closing the door and crossing the room.
Gadge’s personal suite was nothing shy of a techie’s wet dream, with more computers, screens, blinking lights, servers, and anything else needed to make hacking, breaching, and cyber monitoring possible.
Nico took a seat in the chair that Gadge pointed to, stretched out his legs, and folded his arms over his chest. He stifled a yawn against his shoulder, his mind still hazy from being jarred awake. He had groused the entire time he dressed in his room, hating that he left Mikhail looking completely edible in his bed. Then again, he had tasted his mate for more hours than he could count before sheer exhaustion finally consumed them.
Now, at four in the morning and with only a few hours’ sleep under his belt, Nico was trying not to squeeze his eyes shut against the numerous glowing computer monit
ors.
“You’ve got a problem.”
Nico coughed. “Excuse me?”
“Well, we, actually.”
Gadge struck a few keys on one keyboard, switched to another, then a third. When he swung his chair back to the first keyboard, he pointed to one of the screens lit up with a strange glowing green grid and a faint, fuzzy-at-times blinking dot.
“Don’t tell me you dragged me out of bed to play a game.”
Nico could hope, but the twist in his gut snuffed that hope right out. So did the crease in Gadge’s forehead.
“Your guy’s tapped.” Gadge changed the settings on the grid screen. A satellite image appeared for a brief moment before it became obscure behind a veil of static. The blinking light ceased for a full minute before it blipped once, stopped, and blipped again. Nico dropped his hands to the arms of the chair and leaned forward. “Every hour, I do a surveillance scan of the grounds. The wards intercept satellite imaging, hence why it only showed up for a second. The grid was laid and enhanced by the wards, and I created a program with the help of Cael that allows me to monitor in a pretty primitive way on the surface.”
The guy lost Nico somewhere between surveillance and satellite. Gadge switched back to the simple grid screen. The blip appeared to fizzle, then flash again. A dying spark of electricity.
“You’re trying to tell me that little light glitch is Mikhail?”
Gadge nodded. “Exactly.”
“How do you know that’s Mikhail?” Nico gave his head a small shake and squinted his eyes. His sight was more than perfect, but he had no clue what he was looking at. “How do you make anything out of that? It looks like a fucked up PAC-MAN board after a bottle of whiskey.”
Gadge punched in a series of codes. The screen zoomed in until that twist in his gut left him sick. Gadge’s lips pressed together when he looked at Nico.
“There are points along the Creek where markers have been laid so I can determine what I’m looking at. The manor has markers, too.”
He hit another key. The image went from two-dimensional black blocks with green outlining to an impressive four-dimensional blueprint of the manor. Gadge used a customized mouse with a huge roller ball to tip and turn the image until the sad excuse for a blip appeared.
Nico’s heart sank. “Is that my room?”
Gadge nodded again. Nico rubbed a hand over his chin, the muscles along his shoulders and neck tensing.
“Fuck.” He smacked his hands against his knees. “Does Raul know?”
“Not yet, but I have to tell him. I wanted to give you the head’s up so you can try and find out if this is intentional or if he is oblivious to the tracker.”
“We stripped him before bringing him back here. Nothing. Not a single item he owned came with him, right down to his watch.” How was this possible? Mikhail didn’t leave his sight for more than a few minutes at a time, usually when Nico grabbed food from the kitchen. “When did you notice it?”
“Shortly before I called you. I don’t know why it took so long to show up. Could’ve been because of the wards, the magic, the actual tracker.” Gadge shrugged, his mouth pulling into a worrisome frown. “I won’t be able to tell until we find the device.”
Nico’s mind whirled, a mixture of anger over a possible betrayal and the disheartening thought that Mikhail honestly didn’t know he was being traced at war with each other. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that after everything he and Mikhail had shared together that his mate kept up a farce to ultimately bring down Shadow Creek.
Shoving to his feet, he growled. “Give me ten minutes. Then go to Raul.”
Nico wasted no time returning to his room. He slammed the door shut behind him, stormed to the bed, and ripped the covers off Mikhail. His mate shifted and moaned, stretching his arms over his head before curling up on his side, asleep. Nico took the opportunity to assess the exposed stretches of skin and muscle, searching for anything out-of-place. Only a series of scars along his back, a few smaller pale patches on his arms, but nothing that stood out as suspicious.
Nothing. He saw nothing.
“Mikhail, wake up.”
A sleepy sigh escaped the man’s lips.
“Mikhail!”
Mikhail bolted upright, eyes wide as his head jerked one way, then the other. “Wha-what the hell?” When his gaze pinpointed Nico, the fright washed away, leaving his eyes heavy-lidded and a flush touching his cheeks. “Nico, all you have to do is climb up behind me. You don’t—”
“Where’s the tracker?”
