Day of the Dragon

by Katie MacAlister

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Declan now understood why zoo animals paced. They were hungry for their captors, anxious to break free and destroy whoever had them locked in a tiny cage. He wanted to be free to run and hunt, but instead he’d remained locked behind reinforced bars for the last two hours.

  He hadn’t stopped growling from the moment Birch restrained him. Oh, there was no arguing that the rope and chains had been necessary, but logic wasn’t high on Declan’s list of “shit to think about.” At the top was worry about Abby, then escaping, then hunting Abby while killing anyone who stood in his way.

  A new sound filtered through the walls of his prison in Pike’s basement. Two of the walls were concrete, made of bricks and mortar—the house’s foundation. He moved to the closest wall and rested his ear against the hard surface. His wolf was already pushed forward, straining to help Declan sort through the sounds.

  Rolling tires over rocks and glass. Big tires, heavy vehicle, moving slowly through the darkness. The grating of metal on metal followed by the softest squeak of the transport’s springs. Something—someone—heavy exited the vehicle.

  The deep thud of someone’s approach. No, more than one. Three large men—his team. He knew the sounds of their walks as well as they knew his. The vibrations slid through him, the feel of their boots on the walkway and then the front porch shaking his bones. Then came the squeak of the front door opening. Dirt rained down from the basement’s ceiling, dust loosened as they strode through the small home’s entryway.

  The team was there. They’d support him in his fight with Birch. They would let him free to find Abby—to destroy whoever had taken her. They had to because…because he didn’t have Pike to depend on. The damn wolf hadn’t been home when Birch had dragged him into the house, and he still hadn’t returned. Gone. Vanished. Like so many times before. The fucking kid…Declan sighed and shook his head. That fucking kid. Pike had bitched because Birch wouldn’t let him participate in the op and then made like a rabbit—running and hiding.

  Declan’s wolf snarled, furious about Pike’s abandonment, but he did his best to soothe the near-feral beast. He could be angry with Pike later. His focus had to be on Abby.

  Declan pushed away from the wall and tipped his head to the side, closing his eyes as he listened for the activities above. Low murmurs, too low for him to hear. The clinks and thuds of the men removing their gear and the bouncing springs of a protesting mattress. It seemed they were dropping everything on the same bed. Good. He’d need it all when he escaped.

  When. Not if. When.

  Everyone in his way would…die. If Birch, Cole, Grant, or Ethan attempted to keep him locked away, he couldn’t guarantee their safety. Right now he couldn’t think beyond the blood in those churning waters, the humans who’d had their hands on his mate.

  Mate.

  It couldn’t be…He wasn’t the type of male who…He wasn’t mate material, and yet his wolf howled, a hint of sadness and joy in the sound. It was overjoyed he’d finally recognized the truth—Abby belonged to them—but aching to have her at their side once more.

  Now he understood the drive to steal her, to keep her safe, to touch her when he should have stayed away. She deserved more—better—than him, but her fate was sealed, and the truth expanded to fill his body. It changed from a hesitant guess to an unbreakable certainty.

  Abby was his. And his SHOC team was keeping them apart.

  Declan brought more of the animal forward, encouraged it to gift him with increased strength and larger size. His shoulders broadened, fur sliding free. His arms thickened while his fingers gradually took on the shape of paws. The animal’s fury coursed through his veins, adrenaline and blood thirst pushing him to break free.

  Run.

  Hunt.

  Find.

  Not yet, he said to the wolf. He needed to know what SHOC had learned before he broke free. Did they know where she was?

  “What the hell, Birch?” Ethan didn’t have a ton of respect when annoyed. “We’re in deep and then you’re breaking into the com with some order to—”

  A low murmur cut Ethan off. Declan couldn’t hear the words, but he knew that tone—the timbre of that rumble. Birch spoke. The team listened.

  “What?” Ethan.

  “Aw, shit.” Grant.

  “Where is he now?” Cole’s voice was flat, no-nonsense. Evaluate, plan, and execute.

