I downed the bottle of water and resumed chopping wood. On one swing of the ax, I envisioned Adam’s head. I couldn’t wait to level Intech and burn the skyscraper to the ground once and for all. I had no idea what Webb and Tripp were planning for Adam Emery, but whatever it was, Adam was mine. The asshole would be hanging by his toes from his skyscraper before it imploded.
On my next swing, I pictured Roman’s head. The next Rianne’s. I repeated the process, and when the blade met wood, the tension lifted, and a sense of freedom engulfed me until I was interrupted.
A teenage boy, broad and tall, jogged up, his curly brown mane whipping around in the wind. “Bloodsucker, Cooper needs to see you ASAP.” Before I could ask why, he fled as if I was about to sink my fangs into him.
The shifters on the compound knew my name, but bloodsucker was how the majority addressed me.Whatever.
Nodding, I hoofed it from the equipment area where they stored the wood to the tech center on the other side of the property. My stomach fisted into a big fucking knot. ASAP meant urgent, and that was never good. Only hours before, I’d been summoned when Tripp called to tell me about the contract on my head.
What the fuck was happening now? My immediate thoughts always revolved around Layla and my kids. Maybe someone had found my family to use them to draw me out.
Anxiety clawed through my nerves, scraping and cutting. I was a bomb ready to detonate. The two weeks of quietness had to come to a screeching halt.
With a dip of my chin, I acknowledged some folks heading toward the community center as I passed by. I recognized a few since I worked alongside them in the chow hall.
“Sam,” a middle-aged lady named Greta called. The petite brunette was the pack’s chef and in charge of the kitchen staff. The nice she-wolf had a sharp tongue and a big bite, and even the alpha didn’t cross her. “Don’t be late. Tonight’s movie night, and we’ll have a big turnout for dinner.”
I saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.” Another night of sweat and hard work.
I swore Dane had probably assigned my chores just to laugh his ass off at me, which he did when he saw me garbed in an apron, a hairnet, and yellow rubber gloves.Fucker.
I hadn’t forgotten he owed me a sparring session. We’d planned one months ago when he’d been our guest on base, but that never happened once he learned his brother Ross had gone missing.
Maybe it was time to loosen up and beat the shit out of each other. Dane was a ticking time bomb like me. If it wasn’t for his brother, Cooper, convincing Dane not to do something stupid or reminding him of the chip in his head, Dane and I would probably be in Chicago. His anger and aggression matched my own, and at this point, we were feeding off each other to the point that we could convince each other to do something idiotic.
Regardless of the mounting tension, Dane was sure Ross was imprisoned at Intech in Chicago and was not a pile of bones at Intech’s West Virginia facility that had been gutted from a fire. Dane’s wolf senses told him Ross was alive. As the alpha, Dane had some otherworldly connection to his pack members.
If Ross was alive, he was most likely strapped to a table in a glass room in the basement at Intech like Dane and I had been. After the fire I’d set at the Chicago location, Adam had months to remodel the lab.
I breezed into the L-shaped log building, slipping on my T-shirt and beelining it to the last office on the left.
Cooper Gray, technical guru and Dane’s younger brother, monitored and maintained communications for the pack. No calls came in or went out without him knowing.
He was shaking his shaggy brown head of hair as he looked at his computer screen. “Sam is doing fine. We’re keeping him busy. Remind me to send you a pic of him in a hairnet.”
The sweet laughter coming through the speakers melted my black heart, and I skirted the gray metal desk in two seconds flat. “Layla, is everything okay?” My nerves perked up. I loved that I was looking at her pretty face and hearing her siren voice, but our next scheduled video call wasn’t until the end of the week.
Her blue eyes shifted back and forth as she gnawed on her bottom lip.
I was having trouble reading her emotions. “Layla,” I said in a shrouded tone that didn’t sound like me. My fucking stomach was pitching and rolling. “What happened?”
I could feel Cooper’s apprehension.
Layla’s chest lifted. “A guardian showed up here late in the morning, looking for you.” She sounded more perplexed than worried.
It had been only a matter of time before they trekked up to Maine. What surprised me, though, was that only one had shown up instead of five. “They must’ve split up.”
Cooper rose. “I’ll alert the enforcers.” He excused himself.
I sat in his chair and rolled it closer to the desk as I gazed at my wife. Her sun-kissed skin brought out the freckles around her nose. Her auburn hair had been twisted in a loose braid and pulled over one shoulder, and those eyes were so damn blue, it took my breath away. The beach environment definitely suited her.
“Do we have a name of this guardian?” Not that I knew every vampire working on the force. He could very well be one who’d gone rogue for the million dollars on my head.
“Norman Collier,” she said. “There was something off about him that I can’t pinpoint. He had the credentials showing he’s a guardian for the vampire government. Even Conrad said the badge was legit. I didn’t recognize him, but I was only questioned by two out of the five who showed up on base. No one else here recognized him either. Anyway, Conrad is trying to contact your father to verify the guardian’s credentials, but he’s not having any luck reaching Steven.”
We weren’t worried yet, although the thought had crossed my mind that the council could’ve thrown my father in the brig. Maybe the ancient elders had instituted their own coup d'état. If so, we might be fucked.
“Was Jo able to read his mind?” A guardian lived on a mind-blocking drug similar to the one Alia Costner whipped up in her kitchen. If Jo couldn’t get into his head, then that might be proof he was legit. However, we were finding that Jo’s secret weapon wasn’t so secret anymore, given how people were finding a way to block her.
