by Jessie Lane
That fast, Minna paused. In her thickly German accented English, she spoke. “This is the front of the house.” It was a good clear shot. He quickly analyzed what he could see of the structure. There were a lot of windows, they would have to be careful about moving about in the yard because of it. Windows meant exposure if anyone in the house happened to look outside and see them. Or shoot at them. It looked like a double door for an entrance. That could come in handy if the group had to exit quickly. More bodies could fit through two doors instead of one. Gage scanned what he could see of the two level structure and wondered, was there more that they couldn’t see?
“Is there a basement?” He asked Minna.
She nodded. “Yes. It runs almost the entire length of the house, so it is very big.”
That interested Gage. A mansion that size, the basement alone could probably house a small army of wolves in case of an emergency. They probably had their hostage down there too.“So is that where they’re holding Alpha Corvus?”
“No.” Minna pointed to the second floor of the house on the screen. “I last saw him up here, in a room on the backside of the house. Well, maybe I shouldn’t call it a room. They put a cot in a large walk in closet, and that became the Alpha’s makeshift prison.”
“Why the closet?” Jenna asked. “Why not lock him down in the basement?”
Minna shrugged her shoulders. “That’s a good question. I get the impression that there’s something down in the basement that they don’t want most of the Pack to stumble upon. Not that most of us spent our time down there anyways. That the enforcers quarters. You don’t go down there unless you’re one of Beta Lars enforcers for the Pack or someone who’s managed to get in good with them. I avoided anything about the basement.”
The tone of her voice had been fearful. Whatever went on down in that basement had the submissive wolf scared. “Why?” Gage asked. He needed clarification of the possible dangers. They couldn’t walk into this situation completely blind. Whatever information they could get from her now could be the difference between life or death later.
Minna shuddered subtly, before going a little pale in the face. Licking her bottom lip in nervousness, she finally croaked out, “The men are allowed to do whatever they want down there. Think about what that could mean for a submissive wolf like me. A basement full of dominant male wolves with little to no scruples… I’d be lucky to get out alive, nonetheless intact.”
Damn. The more Gage heard about this Pack, the less he liked them. It didn’t take much more than the stiffening of his mate’s back as she still sat beside him for Gage to know that MInna’s insinuation was not lost on Elena. The Corvus males had obviously been given free reign by Lars to whatever the fuck they wanted to do. A small, weak wolf like Minna would never survive that kind of abuse.
That scenario also explained a lot to Gage about why the members of the Pack were letting the Alpha be held in such a dishonorable manner. When the Beta was giving you everything you wanted, and letting you do whatever you want, why change that? But this information led them to a new problem.
“Minna,” Gage murmured gently. “Do you think there are women trapped down in the basement? Being held against their will?”
She shook her head. “Most of the weaker women who couldn’t stand that kind of behavior silently slipped off after the Alpha was locked up.”
Jenna softly asked. “Most? What happened to the other women then?”
“They disappeared.” Minna’s voice cracked on the last word. Tears spilled over her eyelashes and then a small whine escaped her. “I was the last of the women who didn’t like that kind of attention from the men. The remaining women who chose to stay, let’s just say that they enjoy certain kinds of rough or violent tendencies. And some of the men do prefer it when their partners are willing.”
Gage closed his eyes against the unwelcome visualizations of what had probably been going on in the Corvus Pack for such a long period of time. The women whom had ‘disappeared’, yeah, they were dead. The women who had escaped, they were the lucky ones. But that made him wonder, “Why did you stay Minna? Why didn’t you leave with the other women?”
She wiped a hand across her face to dry her tears. “I couldn’t leave him you see. Although I respect Alpha McPhee for giving me a place to stay, and a new Pack that welcomes me, Alpha Corvus is my master. He saved my life when I was too young to be living on the streets to survive. Then he let me go off to a nursing school away from the Pack and he paid for it. He has helped me when I could not help myself. For that, he has my undying loyalty. I will always follow him, even if it is into death itself.”