  Birch answered once more, the bear’s voice too low…

  “I looked at that before we left. Pike’s cage won’t hold him for long.” The tiger spoke the truth. Declan had already taken the time to inspect the bars, the brackets, and bolts that secured the cage. Could it keep him captive? For a little while. He was too motivated, too determined to get free.

  “Ideas, then?” Birch murmured, his voice followed by the scrape of chairs on worn linoleum in the kitchen. “You guys get the data?”

  A smack of plastic on Formica. A USB on the tabletop?

  “Pulled the whole server before your interruption had security on our ass.” Ethan still sounded damned pissed about the disruption, too.

  “Casualties?” The bear asked the question as if it didn’t matter to him. Life or death, he simply had to make a report. But the team knew the truth, the team knew Birch had his own demons.

  “Bumps and bruises, but I didn’t kill anyone.” Cole snorted. “Wouldn’t have been fair. They were practically puppies.” The tiger grunted. “Didn’t even have guns. Just bullshit pepper spray. No fun in it.” He could imagine Cole’s shrug.

  “Grant, you’ll work on digging through the data you guys grabbed. Look to see if there are any FosCo holdings tied to Unified Humanity. Actually, I need to know about anything that’s tied to UH on that USB drive.”

  “You think that’s who took her?” Grant’s dark rasp held more than a hint of the man’s animal.

  “Yeah.” Birch sounded grim, frustrated. “I have headquarters researching known UH locations and any activity surrounding them. Initial eval is that they’ll have stayed close, but there aren’t any records of UH or FosCo holdings in this or surrounding towns.” He sighed. “A whole lot of fucking nothing so far.”

  Declan didn’t know anything about FosCo’s real estate, but something tickled the back of his mind. Something that’d happened years ago near here and…and it danced just out of reach.

  “Did we get the tablet at least?” Cole again. “Not for nothing, but if we’ve got what we came for, we can walk away. No one needs to know that Declan lost it. We can tell the other team that she’s gone and give the director the tablet. Just sweep this shit under the rug and move the fuck on.”

  Declan hadn’t wanted to kill his team, but Cole would die. The idea that he’d leave Abby…His wolf growled and followed it up with a howl, fury over Cole’s indifference straining his control over the beast.

  “No. No tablet. We need to get her—and the tablet—in our hands. At minimum, the tablet.” Declan didn’t like Birch quantifying who—what—was more important.

  “So, what do we do?” Grant spoke up. He was a good wolf but liked having clear direction. It annoyed Declan to no end. Being an alpha meant doing what he wanted when he wanted, but packs needed betas, and their team was a pack of sorts.

  “Research. Go through the data.”

  And while they did that, he’d do some work of his own.

  Maybe what he was about to do was stupid as hell and he should just sit around with his thumb up his ass while his team did the rest.

  Except he wasn’t that guy.

  Declan was the guy who silently worked at the boards in the far corner, the ones that once removed, would give him access to the small bedroom above. It’d taken time, time he hadn’t wanted to waste, but it was worth it in the end.

  He got into the bedroom with hardly a sound, nothing more than a low creak coming from one of the older boards as he pulled himself up through the hole he’d created. He scanned the space and grinned at what he found—weapons and g
ear galore.

  Standing in the center of the room, gaze moving across the space, that niggling thought in the back of his mind pushed forward once more.

  One town over, big house on a big piece of land. Tall fences that shielded the home from neighbors…He could picture it as it’d been all those years ago. But it hadn’t been registered to FosCo then. Or Unified Humanity. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember who’d owned the property, but the name wouldn’t come to him. Dammit.

  He refocused on the room. There was the predictable neat pile from Cole, the random mess from Ethan, and Grant’s area was a little in between. Guns were cared for. Clothes? Not so much.

  Declan remained silent while he crossed the room and tugged on a tactical vest. Then came the weapons, guns and blades strapped to his body until he figured he was as ready as he was going to be. Guns, mags, knives, a grenade or two, and a com unit settled into place.