A delicate crease formed over one brow. Mikhail drew his knees up and rubbed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Nico braced a knee on the mattress. “The tracker? Where the fuck is the tracker, Mikhail?”
“Nico, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking—”
“The tracker!”
Although a full transfer didn’t occur, the connection strengthening between Nico and Mikhail was enough to send Nico untainted, pure confusion on behalf of his mate. Mikhail’s post-sex glow dissipated and frustration welled up in its place. He scooted away from Nico until he stood up, the bed between them, and burned his half-sleepy anger into Nico’s face.
“What the hell, Nico? I don’t know what you’re looking for. I don’t have a-a tracker.” Mikhail threw his arms out to his side. Aggravation twisted his expression. “I came to this place with whatever you dressed me in. That’s it, remember? I have nothing. And for the love of someone up above, could this have waited a few more hours?”
“No.” Nico rounded the mattress, gathering up Mikhail’s shorts he’d thrown at the wall earlier. He tossed them to his mate. “On. Let’s go.”
“Hell, Nico. I’m beat—”
“You’re being tracked.”
Nico watched Mikhail’s entire body go ramrod straight. Slowly, those sleepy copper eyes turned back to him, flashing with disbelief.
“What did you say?”
Nico raked a hand through his hair. “You’re being tracked and we need to find out how. You’re certain you don’t have a tracker or any device on you that I should know about before we go to Raul?”
Mikhail stepped into the shorts and tugged them up. “I feel like I’m facing judge and jury with that guy on a daily basis. This is becoming routine and it’s getting old.”
Beneath the tumultuous concern, Nico sympathized with his mate. He wouldn’t like to face Jude on a daily basis. Then again, he’d more than likely be chow before the first day was done.
Mikhail shouldered past him and locked himself in the bathroom. Nico sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as a dull throb started along his tense shoulders. He listened to his mate go through a quick routine before emerging, looking more awake and more pissed. He barely glanced at Nico as he snatched up his shirt and tugged it over his head.
Nico groaned, grabbing Mikhail’s arm as he went to leave the bedroom. Mikhail gave him enough resistance to imply his aggravation with Nico, but didn’t fight when Nico drew him into his arms.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. Gadge woke me up a little while ago and told me what was going on. There was no tracking device for the past week, and suddenly it came up on his radar. I’m worried for you, for us. All of us. If Jude—”
“It’s a mistake.” Mikhail pressed his forehead to the hollow of Nico’s neck. A hard breath spread over his skin. “There is no device. Sure, on my cell phone and on some of the gear, but I don’t have any of that here. Unless he implanted a chip…or…”
Nico’s gut twisted into a full knot. Mikhail looked up at him, eyes widening as his words sank in.
“Oh, shit.”
Slipping his fingers between Mikhail’s, they left the room and bolted down the corridor. Nico’s fear swelled at the prospect of his mate being tracked by a chip somewhere in his body.
“Gadge, is that tracker moving?”
“Nico?”
Mikhail sounded sick, almost frightened. A characteristic he never exp
ected to see in his mate.
“Yes, sir. And I’m heading to Raul now.”
“It’s going to be okay.” Nico came to Raul’s suite and pounded on the door. “Raul, it’s Nico. We have a problem.”
“And I see you beat me.”
Gadge came around the corner as Raul pulled open his door in nothing but a pair of half open jeans. His piercing gaze moved between Nico and Mikhail, to Gadge as he stepped up next to them, and back to Nico.
Raul opened the door and motioned for them to come in. “What’s the problem?”
“Mikhail’s being tracked,” Nico said as Raul closed the door.
“Tracked.” Raul turned narrow eyes on Mikhail. Nico gave his mate’s hand a reassuring squeeze, sensing his mate’s growing frustration. “How is that?”
Gadge lifted a tablet he had secured on his forearm. “It just popped up about a half-hour ago. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing until I zoomed in on the location. It’s faint, but it’s there enough for the hunters to receive a signal and trace it. I think the wards may have intercepted and screwed with the device, but tonight, the signal was able to get out. I’m still looking into it.”
“So, you’re telling me he has a tracking device somewhere on his person, is that correct?” Raul asked, taking a step toward Mikhail. Nico placed the side of his body between his alpha and his mate. Raul’s brow lifted. “Why wasn’t I notified immediately, Gadge?”
“I, um, told Nico so he could look for the device.”
Nico straightened his shoulders when Raul’s gaze shot to him. “And did you?”
“He swears he has no device. We left all of his belongings in the woods before returning to the Creek. However, we think there’s a possibility he may have been chipped.” A faint current along the telepathic link between the guards hummed, but no conversation came about. Nico tried to read his alpha, but the fierce expression yielded little beyond his skepticism. “Raul, please. He hasn’t betrayed us. We’ve swayed his thoughts through our actions, not through magic or manipulation. I believe him. I trust him.”