Live to fight another day and all that.
I hold my hands up by my chest. “We’ll go quietly.” I press my lips together and glance at the alpha again, the ache in my chest growing. “Just don’t hurt him anymore.”
The asshole scoffs. “He’s dealt with worse.”
I close my eyes, taking a deep breath to steady myself. There’s no way to change the past, so I’m choosing to focus on the future no matter how much my wolf would love to rip that mocking smile off this guy’s face.
Taser Guy jerks his chin toward the gate. “Let’s go.”
I nod and follow his instructions, attempting to keep myself between the taser and Raquel as we walk. The thing could still hurt me, but not as badly as it might hurt a human.
Past the slowly closing gate is a square concrete room. The space is small, definitely too small for the number of people currently crammed in here, and I find myself squished against the wall near the gate, Raquel still behind me, and the alpha huddled in the opposite corner. I’m assuming this is some kind of double entry system, and my suspicions are confirmed when the gate to the ringslides closed with a loud clang and the set of metal doors on the other wall swing open, revealing a concrete-lined corridor.
The shifter holding the pole drags the alpha forward, the guy with the remote once again tagging along behind him. Once they’re in the corridor, the remaining asshole prods me with the taser. He doesn’t actually discharge the thing, but he presses it into my side hard enough to draw a pained noise from me. The sound is nothing, barely louder than a sharp inhale, but it snags the alpha’s attention and he glances at me over his shoulder.
“Get moving,” says Taser Guy. He pokes me in the side with the taser again, then wraps his hand around my arm. The alpha’s gaze slides to the hand on my arm and a low rumble starts in his chest, his eyes going cold and blank. Taser Guy ignores what I think is a pretty clear warning, gripping my arm even tighter and yanking me forward.
Wrong move.
All hell breaks loose. The alpha’s growl turns into an outright roar as he lunges toward Taser Guy, the movement so sudden and unexpected that he yanks the pole right out of his captor’s hands. The shifter makes a grab for the escaped pole, misses, and stumbles forward as the alpha takes a leap in my direction, the pole trailing behind him still attached to his neck. The shifter again reaches for the pole sliding along the concrete, managing to wrap his handaround the very end of it and jerk the alpha to a stop for half a second before the alpha twists away again.
Remote Guy jerks in surprise, eyes wide as he plasters his back against the wall of the corridor to avoid the alpha. He frantically fumbles for the remote, but the small black object clatters to the ground and the dragging pole catches the side of it, sending the remote skittering across the ground toward me and Raquel.
All color drains from Taser Guy’s face as he stares at the quickly approaching alpha. Theclearly enragedalpha. Taser Guy edges backward, his gaze firmly locked on the snarling wolf. The alpha lunges again, but the pole dragging behind him wedges between the walls of the corridor, preventing the wolf from getting closer. The trapped alpha snarls and violently tries to shake himself free without any luck, and Pole Guy starts to close in from behind as Taser Guy moves forward.
My wolf wants me to go help my mate, but this is probably about as good a distraction as we’re going to get, and I can’t waste this opportunity.
Glancing at Raquel, I jerk my chin toward the remote and she nods in response, already starting to move in that direction. She knows just as well as I do that the best weapon we have right now is the alpha himself, and that makes getting possession of that remote priority number one.
I quickly strip out of my shirt, barely taking the time to unbutton my pants before shoving them down my legs and shifting. My wolf emerges with my hind legs still in my pants, but I shake them off and lunge toward Taser Guy who’s so focused on the alpha that he doesn’t even notice I’ve moved until I knock him to the ground. Without hesitation, I wrap my jaws around his throat and bite down until I feel something crack. He makes a wheezing noise, blood bubbling from between his lips as he struggles to pull in air.
Hard to do with a crushed windpipe.
But I don’t have time to wait for him to suffocate to death.
I bite down harder and shake my head sharply from side to side until there’s another crack—presumably his spine—and he goes still.
Lifting my head, I catch movement from the corner of my eye as Raquel dashes to the area where we saw the remote land. From the opposite side of the corridor, the remote’s original owner peels himself off the wall and scrambles in the same direction.
Now that Taser Guy is down, and I’m not in immediate danger, the alpha pauses long enough for the other shifter to grab hold of the pole. The alpha’s head is yanked to the side as the shifter struggles to maintain his grip and get the huge wolf under control.
“Get that fucking remote,” he yells at Remote Guy.
But unfortunately for him, his partner can’t comply because Raquel reaches the remote first, grabbing it and holding it up in triumph. She spins around, her eyes widening slightly as she takes in my wolf form, then sprints back toward me, Remote Guy not far behind. I move to face her pursuer, leaping across the distance and latching on to his arm to pull him to the ground. He screams as I clamp down on his wrist and violently shake my head, the crunch of breaking bones like music to my ears.
I’m not inherently violent, but Doyle and his underlings have pretty much literally backed me into a corner here, and I’m going to do whatever I have to in order to get the hell out of here.
And both me and my wolf want them to pay in blood for what they’ve done to my mate.
I release Remote Guy and he scrambles backward on his ass, whimpering and cradling his injured arm against his stomach. I can’t find a shred of pity for him, so I do what I have to, pouncing on him and driving his back into the concrete floor, then close my jaw around his throat and shake him by the neck until he’s gone still.
Once I’m sure he dead, I lift my head and take stock of the situation. It seems the alpha managed to take out Pole Guy while I was otherwise occupied, so things are actually looking pretty good at the moment. The alpha catches my gaze and sits back on hishaunches, panting and showing off bloody teeth. The sight should disgust me—or at least make me uncomfortable—but I can’t find it in myself to care about the deaths of these guys.
Not even a little bit.
In fact, the whole “touch him and die” thing that started this off was kind of hot.
I pull my eyes away from my mate and look around, my gaze landing on a camera in the corner of the ceiling, red light blinking. Shit. There’s no telling how much time we have before Doyle sends more people. We need to get out of here.
