Page 4 of Hidden Nature

“Ah, the emotions are making more sense now. Now that I am out of that cell and the iron shackles they used to keep my powers locked away are gone, I will help any way that I can.”

I cocked my head to the side as I took in my newest mate. The words he was speaking were English, even if he had a slight accent to them, but I can’t say I understood half of what he was talking about. There was no time to deal with all of this and our time for getting out of this place undetected was getting shorter the longer we stood here. Grabbing his hand, I pulled him after me as we made our way back downstairs and out the back door I’d come in.

Blackley had to have parked the boat somewhere around here. He wouldn’t have let it drift out into the ocean.

“The man who shot you brought me here on a black inflatable boat. If we can find it, then we have a better chance of getting out of this without drawing attention,” I said over my shoulder as I let go of him to search.

The coast was pretty clean since so many of the people here had landscapers to maintain the area, so Blackley would have to find some place to stash it out of sight. I spotted a dock where a few boats were moored for one of the houses. If I were going to hide a boat, I would put it in plain sight, where it wouldn’t be odd for it to exist.

The ramp to the dock had a motion sensor light, so it looked like I was going for another swim since it was the only way to get around the thing. Even though my wet suit helped fight the frigid water, I still hissed as it hit my stomach. Deciding it was better to simply get it over with, I dove into the water and swam for the dock.

Sure enough, the inflated boat was tied in the back, going unnoticed in the darkness as the other boats were docked. Grabbing onto one of the handles on the side, I heaved myself into the boat and cut the rope tethering it to the dock. I let it drift a little further out before I started the engine, bringing it to the shore before cutting it, so it shot right up onto the beach where Rathal stood. He didn’t look pleased with me, but I was more worried about getting us out alive right now. “Can you shove us off and hop in at the same time?” I asked.

“I can do one better,” he answered, stepping into the boat and taking a seat at its bow, letting his hand drift into the water.

Unsure of what he was trying to do, I waited in silence and watched, curious about elf magic. His hand in the water started to glow, and the water around us seemed to swirl, drawing the boat from the shore and pushing us further out into the ocean. When we got a safe distance away from the beach, he pulled his hand out of the water and dried it off on his pants.

“Water isn’t my strongest element to work with, but I can manage simple feats such as that,” Rathal shared as I gaped at him.

“Can I do that?” I asked, feeling like being an elf might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me if I could do tricks like that. Being able to control elements would make my job so much easier getting in and out of places.

“It will take us time to figure out what your talents might be, but clearly, healing is one of them. Not many could heal me as fast and perfectly as you did. Even some of my old injuries are gone,” Rathal shared. “As your Guide, it is my duty to train you in your magic and help you to discover these talents. In due time, we will find what your magic is drawn to.”

“Guide, you mentioned that before. Is that part of the Nos thing like my other mates being a Sentinel, Hunter, and Companion?” I inquired, curious as to why they hadn’t mentioned the title when we talked about it before.

“For a Nos to have a guide isn’t common. Only a powerful female will draw one to her so that ensures she is trained properly,” Rathal instructed. “Some knowledge we didn’t share with others, feeling it was wise to keep them to ourselves in an effort to protect our mates from being sought after for their powers.”

That made sense, so I merely nodded as I pulled the cord to start the engine. “My plan is to get us to Miami. It will be easier for us to find a place to hide out there and the airport is close as well. If I can get ahold of my mates, Zander can send the plane for us so there won’t be a trace of either of us in the flight system for them to track. It’s gonna take us about an hour, so get some rest if you need to. This is the safest we are going to be for the night.”

“No, nin mel, I will stay awake with you. Two pairs of eyes looking out for danger is better than one,” he yelled over the sound of the engine as I gunned it.

The sooner we got farther away from the scene of the crime, the better. Nothing about this job went according to plan but what haunted me more as I left that house behind was what Blakley said before he killed himself. There was more going on in this situation than any of us realized. Would it be worth reaching out to Miranda and seeing what she knew? When I told her what went down at Delilah’s, she seemed displeased with how much we didn’t know about the situation. The Senate had given us everything, even providing a way in, so it didn’t make sense for them to set a trap like this for me. Could it be that not all the Senate knew about the mole they had in their midst?

There were way too many questions and not enough answers. What made it worse was that I didn’t have the same connections as I did with the Organization… Or did I? No one knew what happened within the Organization and I’d cultivated my own contacts over the years. It might be worth reaching out to see what I could gather. The only trouble was both the Senate and the Dark Ring might be groups people didn’t want to go against. Well, there was one I knew of who would gladly give me information on the Senate, but I didn’t trust him enough not to slip it to the Dark Ring. Even so, for the right price, anyone would talk.

Since I was in need of bribe money, it seemed it was time I started to shift some of my assets around that I’d been saving for the past twenty-some years. When almost everything was provided to me by the Organization, I didn’t really spend all that much of it. I had a hefty nest egg sitting in a few offshore banks, but I had a feeling I was going to need to pay a pretty penny for this information.

I’d started to bring up the fact I had money when Zander made us go shopping, but he was hearing none of it, always telling me it was his place as my mate to take care of me. My omega side had been incredibly excited about them wanting to take care of me, I decided not to argue about it.

A shifting in the boat had me snapping my attention back to my surroundings, but it was only Rathal moving to sit next to me. He pulled my hand off the tiller and grabbed the handle, holding it steady while his other arm wrapped around my waist. Yanking me into his lap, I suddenly realized how cold I was with the added body heat from him penetrating through my wetsuit.

“How can you not notice that you’re cold enough to be shivering?” Rathal asked, speaking right into my ear so I could hear him clearly.

Taking stock of my body, I noted I was indeed shivering. Training had taught us discomfort was simply an issue of mind over matter. We could drown out anything with the power of our mind freeing us from limitations due to discomfort or pain. Unconsciously, I’d shoved that worry out of my head to deal with the need to get us out of danger.

“I’m an assassin. We do what’s needed to get the job done. My job isn’t done until we are both safe and back with my other mates,” I answered. Only with that answer came a revelation—if I went back to my mates, I would be putting the whole pack in danger.

If the Senate and the Dark Ring were after me, they wouldn’t bat an eye at the thought of wiping out our entire pack.

Could I go back there?

I knew my mates would never let me walk away from them, and that’s not what I wanted either, but could I knowingly walk back into their lives with the possibility of destroying everything they worked for?

“Nin mel, whatever you are thinking, stop it right now. You are tearing yourself apart over something, and I can tell you, if it has anything to do with your mates, the only option is to go back to them. Light Elves, once marked and mated, can’t survive without being around them. Clearly, you can have some separation, but if you were to leave all of us, it would kill you. The fact that I was in the house kept you from having any side effects, but there is no way you can cut us out of your life once having claimed us,” he snapped, making me flinch at his icy tone. Even my wolf wanted to hide and beg him to forgive us for even thinking of leaving our mates.

I deserved the scolding. Deep in my heart, I knew it was the coward’s way out of this to leave them, but I was still learning how to share my life with them. I’ve been on my own my whole life and it terrified me to the depths of my soul that I could lose them. Then from deep inside me, where my power had laid dormant for so long, it came rushing to the forefront, furious with me for being so weak. It was as if the part of me that was the assassin had been my elf nature all along but somehow muted. Now that my magic had been released, it counteracted some of the omegas’ urges.

Was I an omega, yes, but I was also a fighter, a survivor, one who’d made it in this world on my own two feet. If the Senate and the Dark Ring wanted to take from me, it would be over my dead body.