FORTY-FOUR #2
Dakota’s jaw tightens. “Because of the blood.”
“Because of you,” Xeon corrects from the doorway. His voice is quiet, but it still splits through the garage loud enough that we hear him.
Dakota cuts her eyes to him and, for one second, the missing thing between them strains so hard I can almost feel the shape of it through her. Almost.
Then Valeria’s voice crackles through the radio again. “Smoke charges near medical. Chemical masks are down. South corridor blocked. Dead in the outer yard. Non-combatants to shelter two.”
Too much. Too spread. Too many places all at once. Haven Ridge doesn’t feel like a compound under attack right now. It feels like a pocket being turned inside out.
Dakota’s expression goes cold. Not scared, but calculating.
“Noise west,” she says. “Zeds north. Smoke near medical. Chemicals near Omega housing.”
“That doesn’t sound random,” Ewan points out, jaw tightening.
“It’s not,” she says. “It’s designed.”
I look past the garage doors. The evening has turned red under the flashing emergency lights.
Smoke billows low around the medical wing, thick and pale.
Figures are running between buildings, some armed and some rattled with panic.
Gunfire cracks near the west wall while the groans of Rots start building behind it, drawn by some sharp, shrill mechanical whine rising and falling in the distance.
A lure.
They brought lures.
They brought chemicals.
They knew where to place smoke.
They knew where Dakota might be taken if command panicked.
My stomach turns to iron when I say, “Someone handed them the damn map.”
No one argues.
The first Rot hits the outer garage fence hard enough to rattle the chain links. Then another joins it. And then four more. Their rotting bodies slam into the fence while they stumble toward the noise, but then their heads twitch when Dakota moves.
Honey and rain leak through the smoke, blood, blockers, and three new bonds. It’s too bright and alive and easy for someone who’s looking for it.
My Alpha surges to the front of my mind then.
Protect.
I plant my feet right beside her instead.
Xeon steps forward, frost and steel cutting through the bitter air. “Service lane. It keeps us out of the main smoke.”
Kaito nods once. “Fastest route to medical without crossing the yard.”
Dakota looks over at Xeon, then at the service lane. Then she nods. It’s not a bond, but it’s still trust, and that distinction lands heavy at our feet.
We move.
I take point because Dakota jerks her chin and gives the go-ahead. That’s the only reason. Ewan stays tight to her right while Kaito shadows her left. Xeon drifts just ahead, silent and sharp, checking corners before the rest of us reach them.
Dakota keeps pace, too. Her knee is far from perfect.
I see it in the slight hitch she hides with speed and the way her jaw flexes every time she pivots too hard.
But she’s not helpless. Not even close. That woman has more grit than sense, and God help me but I’d follow both into fire without a second thought.
A Rot lunges through a broken section of fence, and I shoot it once through the head.
Dakota ducks under my arm before I can lower my rifle, driving her knife into another Rot’s eye socket.
She tears the blade free, breath sharp, hair tucked under Maine’s hat, and throat marked and bloody and alive.
Ewan laughs once, bright and wild. “That’s my girl.”
Dakota points the knife at him. “Don’t even think of making it sound like you taught me that.”
“I’d never do such a thing,” he volleys, and I hear the lie in his voice.
Kaito kills the next Rot without comment and Xeon’s attention cuts toward the smoke ahead. Human movement, not dead.
He lifts one hand and we all come to a stop. A figure breaks from the chemical haze, wearing a Haven Ridge jacket and a gas mask. They spot us and freeze.
“Identify,” I bark.
They run.
Dakota bolts after them. Of course she does.
“Dakota!” Ewan shouts, but she doesn’t stop.
Kaito curses in a language I don’t even know and moves after her.
I follow, rifle up and boots pounding over concrete.
The runner dives toward the storage annex, fast but sloppy.
Dakota is faster, bad knee or not. She catches them by a stack of crates, slamming her shoulder into their back and driving them down to the ground with a force that looks like it hurts.
