After a minute, his partner—his mate—woke.
“Thank God.” Bas kissed him hard on the mouth and dragged the key out of Ali’s hiding spot. After releasing Gray from the restraints, he carried him upstairs and placed him on the couch. He grabbed some leftover rogue clothes from her armoire and tossed them at his lover. “Well? What did you do to Ali?”
He hated to jump to conclusions, but the scent of sex, joy, and confusion, not to mention Ali, lingered over Gray like a perfume.
“Huh? Ali?” Gray called out.
“She’s not here.”
Gray held his head. “That little witch.” His growl turned into a roar as he stood and looked around. “She fucking held me with that scent. Then she tranq’d me. Again!” Gray pulled on the clothes Bas gave him, to include his own boots that sat in the bottom of her armoire. “You filled in the admiral?”
“Through Keiser.” Bas didn’t want to, but he had to acknowledge Gray had been right to send him. “He’s as arrogant as you are. And he’s hiding a lot behind those cold gray eyes. Secrets I don’t even wanna know about. But he’s solid. Gave me this sat phone and a bunch of supplies and a truck I left at the base of the mountain. Now tell me about Ali.”
“I don’t know. We made love, we bonded, and I told her we were mated. She seemed happy about it.” Gray frowned. “I think. Maybe she was a little annoyed.”
Bas groaned. “What did you say to her? Idiot.”
“Hey, I told her the flat-out truth,” Gray snapped. “We’re mated, and we’re going to be together. So she got a little touchy about the future. I told her not to worry. I’d handle it.”
“You handled it, all right.” Bas paced the living room, needing to find her now. “Think about it. The woman has been through hell with men, and Circs in particular. Then we come in here out of the blue to kill her. But instead we fuck her. Two guys she doesn’t know from Adam.”
“Her beast knows,” Gray argued. “Instinct doesn’t lie. You know our intuition is there to protect us, self-serving to ensure the survival of the species. I felt her, Bas. Ali’s beast is mine, as much as it’s yours. So’s the damn woman under all that mutant DNA,” he ended on a growl.
“Well, apparently the ‘damn woman’ doesn’t accept that yet. Asshole,” Bas muttered, knowing it was partially his fault for not warning his mate to go easy on the woman. Gray tended to take charge, and he didn’t have a lot of tolerance for those not following his orders. Bas knew that better than most.
“I’m not a child to be warned how to behave.” Gray glowered.
“Then don’t act like one. You should have used more patience. Admit it.”
“Maybe.” He threw open the door and lifted his nose. “Come on. Let’s find her so we can talk some sense into her.”
Except they didn’t find her. They searched for hours, until Gray and Bas caught wind of a dangerous scent that didn’t belong.
“Impossible. That smells like Bradley Watts. Another guy I supposedly shot and killed a year ago. What the fuck?” Gray snarled and tracked the small clearing, searching, while Bas did the same. “He was here.”
Fear spiked. “So was Ali.”
Gray bent over the ground to pick something up. “Oh shit. This isn’t good.” He handed the letter to Bas.
“Hell. You know she read this. That fucker Watts must have given it to her. The admiral has another leak in security.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Now she knows we lied about not coming to kill her.”
“She’ll think we lied about the rest of it too.” Gray looked haunted. “We need to get to Trenton now. When she and I were together, I caught some of her thoughts, the ones buried in the recesses of her mind. She’d always planned on killing him, then herself. And if she’s as pissed off and hurt as I think she is, believing I lied about loving her, she’ll do something stupid.”
“You told her you loved her?” Bas couldn’t believe it. Then again, he could. He’d fallen hard for Ali the moment he’d opened his eyes and seen her.
“No. Not in so many words.”
Bas scowled. “In any words? No, of course not. I had to drag the confession out of you myself. Look, asshole, just because you feel it doesn’t mean the rest of us know it. Ali’s vulnerable enough. But even I could see how she responded to some tenderness. Then to have that ripped away, based on a lie? Shit. She won’t hesitate to put herself in harm’s way.”
“Let’s go.” Gray changed and ran faster than Bas could keep pace with.
Bas followed his scent trail and found Gray waiting for him in the truck, ready to go. The moment Bas joined him, they sped away from the Cascades.
Gray nodded at the sat phone. “Call the admiral and tell him to mount an assault on Trenton’s lab now. She has a good start on us, and no telling when we’ll get to him. But we have to nail his ass before she does. She won’t harm herself if she can’t verify his whereabouts.”
“But if we move too fast, we’ll miss rounding up his contacts and sources,” Bas argued for the sake of argument. He readily agreed with Gray’s decision to nail Trenton now.
“Fuck his sources. We need to save Ali. And God help Watts if he so much as breathes wrong around her.” Gray’s violence seeped into the confines of the SUV.
Bas did his best to remain in control, but he worried for Ali. He hadn’t had a chance to tell her how he felt. How much she meant to him, which even he had a hard time believing, considering what little time they’d spent together. But he knew. Love had no timetable. And he wouldn’t lose her now. He couldn’t.
“Hurry up, Gray. Put your foot on it.” Bas called the admiral. The mission was a go. There would be a plane standing by for them in Redmond to take them straight to Whidbey Island. God help Trenton when they got there.
Ali felt a curious sense of detachment as she and Watts tore through the rogues guarding the breeding facility. She’d freed several females while having to put down others who’d turned too aggressive to control themselves. She watched Watts enjoy the decapitations and mutilations as they grew closer to Trenton’s wafting fear.
They’d timed their attack just right, because aboveground, the government’s forces were tearing the security forces a new asshole. But it would be a while before anyone knew to check the subbasement levels that didn’t exist in any blueprint. Trenton had killed the laborers and engineers who’d built the place years ago. Only he and a select few scientists knew of this area’s existence. Well, and Circs like Ali and Watts, who’d been worked over down here.
“Some fun, eh?” Watts cleared a bloody path toward Trenton’s office. He smiled, his sharp teeth little points of delight he no doubt used to his advantage when he felt like biting to make his point.
The rage and frustration she’d thought she’d feel when taking her revenge paled next to the sadness deep within. She couldn’t believe she’d ever bought Gray’s lies. She had thought herself beyond hope for the future. How could she have let herself care, even a little bit, for two holier-than-thou Circs?
“Hey, Ali. Pay attention, would you?” Watts asked with exasperation as he tore a guard in two, ripping his legs apart like a wishbone. He tossed the remains aside, like throwing out the garbage. “Our prey is in here.”
“He’s armed.” She shot two more rogue and mutating Circs in the head as they tried to attack. The frothing mouths gave them away, as did the roaring cries of insanity.
Though the walls and ceiling were soundproof, she wondered if any Circs above might hear the noise. “We should make this quick, in case anyone upstairs can hear this mess.”