And with that honest, somber statement, the picture of Minna became a bit clearer for Gage. He’d guessed for so long that her interest in Corvus had been a love interest, and in a way he had been right. It was love, just not the romantic kind he had assumed. Minna loved Corvus as a child loved a father. As a victim loved their rescuer. With a pure innocent loyalty that could never be killed. The kind of loyalty a sick, twisted wolf like Lars would kill for.
Minna sniffled as if she might cry any second. “I finished nursing school about a year and a half ago and came home to my Pack. A few months after that is when Lars took over. I don’t know what the Beta originally gave Alpha Corvus to incapacitate him, but the Alpha had a bad reaction to whatever it was. It almost killed him. Lars had me dragged out of my bed in the middle of the night and told me that if the Alpha died, I died with him. After that Lars ordered me to keep Alpha Corvus alive and in a coma with the same stipulation, if the Alpha died, I was dead too. The fact that I was the only pack member with medical knowledge is what saved me from being dragged to that basement. Lars told all of his enforcers that I wasn’t to be touched.”
Minna dragged in a ragged breath. “I kept Alpha Corvus alive those six months I was with him, but he was starting to deteriorate and I couldn’t figure out why. I’m worried about what state he’ll be in now since I haven’t been there for the past three months to take care of him.”
The tone of the plane was somber now. He imagined that every man on that plane was now filled with the same unbridled fury that he was feeling himself. Who knew what his mate and Jenna were feeling. Sympathy. Pity. A need for vengeance for the small, sensitive blond wolf. But they didn’t have time to dwell on what hells Minna had lived through, or the women who were now buried and dead somewhere. They had a mission to plan, an Alpha to rescue, and a bunch of depraved, shameless wolves that Gage planned to rip apart with his own two hands.
Pack Master Davies must have been thinking along the same lines he was, because he thanked Minna for what she told them and asked her if she could tell them anymore. Minna pushed the play button and for the next hour the group stopped, started and rewound the surveillance video a dozen times. Asking Minna questions. Pointing out possible entrances and exits to the building. Plotting the best way for the lot of them to go in and wipe out a bunch of bastards who deserved anything but an easy death.
CHAPTER-NINETEEN
Gage
After what felt like an eternity, the co-pilot’s voice finally came over the intercom. “ETA is thirty minutes.”
Gage looked over at his unit. “Lock and load. Tyson, give me the duffle bag.” He looked over to Davies. “Your man going to be at the air strip in time?”
Davies whipped out his cell phone and started texting as Tyson placed the bag at his feet then gave Elena a wary look and asked him, “You sure you want to do this?” He pointed to the bag.
Gage snorted. “There are worse things than giving her this.”
The lion-shifter pride leader’s eyes bugged out of his head. “I’m not so sure of that, but it’s your funeral, man, not mine. I’m just glad I’ll be on the other side of the house.” With that, Tyson walked away. Gage looked over at his mate, who was watching him with one eyebrow cocked up in curiosity.
He waited for her to say something, perhaps ask what was in the bag, but she didn’t say a word. Reachin
g into his pocket, he withdrew the key to their handcuffs and unceremoniously unlocked them. Elena’s face was a mask of surprise, however they didn’t have time to bullshit around about him finally taking the handcuffs off. They had to get ready for what they were about to do.
Not ready to give her the entire contents of the bag yet, he bent down and unzipped enough of the bag to reach his hand in and grab the change of clothes and the pair of combat boots that he’d had Tyson procure for her. Pulling them out, he zipped the bag back up quickly so she couldn’t see the remaining contents, and then thrust the clothes in her direction.
“Go to the bathroom and change.”
Elena narrowed her eyes at his tone, but she grabbed the clothes and disappeared into the bathroom.