The gas mask cracks against the ground and I reach them just as she rolls the bastard over.
Porter.
One of Hale’s logistics men. Mousy little fuck with a twitchy face and a habit of looking at the ground whenever an Alpha walks by. His eyes widen when he sees Dakota, but not with surprise. Recognition.
My fingers tighten on the trigger and Dakota sees it, too. Her face goes flat. “So what’s with the mask, Porter?”
Stuttering and stumbling over his words, he answers, “I-I was assigned to-to chemical control.”
“No. No you weren’t,” I contradict, and Porter’s eyes flick to me, then to Dakota’s throat.
To the bites.
My bond snarls so hard my vision narrows. Dakota puts her knife under his chin before I can even move, and she snaps, “Eyes up here, Porter.”
The asshole’s breathing turns fast and wet under the cracked mask, but his eyes snap back to Dakota’s as he says, “You don’t understand.”
“You know what, people keep saying that to me right before they become the biggest pain in my ass,” she counters, pressing her knife a little harder into the skin of his neck.
Not that he seems all that bothered by it.
“She’s not yours,” Porter says, looking at me now. “She isn’t any of yours.”
Every single inch of me goes completely still. Dakota does, too. Ewan’s scent darkens. Kaito stops moving entirely and Xeon takes one soundless step closer. Porter’s eyes shine with terror and a strange little conviction, which is always a very ugly mix.
“She belongs to all of us,” he says, uncaring that Dakota is one breath away from slicing her blade from ear to ear. “You think one pack gets to hide her? One compound? She could change everything. Omegas are dying. People are still dying.”
Dakota’s knife presses closer, and a drop of blood spills down his throat and drips onto the ground under him. With a chill in her voice that would have had my hackles rising when we first met, Dakota asks, “Who did you tell?”
Porter’s eyes skitter away like the coward he is. Not toward the smoke, and not toward Vector. No. They skitter toward command.
My stomach drops.
“Porter,” I start, voice low. “Who gave the order?”
His mouth trembles and his eyes water from behind his shattered mask. “He said it wasn’t an order.”
Dakota goes still and her voice is eerily calm when she asks, “Who?”
“He said someone had to force the issue,” Porter whispers. “Before her pack made it impossible.”
Every sound in the lane seems to fall away, because I hear what he’s not saying. Before her pack made it impossible, not before the compound lost her. Or before Vector found her.
Her pack.
Only someone close enough to command would think of that.
The radio attached to Porter’s belt crackles right before a voice comes through, low and unfamiliar under the static. “Asset confirmed near storage annex. Team two, converge.”
Asset.
Dakota’s face empties completely and my blood burns in my veins so hot that I grit my teeth against it.
Porter starts to sob, whispering through hiccups, “I did it for humanity.”
Dakota hits him with the hilt of her knife, the blunt tip clocking him in the temple. His head snaps sideways and he falls unconscious in the next breath. With a voice sharp enough to cut through bone, Dakota says, “Humanity can send you a thank-you card.”
Then the first shot explodes from the smoke.
I shove Dakota down behind the crates just as bullets chew right through the wood where her head just was.
Splinters explode over us like a fucked-up kind of confetti.
She lands hard, breath punching out of her lungs, and I come down over her without pinning her.
One of my arms is braced above her shoulder, while the other is already returning fire with the rifle clutched in my hand.
Three figures move through the smoke.
Not Haven Ridge.
Black masks, gray gear. Vector.
The sight of them makes my stomach turn to iron.
“Move!” I shout.
Dakota rolls, not away from me, but with me. We break from cover together, and I fire twice. One Vector soldier drops, and Dakota throws her knife into another’s thigh, then rips the pistol from Porter’s belt as she passes.
Smart girl.
Terrifying girl.
My girl.
No. Not mine like that. Chosen. Get it right, idiot.