Alex yanked her to him and turned, so that his back was to the threat, protecting her from the looming oppression wearing on his mind. A blade pierced his shoulder and glanced off the bone. It hurt like a bitch, and the bleeding didn’t help.
“Oh, youasshole.” Kennedy shrugged out of his arms and roared.
And he knew no more.
******
Kennedy pushed to her feet and concentrated on Duane Smith harder than she’d ever focused in her life. He had some kind of mental wall protecting him. An odd psychic layer obscuring his thoughts. And something else. A power, dark and corrupt and telepathic in nature.
She imagined an arrow spearing through to his core, taking away the threat to her mate. Poor Alex was writhing on the ground, lost, and she felt nothing but his beast inside him. His consciousness had faded to a spec, trapped in the hold of their enemy.
Smith shouldn’t have been able to stand. He was human, or he had been. But a human couldn’t recover from a broken back in minutes. He stood, in one piece, his wounds healing as she watched. He didn’t smile, but the satisfaction on his face alarmed her.
He was killing Alex. She sensed it.
At that moment, she let her beast fill her, from top to bottom and in between. She became one being and used the power she now had to end the threat to her loved one.
With a shove, both physical and mental, she tossed Smith from the room hard enough to hear him bounce down the hallway. Her claws had scored him, so while he wasn’t human, he wasn’t exactly Circ either. But he had a telepathic ability he hadn’t possessed before, as well as an ability to heal his injuries.
Not good at all.
Alex lay still. Silence blanketed them.
She wanted to cry and flounder, unsure about everything. Her cousin, Smith, Lang. But she didn’t have time. She had to save Alex.
She begged her beast to give her the strength to carry her mate, and they managed to move him onto a wheeled table. Better than nothing, but not ideal. She hurried to push him out into the hallway.
The alarm sounded and lights dimmed. Then they cut out. But didn’t have time to worry about what that meant. She had to get them out of this hellhole.
Rushing with her unconscious mate on the table, she’d made it to a set of double doors, praying for an escape, and pushed through to see Lang’s rogue Circs protecting scientists and test subjects clad in hospital gowns as they raced down the hall, away from her.
And she soon saw why as mutants fell on them, hungry for blood and whatever else they could get. Then one looked up and spotted her.
Crap.
She turned and was blocked by a broad chest. A powerful Circ, he felt so strong, so scary…
She slowly glanced up. “Carter?”
“You have a lot of nerve taking on all the fun stuff by yourself.”
She threw herself into his arms and sobbed, so relieved to find someone to help her with Alex.
“Aw, honey. It’s okay. Gideon’s here too, Bailey and the others as well.”
“Others?”
“We found some people to help contain the threat. Government types, but with the size of this operation, we couldn’t be too picky.” He nodded at a large man with startlingly bright hazel eyes and a stern countenance. One who disguised a very different kind of beast deep down.
“Remember, you owe me,” the man said to Carter.
“Bite me, Belle. I’m doing Sharpe a favor.Sheowesme. And so does Admiral London. You tell him I said that.”
The large man flipped him off.
Behind him came another Circ, this one like her and the others. He was taller than his partner, with boyish good looks and something the others lacked. Manners.
“Ma’am.” He smiled at her and nodded to the hallway through which he’d come. “You can take your man that way. It’s been secured.” Then he hurried after his unfriendly companion. “Damn it, Grayson. Benice.”