Not having a minute to waste, he asked Tyson to pull the floor plans they had of the house up on the television. They needed to go over it and their plan one last time before they left the plane. The sounds of the men checking and double checking their weapons played like a familiar song in the background as he waited for Tyson to finish setting up their visual. Just as the simple lines of Minna’s drawing popped up on the screen, Elena came back out of the bathroom.
Some men fell in love with women who looked like sensual supermodels, were high maintenance, and couldn’t imagine leaving their house without a purse on their arm. Other men fell in love with women who were sedate, angelic-looking in a girl-next-door, simple way and could care less for fashion. Most men wouldn’t give a second glance at the woman he loved.
Elena was thin in a way that made him want to feed her junk food for a couple months to put a few extra pounds on her. She didn’t strut like she was sex on legs or walk gracefully like a dancer would, instead she marched quickly and quietly as if she had purpose. He didn’t think she’d worn a bit of make-up since the day he’d met her and he’d only ever seen her hair down, in her Army regulation bun, or up in a ponytail, as it was now. Plus, the day that she ever willingly wore a dress or skirt would probably be the day that Armageddon hit, yet as he watched his mate stride towards him in a set of Army regulation camos, he couldn’t help thinking that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Perfect for him in every way. He could only hope that soon she would see that they were perfect together.
She resumed her seat next to him, remaining stiff in posture, as if she was waiting for him to do something. Unable to stop himself from nettling her, he leaned his head into her space and just barely stopped himself from laughing when she moved her hands away from him, as if she were afraid he was going to handcuff her again.
He didn’t stop leaning in until his lips were touching the shell of her ear and then he whispered. “Seeing you dressed like that brings back a lot of memories, Sergeant Demos. Remember that time you came off shift and I surprised you in your apartment and used your own shirt to—”
Elena leaned away from him then slapped a hand over his mouth before he could finish the sentence. A blush spread over her cheeks at the same time that she scowled at him as they heard several snickers behind them.
In an angry hiss, she whispered, “You know damn well they all heard that. If you don’t want me to cut your nuts off and roast them over an open fire, you won’t do that again, cat.”
Gage smiled under her hand, satisfied that he’d been able to rile up his mate so easily.
Tyson cleared his throat uncomfortably, a sure sign that he was nervous because Elena had no clue just how on point she’d been with the roasting comment without realizing the weapon Gage was going to give her. “Ready to review the plans, Ivanov?”
Placing a gentle kiss on Elena’s palm, he pulled away from her, knowing the time for playfulness was over. They couldn’t afford to fuck this mission up. Too much was riding on their group going in and completing this successfully. An Alpha’s life was on the line and they needed to do what they could to shut this pack down. If they didn’t at least temporarily incapacitate them, there would be no telling what they might do next, and the subsequent scheme they pulled off might finally alert humans about the supernatural nature of those living among them. That was a risk they couldn’t take.
Turning to face the group, he motioned for Minna to go back over to the television as she had hours before.
Glancing down to his watch, he noted the time. “ETA is now twenty minutes. All right, wolf, let’s go through this one more time.”
Twenty-five minutes later, they were departing the plane in the dead of night, while fifty feet away a man with a small moving truck painted black was waiting for them.
Gage had the duffel bag in one hand and Elena’s hand in his other. Surprisingly, she hadn’t fought him when he’d grabbed it and threaded his fingers through her own. He needed the contact to soothe his tiger, who was anxious about them taking their mate into danger. His human side understood the tiger’s anxiety, however he also knew that, if Elena didn’t stray too far away from him and kept ahold of the weapon he was about to give her, she would be fine. His mate was a warrior and could hold her own. He had to have faith in her and her skills if he was going to keep his sanity.
As they drew closer to the truck, Gage took in the features of Davies’s co-conspirator. The vampire was leaning against the truck with his arms crossed over his chest and one foot overlapping the other. On the surface, he seemed at ease, like he didn’t have a care in the world and hadn’t been watching an unstable wolf pack for the past couple of months.
