“He wants her weak,” I snap. “The only way he’s holding her is if she’s compromised. Somehow.”
“That intel is fucking weeks old. For all we know, the fucking universe has her gallivanting around doing shit at its behest and Coda just can’t track her.”
We’ve got people inside the Federation, but none as close as Pinky’s contact — a former sister-in-law who apparently has her own contact close to the Cataclysm. But too much communication between Pinky’s sis-in-law and her contact might mean a death sentence for everyone involved. We don’t even know the identity of that insider, or how they’d gotten eyes on Zaya in the first place.
“I need you to take another go at Bellamy,” Rath says, changing the topic seemingly at random. Except that everything and anything we discuss is about Zaya, about getting our mate home safely.
About being at her side to face whatever she’s facing, shielding her from whatever we can shield her from.
That newly-healed-over void in my chest wells with helpless frustration, threatening to crack open. I shove all that useless shit down, though, looking away to see if I can track Muta through the wildflowers.
“Bellamy is an untapped resource,” Rath continues insistently. “She’s been with him way more recently than any of us have, and she’s seen how his operation is currently running. She can give us insights into his patterns, tell us if Zaya is at his main compound or somewhere else, tell us how he’s holding her. Did he run from the three of us, or was there another reason for his retreat? If so, how can we capitalize on that? I would have expected him to try to take at least one of us, for leverage or even to kill us in front of …”
Rath trails off as he puts together what he’s saying now with what he so stupidly tried to do during his solo attempted suicide run against our father. “Fuck,” he mutters. “He didn’t even bother transforming to face me.”
No, he didn’t. Not even when Reck and I showed up midfight. So why retreat?
“Why me?” I say dully, responding to Rath’s initial request rather than delving into his revelation. Because I don’t have any of those answers either. Bellamy hasn’t said a fucking useful word to anyone in the almost three months she’s been held by the Outcast. Of course, that involuntary imprisonment might directly correlate to her selective muteness. “You know Presh is the only one she’ll talk to.”
“The Outcast isn’t letting Presh get anywhere near Bellamy,” Rath says.
That’s another ache, for all three of us — assuming Reck occasionally surfaces from his self-destruct mode enough to feel actual emotions. In the aftermath of losing Zaya and everyone being kicked off the Gage estate, the Outcast got his hands on Presh.
Under the guise of protecting our sister from further kidnapping attempts, and not only by the Cataclysm, our uncle is practically keeping the young awry hostage. Granted, my little sister is with my mother and the twins, and DeVille has been granted visitor rights. But that’s only due to the ‘touched by a goddess’ issue and comes with very specific and limited hours of access.
The other looming issue is the fucking Authority. They’re reaching out through proper channels right now, and the Outcast is stonewalling them, but I doubt that will last. Presh is on some list of ‘persons of interest,’ along with Reck, Bellamy, Zaya, and the two extremely dead Authority agents we disposed of.
DeVille thoroughly mauled Shaw, and that sort of infraction, according to the Authority, comes with a no-trial-necessary, instant-death-penalty judgement. A reminder of why they’re also known as “the Purge.”
Either that or DeVille could join the Authority himself. They’d love to get their hands on the sabertooth tiger — the same way they got Reck and the cu-sith.
Reck still has no idea that I long ago uncovered the real reason he suddenly abandoned us to enroll in and be fast-tracked through Authority training after Zaya’s death.
“Fuck all that shit,” I snarl, starting my bike.
Not that Rath has any idea what encompasses ‘shit,’ since I’m all up in my head. But I catch his almost feral grin of agreement as my back tire spins in the loose gravel at the edge of the road. Then we’re both speeding toward the Outcast pack house.
It’s intermittently raining by the time we pull our bikes into one of the garages on the Outcast’s property. Protocol dictates that as unaffiliated shifters, we should check in with the Outcast, or at least with the highest-ranked lieutenant on-site. We don’t.
We cram into the elevator at the back of the garage, and Rath repeatedly pokes at the button for 3B so hard I’m concerned it might shatter. Stopping the idiot from doing it a fifth time, I shoulder him to the side and scan the access code off my phone.
He huffs. “Forgot about that.”
The code is only necessary to access the third subfloor as well as the armory on the second subfloor, but still. “You need to calm the fuck down. And stop fucking channeling so much of the dragon. The two of us barely fucking fit in here as it is.” Seriously, working out daily, even as obsessively as he’s been doing it, can’t account for the bulk Rath’s gained in just a few months.
“It’s like last time all over again,” he snarls.
“It’s not remotely like last time,” I say, really, really trying to not let the asshole rile me.
“For you!” he snaps. “You got to complete the bond. Both times! You got —”
“Don’t fucking compare us, and don’t compare now to then,” I say. “You didn’t try to fucking kill yourself because you couldn’t exist in a world where your mate was —” I grind my teeth, stopping myself from continuing.
Rath clears his throat quietly. “I didn’t. But I ran. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore.”
“I know,” I say quietly.
It’s only then that I fucking realize the stupid fucking elevator isn’t moving. I huff out a sigh at my own idiocy, scan the access code a second time, then press the fucking button.
