When loud, satisfied hissing came from Beaumont, Duron refocused on his mate and what he’d originally asked him. “Did you scent your son?”
Chapter Eighteen
Beaumont
Fury and rage ran through his veins as Beaumont shifted, stalking toward Duron, his hand brushing against the claw marks left on his mate’s face. “He hurt you. He had no reason.”
“He was scared for his daughter.”
“No, no. You don’t get to justify him attacking you.” Beaumont wanted to take the pain away—the pain he could sense through his bond, knowing it would only be ten times worse for Duron. “Everything we’ve heard about him suggests he’s a reasonable man, a friend of the Putneys. Like everyone else in this damned place, he had to know we were working with the brothers. Now he claims we’re hounding Selina, when we’ve only seen her the once, and she came with us willingly?”
“We don’t know what she told him…”
“He’s a shifter. He should’ve been able to smell the truth or lies, depending on her duplicitous nature. Fuck, Duron. You’ve been hurt… I never wanted that for you.”
“And you’ve made your displeasure clear.” Duron nodded at the body. “I don’t know why the man attacked the way he did, but it’s of no consequence now. The scents here. What are they telling you?”
Not for the first time, Beaumont just wanted to drag his mate to safety, get them on the council plane, and head off for anywhere that had air conditioning, a decent bath big enough for two and absolutely no freaking phones or internet access. From the moment they’d met, it had been one fucking disaster after another, and nothing but a tangled web of half-facts that didn’t lead anywhere to show for it.
Swiping his fingers through the blood on Duron’s face one last time, Beaumont turned, pointing angrily at the pile of debris he’d been sniffing before the cat showed up. “Selina has been here, not at the same time as the others. The three scents that are like hers—let’s call them her brothers, although we all know that’s a relative term here—have been in the area more recently. It is clear they have searched around the debris, possibly looking for an entrance to the offices Kylo told us about that were under the facility. We already know there was nothing left for them to find there.”
Going over to his clothes, Beaumont started tugging them on. “As to the scent of the fourth male… I’m damned if I know. If I’d come across this scent fifty or sixty years ago, I would’ve said that scent was my son, absolutely. The scent has been altered…”
“Like that of a hybrid,” Duron agreed.
“Exactly like that, but the essence of me and my late wife is there as well.” Fastening his pants, Beaumont pulled on his boots before straightening his clothes and facing his mate. “This situation sucks donkey balls. Every inch of my body—animal and human—wants to chase that scent down to the ends of the earth if necessary, and fucking face the man I would swear was my son, just from scent alone.
“But you and me, we already know that’s not possible. This stronger figure, the one who smells of both me and my late wife, is likely the father figure Selina refers to. But I refuse to entertain the hope for one single second longer that it could actually be my son. The hopes I’ve held robs a man of his reasoning and I will not allow that to happen anymore. You got attacked… you’re hurt…
“I will hunt this man purely and simply because he’ll hold the answers I seek about what happened to my dead family. I’ll strip them from him inch by fucking inch if I have to. And then we’re going to leave this place, the Devil be damned, and I never want to set foot in this country again.”
Beaumont was shaking, whether from the killing, the anger at the blood on Duron’s face, or the stupid hope he was determined to kill because it did him absolutely no good in the long run, he did not know. “They went that way.” He pointed off to the right. “I’m carrying the bag.”
Out of control. It wasn’t something Beaumont had allowed himself to be in over a hundred years. He hated how Duron stayed silent after pulling on clothes he’d taken from the backpack. He simply raised his hands and stepped back so Beaumont could pick up the backpack, slinging it over his shoulder. It was heavy, so damned heavy, and there was a part of him that reveled in how effortlessly his strong mate had carried it. But that same mate had gotten hurt, and while Duron would heal—that’s what shifters did—those scratches on his mate’s cheek were a livid reminder that Beaumont had failed to protect again.
Duron silently followed Beaumont, pushing his way through low slung vines and branches, the earth moist under his feet. Shifting would be easier, but the scent they were following was strong, taunting Beaumont with dreams of a family lost. He lost track of the number of hours they’d pushed on, sweat dripping from every part of his body.
The rainforest gave way to a dirt trail, one similar to those used by trail bike riders. Looking left and right, Beaumont accepted the bottle of water Duron had pulled from the pack, swigging half of its contents, before handing it to his mate. “This way?” he asked, pointing to the left, moving that way when Duron nodded. They didn’t need to go back to the road, they needed to go to where that trail would lead them.
It was only five minutes in when Duron stopped him with a tap on his shoulder. Something, Beaumont didn’t know what, cut through his determination on what was ahead, to focus on where they were.
Someone is following us.
And even as Beaumont started to ask the basics of who, how many, and why, a loud shriek ripped through the air, and three figures in black blocked their path, knives in hand.
“Fucking amateur ninjas. It’s alligator playtime.” Beaumont slammed the backpack in Duron’s direction and shifted—his clothes ripping as his alligator came through.
The men didn’t run, which meant they’d clearly seen shifting before. Or maybe because they were in the middle of a jungle, they’d seen stranger things than a man turning into an alligator right in front of them. Beaumont didn’t know. He didn’t care. What he knew was they were avoiding him, trying to get Duron, and Beaumont would not let that happen.
His earlier frustrations rushed forward. The answers they were seeking could be just around the next tree, or over the next hill, and three fucking idiots with their faces half covered thought they could stop Beaumont? Eugenie had encouraged him to be a better man, but there was still a part of Beaumont who was as ruthless as he had been before he married.
Jaws snapping, he lunged for the nearest person, daring to try and pass him. The man yelled, swinging his knife wildly, but Beaumont’s scutes—his bony scales—were hardened like steel. Raising his tail, he swung it at a second attacker, while chomping his teeth down onto the leg of the first. His webbed feet dug into the ground, giving him leverage, twisting the second man around to join the first.
Moving quickly, Beaumont moved over them, snapping his teeth, warning them not to move as his foot pushed into one’s back. Duron already had the third man gripped around the neck with one powerful hand—he hadn’t even dropped the backpack, and Beaumont felt pride in his skills.
Kill them?
Hold a minute.Duron shook the man he was holding. “Who sent you? Tell me, and I’ll kill you fast.”
