“How copy, Shade?” Knox barks again, the worry seeping through his voice.
There’s no response.
“He’s got to be out of battery,” Viper mutters.
I look between the two Alphas, their expressions tight with concern, and I’m filled with a sinking dread.
A pop breaks the static, and the voice of our Beta emits from the hand-held radio. “Copy, Prime Alpha. We’ve had an incident at base camp. Over.”
I snatch the radio from Knox.
“What kind of situation? Are you alright? Is it Halley?”
There’s another long pause, until finally he replies, his voice slurred, slow. “She’s safe.”
I don’t wait to see if Knox and Viper are behind me. I’m sprinting through the forest, my legs pumping as I leap over fallen trees.
My mind races with thoughts of Halley.
Did an Alpha get to her?
Is she hurt?
My heart pounding in my ears is from fear, not the run.
I run back to base camp in record time, and when I skid into the clearing, my feet slipping on the soft mud, the sight before me has me frantic.
A dead Alpha lays in the center of the training camp.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Viper
My broken rifle slaps into my back as I run through the tree line.
I stride straight past the dead Alpha, not allowing myself to look at his face, afraid of feeling a kinship with the Blood Lust victim. In another life, that would’ve been me.
Blaze is double checking that it’s actually dead. The last thing we need is for a zombie situation to happen.
In front of the tent, Shade remains on guard, his eyes squinted in a permanent wince and blood on the side of his face.
“Shade?” I call, jogging over to my teammate, concern in every fiber of my being. He looks like shit, his face purpling and swollen. “Oh fuck, man. You okay? What happened?”
I can sense Halley inside the tent. She doesn’t smell hurt.
“We have to go, our location’s compromised,” Shade says to me, his dark eyes intense but unfocused.
Yeah, definitely concussed.
I sigh. We all know what has to happen. When a black site is compromised, we grab essentials and disappear.
It’s not so easy this time. We have precious cargo.
“We can’t. Halley is… She’s not…” I don’t have the words, my brain already feeling like cotton in her proximity.
Blaze appears beside me, blood coating his lower face and soaked into his shirt. Little bastard’s nose has always been a bleeder.
“Don’t worry about Halley.” Shade snorts in mirthless humor. “Trust me, she can handle it.”
