The guard’s microphone clicks on again, the rattle of static breaking the silence.
“Report back to the main office now!” the guard bellows.
Jasper smiles at me then turns to the speaker and a small camera he’s spotted next to it.
“Come and get us!” he shouts.
And like clockwork the elevator doors at the end of the hall clank open. Two guards emerge in uniforms, with clear visors covering their faces.They’re wearing riot gear for Selene’s sake!
“Uh, Jasp,” I say, my fingers grazing his elbow. “Maybe we didn’t think this through. How do we get the keys off them?”
The guards growl as they approach ever so slowly. One of them whips out a baton, blue electricity fizzing at one end.
“Can you, ah, do your mind thing?” he asks. “Like with Clayton? Pull up some painful memory or…something?”
“Uh, let me see, I need to concentrate.”
I snap my eyes shut and try to find peace to clear my mind and reach out for theirs but it doesn’t come. I peek through one eye and the guards are nearly at us, their fangs fully extended.
“I’ll give you some time,” Jasper says, and steps forward, leaping into a run.
Before I know it he’s barged into the guard on the left. The guard tumbles backward but Jasper somehow remains upright. The other, the one with the baton, swings his weapon back but Jasper manages to block the blow with his forearm. Meanwhile the tackled guard has gotten to his feet. Jasper engages them both at the same time, trying to keep them distracted while avoiding the zap of the electric baton.
“Anytime, Max,” he says while dodging a punch.
Knowing there’s no time left to gawk at my action hero boyfriend, I close my eyes again and reach out, and just like before, I whiz through the sea of wolf consciousnesses and zero in on the guards. I grasp onto their threads simultaneously and search frantically for anything I can use to bring them down—a death in the family, a rejection from a mate, anything painful that will render them useless. But there’s nothing. These guys have either led very lucky or very uneventful lives. Then I notice something: they’re both mated. And I wonder…
I pull a moment from both of their lives to the forefront, letting the emotion wash over me, pulling it into myself until it’s amplified and fizzing. It’s warm and comforting and makes me want to stay with it, bathe in their shared elation, but I know I can’t—I throw it back into them.
My eyes dart open as they both stagger backward, away from Jasper, who stands hunched and huffing. Then one after the other the guards drop to their knees crying tears of joy.
“What did you do?” Jasper asks.
“I found the moment they met their mates and made them feel all that gooey goodness at once.”
“You overcame them with…happiness?” Jasper asks, a little bemused but also sort of impressed. He rolls his eyes affectionately. “Of course you did.”
“You can stop gushing now,” I say. “We need the keys.”
“Right.”
Jasper is on the crying men in an instant. One even reaches out to him with a giddy smile on his tear-streaked face, laughing and spluttering like a big emotional mess. For a moment Jasper searches his body, trying to push his hands away, until finally he finds something. It’s a fob similar to the one he used to enter the building.
“This might work,” he says.
Next to Omar’s cell panel is a small censor. Jasper swipes the fob over the censor and we wait with bated breath as the light on top blinks red, then orange, then…green!
The glass turns from black to clear and then rises in an instant into the ceiling. Omar is waiting, a wild, panicked look in his eyes. He surveys the scene around him.
“What’s up with them?” he asks.
“Overcome with happiness,” I say.
Omar smirks. “Cool, should we?”
“Yes,” Jasper says, his voice suddenly low and serious. “They’ll be locking this place down any second.”
And with impeccable timing, like they can hear us or something, an alarm blares, the lights flash red, and the elevator begins to slide slowly shut.