  The memory still teased him as he prepared to escape, and with each passing second, certainty grew. Liv at headquarters was a badass techno bitch. She hadn’t found anything yet, and Grant was just starting his search. He could sit around and wait. Or he could do what his gut was screaming at him to do.

  Rumors had led him to a building years ago, and he’d purged it of Unified Humanity to atone for the sins in his past. He had a funny feeling they’d refilled it with their crazed kind. He knew how he’d get there—a man never forgot how to steal a car. He knew exactly how many he could kill with what he wore. The wolf would take care of the rest.

  He padded to the window and ran his gaze over the frame, searching for any security measure his brother might have put into place. Nothing obvious, but who knew. For now he’d go quiet rather than shatter the glass.

  Declan placed his hands on the bottom edge of the window and held his breath as he tugged, lifting the panel and letting in the night air. A tendril of relief suffused his blood, and he sighed, thankful Pike was a big enough idiot to leave his home without any kind of alarm.

  Then the alarm went off and Declan cursed his brother for being all prepared and shit. He threw the window up and dove through the opening, rolling as he hit the ground. He kept the tumble going until he gained his feet, and then he ran. He bolted into a ground-eating pace, leaving his team behind while he let the wolf free to do as it desired.

  Hunt.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Declan skirted the ragged lawn, sticking to the perimeter, staying in the shadows while he sought an entrance to the dilapidated house. If he recalled the layout correctly, a bolt-hole would get him into the winding corridors beneath the home, bypassing the guards inside. Sure, he’d have to kill the guys up top eventually, but remaining undetected for a little while would let him find Abby quicker. Then he’d fight their way out.

  His beast growled, shaking Declan. It didn’t like thinking about Abby being in such danger. Declan didn’t either, but he had to take solace in the fact that he’d avenge his mate for every hint of pain they caused.

  His mate. Each time he thought of her—said her name in his mind or whispered it beneath his breath—the certainty strengthened. He’d always sought something—something to fill the hungry beast inside him and fill the bottomless hole in his heart. It had come in the form of a cougar shifter named Abby.

  Declan continued his path, steps nearly silent as he moved through the welcoming dark. He soon reached the backyard, the area just as run-down as the front half of the house. It appeared to be a forgotten place—a building filled with people who didn’t care about the home.

  Declan cared about it—it and what it held. Because at that moment the wind shifted and a ghost of feminine scent teased his nose. A sweetly seductive aroma his wolf knew without a doubt.

  “Abby.” He breathed out her name, his lips tingling as he spoke. As if she gave him a gentle kiss when he said her name aloud.

  The wind changed once more, and with the subtle shift came something else, something that had the wolf leaping forward without thought, old reflexes snapping into place as if he’d never left his previous life.

  The crunch of a blade of grass. Just one. Some would dismiss the soft sound, but those were the same people who’d die beneath his claws.

  In one smooth move, he whipped the gun strapped to his left thigh from its holster, the glide of metal on its custom casing silent. Without diverting his attention from the house, he pointed the weapon at the intruder, arm steady and aim perfect.

  No other sounds came from his left, the darkness broken only by the random echoes from inside the home.

  “Easy way to get yourself killed,” Declan murmured low.

  “You don’t have my silencer, and the muzzle flash would betray your position.” Cole didn’t sound the slightest bit concerned, no hint of sour fear coming from the tiger, nor a tremble in his voice. Then again, Cole was like him—tired, old, jaded.

  Until Declan had met Abby and now…things were different. Good different or bad different? He wasn’t sure. It depended on whether he lived through the next half hour.

  “Don’t think I can take down a handful of humans?” Declan snickered.

  Cole grunted. “Got a plan, or are we just winging it?”

  If Cole was willing to help, Declan had to toss the original plan aside. “Are the others here?”

  “Heads up.”