As Gage stopped feet in front of him, he noticed small laugh lines around the man’s eyes and the dimple that appeared in his left cheek when the man smiled at the Pack Master. The vampire looked to have been frozen in immortality around his mid-thirties. He was slightly shorter than Gage at just under six-feet with blonde hair. His pale skin stood out in stark contrast to his black clothes and Gage saw the outline of a tattoo on the side of his neck that disappeared under his shirt.
Davies held his hand out to the man in greeting, which the vampire grabbed to pull Davies into a one-armed hug. As they gave each other slaps on the back, the Pack Master murmured. “It’s been too long, my old friend. You need to stop hiding out a continent away and come home.”
They separated, and the vampire shrugged. “Where is home? England? America? When you’ve lived as long as we have, you become your own home. Everything around you changes, and you learn that you are your only constant. I’ve been thinking about coming back to America, though. Introduce me to your crew and let’s get going.”
Davies slapped a hand down on the man’s shoulder and turned to face them. “This is Rhett Baines. You remember my nephew, Logan, I’m sure.” Holding his other hand out in Jenna’s direction, he motioned her to come to him. When she stepped forward, Adam was plastered to her back like a second skin. This caused the Pack Master to snort in amusement. “This is my niece, Jenna, and her mate, Adam McPhee, the Alpha of North Carolina.” Davies pointed to Gage, “This is Gage Ivanov; his mate, Elena; his brother, Alec; and the rest of the men are Gage’s unit.”
Baines tilted his head to the side and stared at Elena. When Gage watched the man’s nostrils flare, it took everything he had not to reach forward and rip the man’s head off his shoulders. The tiger didn’t like the other man sniffing the air for his mate’s scent.
“She’s human.” Baines turned his attention to Gage. “Do you think it’s wise to bring your human mate here? I imagine she’ll be more of a liability than a help.”
Gage heard Tyson chuckle behind him. Ignoring that, he stared at his inquisitor. “I’ll worry about my mate; you worry about getting us to the Corvus Compound unseen.”
Baines shrugged. “Your loss if she dies, not mine.” With that parting shot, he walked to the back of the truck and slid open the door for them before disappearing to get in the front to drive.
Gage watched Davies peel off from the group to sit in the cab of the truck with his friend so that he could update the vampire about the things they had learned on the flight over as the rest of the grou
p climbed in the back of the vehicle. Once they were all in, Gage pulled the door shut. The truck roared to life and immediately took off towards their destination.
Feeling Elena next to him against the wall, he set the duffle on the floor in front of him and then pulled a flashlight out of one of his cargo pockets. Turning it on with the beam shining on the bag, he crouched down over it and motioned for Elena to do the same. When they were both situated comfortably, balancing on the balls of their feet as the truck turned to the left, he got her attention by running one of his fingers down the side of her face.
“You already know that you’re to stay with me on the first floor of the house when we go in. Our objective is to keep any of the Corvus Pack from going up to the second floor while the others rescue Corvus. What’s in this bag is how you’re going to help me do that.”
He unzipped the bag completely and then spread it open so she could get a glimpse of the contents. His mouth kicked up on one side when he heard her gasp.
“Is that…?”
“A M2 Flamethrower? Yes.”
The faint scent of Elena’s arousal filled the air around him and Gage guessed that his mate had just creamed her panties. He just wished he knew if it was because he’d pleased her or if she was having an internal orgasm over the idea of using such a weapon.
When she spoke, her voice almost quivered in excitement. “I’ve always wanted to use one of those.”
Gage snorted. While most women liked roses or chocolates, his mate dreamed of high firepower weapons.
Pulling out the heavy weapon, he set the tank and firing apparatus on top of the bag. “The tank weighs almost seventy pounds, so we’re not going to put this on you until we get close to the house. The two large canisters hold napalm. The third, smaller canister holds the compressed gas. This valve here is the Pressure Regulator; you need to turn that before we go into the house. You with me so far?”