  He lifted his right hand and caught the device the tiger tossed while he kept his gun trained on the male. Sure, he listened to what Cole had to say, but until he knew more, he’d keep the man at a distance.

  He sure as fuck wasn’t going back into some damned cage.

  Declan slipped in the earpiece and turned it on. “Declan in.”

  “Team on deck.” Birch was all business, but Declan sensed a hint of fury. “No records. Entry?”

  The whole fucking team is here. There are no fucking records on file. How the fuck are we getting in there, Declan?

  Birch said a lot when he was barely speaking.

  “There’s a storm cellar.”

  A low click filled his ear, a notice that someone else on the team was about to speak. “There’s a ten-digit keypad,” Ethan said, but Declan knew that already. “Code?”

  “Known,” Declan murmured. “Self-programmed.”

  It’d been his last task before he’d left the carnage behind. Just in case he’d needed to return, he’d wanted easy access with his personal backdoor code.

  “Repeat visit?” Grant sounded surprised, but no one else said a word.

  They all had secrets from the past. Declan wasn’t about to have a heart-to-heart while Abby remained in the hands of Unified Humanity.

  “Who’s on point?” Cole asked from his left, voice filling both ears.

  Declan hated giving up control, but his wolf was too close to losing it. The beast could think of nothing but its mate. Fuck battle tactics and strategy. He’d defer to his team alpha for this one. “Birch?”

  Birch sounded more normal when he spoke. “Grant’s up. Cole on our six. Low, tight…”

  “First.” They finished the order as a group.

  Keep their asses low, keep a tight formation, and shoot the assholes before they got their own off.

  Grant peeled away from the fence, sticking to the shadows of the few trees in the backyard. The trees were half dead and sad with drooping branches, but the gloom kept their movements hidden.

  Then there was Birch, and Declan slipped into formation behind the team alpha. Ethan followed, and Cole joined them at the back. Five men in a line, ready to risk their lives for…

  “She’s my mate. They’ve touched her. They die.”

  The whole team froze in place—not even breathing. Finally, Birch spoke. “They die. Move out.”

  They moved as they’d been trained—as one. Their steps matched, their strides identical so they could walk in each other’s path. Someone coming across their boot prints wouldn’t know that five men attacked. They’d assume there was only one.

  Until repor
ts flooded the security station. Then it’d be too late.

  They reached the deep shadow of the back of the house, the moon gifting them with cover, and they dropped into low squats. Declan’s wolf’s sight let him peer through the midnight black, to lay eyes on his teammates.

  Each male was dressed all in black, a gun in one hand and the other in the shape of a claw. Two halves making up a whole, two parts of each man working together to save Abby.

  “Code?” Grant grabbed his attention.

  Declan recited the numbers from memory, the digits seared into his head for eternity. The date of his last kill—the last bullet he’d shot for money.

  Grant pressed the keypad, and soon the whir of the lock disengaging sounded. They remained in place a beat longer, waiting for any alarm or sound from inside. Then they were in motion once more, through the door and trooping down a bright hall.

  Declan’s wolf sorted through the plethora of scents, the hints of gunpowder, sweat, and the rotten flavor of hatred.

  “I scent at least twenty. One female,” Declan said. No one had to question the identity of the female. Abby’s terror consumed the air, filling the space with her fear, but there was another scent he recognized from yesterday. “Foster.”

  “One known male—friendly.” Birch’s words made Declan jolt. A known male? A friendly? “Move out.” Birch gave an order, and they all complied, training overtaking Declan’s curiosity.

  They dealt with the first duo they came across quickly and quietly. They’d take their time, eliminate enemies as they went. They would not turn the op into a bloodbath.

  How many times had Declan heard those instructions in the past? Too many to count. Though this time Birch hadn’t drummed the words into their heads before they breached the cellar doors. So when he heard Abby’s scream, he didn’t feel too bad about breaking formation and launching into a dead run. His boots pounded on the white linoleum, the rapid, heavy thuds announcing his presence to one and all.