FORTY-FIVE
DAKOTA
The smoke takes Fletcher first.
One second he’s there, broad and bloodied and reaching for me through the white.
The next, he’s gone. Well, not gone exactly. I still feel him in my chest, cedar and leather turned wild and frantic through the bond, but the chemical fog splits his shape from the world as if someone carved him right out of it.
Then it takes Ewan.
Then Kaito.
Then everything else.
The first thing I lose is scent. Not sight or hearing. Not the breath in my lungs or the furious, panicked thoughts clawing around inside my skull.
Scent.
It vanishes under a chemical burn so strong it feels like someone has poured bleach down the back of my throat. Honey and rain disappear first. My own scent. My own body. Gone beneath something bitter and metallic and wrong.
Then Ewan disappears, smoke and clove growing thin until it’s snuffed out.
Kaito’s burning wood and worn flannel fracture into nothingness.
The bonds don’t vanish. They’re still there, three live wires welded under my ribs, but the world around them goes completely blind. And that’s the first moment I understand that we haven’t just stepped into chaos. Because chaos is loud. Chaos is messy. Chaos doesn’t know what to silence first.
This does, though.
I reach for the quiet place in my chest before I can stop myself.
For frost and steel and the thread that isn’t there because I’m a stupid bitch who told him not to bite when I should have asked for it.
I should have told him I wanted it. Wanted his bond.
Because I did. I do. But that’s what fear does, right?
It makes you stupid, even in times when there isn’t an actual threat to be worried about.
Just my own stupid fears and worries and overworked brain.
“Xeon,” I choke, the smoke thick and cloying.
Nothing answers, and the silence hurts worse than the smoke.
Something moves behind me a moment later.
A gloved arm hooks around my ribs from behind, so quick and tight that it crushes the breath right out of me and loosens my hand enough that my freshly acquired gun goes scattering over the ground like it was nothing more than a prop.
A cloth is shoved against my mouth, the pressure hard and unrelenting.
It’s soaked with something sweet under the chemical tang, and my body instantly recognizes the danger before my brain can even begin to name it.
Drug.
It’s a fucking drug.
I stop breathing without a second thought. It’s instant, even if my lungs are already screaming at me. I lock it down and focus on everything else instead.
The man behind me swears when I slam my elbow back into his ribs, the collision hurting him more than me.
It digs him hard enough to make him bend, the cloth dropping away enough that I can take in a breath that rattles painfully in my lungs, but it’s not hard enough for him to release his hold on me.
Not that it would matter, because another hand clamps down on my wrist right before some fucker grips my hair from under Maine’s hat and yanks. Hard.
Pain explodes across my scalp and I see fucking red. It’s not fear. Not yet. It’s pure, unfiltered rage.
My knife is gone, buried in some fucker’s body, but that isn’t their first mistake.
Their first mistake is thinking I’m only packing one blade.
I twist toward the pull on my hair instead of trying to get away, letting the grip drag me off balance.
The man holding my wrist expects me to fight backward, so I go forward instead, yanking the spare blade from my boot just as my shoulder collides with his chest.
My boot hooks behind his knee and I drive my knife into the soft spot under his jaw. He makes this wet, choking sound that is honestly music to my ears. Good. Serves the bastard right. This should teach him not to mess with things that aren’t his to mess with.
I rip the blade free and slam my head back into the face of the one behind me.
Cartilage crunches beautifully, the sound loud in my ears.
His hold loosens and I drop. Not gracefully, by all means.
My knee screams the moment it hits concrete, a flood of pain bursting up my thigh.
I ignore it, because pain is information and information can shut the actual fuck up until I’m not currently in the process of being Omega-napped by apocalypse versions of nightmares at discounted prices.
Rolling under one grabbing arm, I come up low and slash across the back of someone’s thigh. Blood sprays across the space behind him and the masked man drops with a shout. Then three more shapes appear in the smoke, moving toward me completely unaffected by the chemicals choking the clean air.
Black masks.
Gray gear.
No hesitation or surprise. And that shit scares me worse than the weapons.
They watch me take two of them down. They don’t panic, they simply adjust. One of them lifts a compact weapon that looks too much like a baton and not enough like a gun.
My stomach drops into my ass.
“Nope,” I rasp.
I throw my knife before my next pained breath, and the blade sinks into his shoulder rather than his throat like I wanted. Apparently my body is still being rude despite recovering for two days from injury, heat, stress, science nonsense, and being bitten by three emotionally complicated Alphas.
The weapon still fires and a crackling line hits the wall right next to me, spitting blue-white sparks over the concrete.
Shock baton.
Oh wait. No. Not a baton, I realize.
A fucking shot projectile.
I know what electricity does to me now, and I know what it wakes.
Distance.
Pulse.
Threat.
Remove.
Oh, fuck me. Not again. Please, no, not again.
I duck behind a stack of metal crates just as another shot zips past me. The smoke burns my eyes until tears spill down my cheeks, making the world all watery and white and annoying as shit.
Somewhere beyond it, Fletcher roars my name, and not just with his voice. It’s through the bond, hitting me so hard I almost topple with it.
Dakota.
Not a word exactly, but a shape. A demand. Terror.
Ewan comes next, bright and wild and frantic, shoving roughly against my chest like he’s trying his best to crawl through the bond with his bare hands. Kaito follows after that, deeper and sharper, a blade pressed against the inside of my ribs.
Three bonds.
Three alarms.
Three anchors trying to hold me exactly where I am.
And then there’s a fourth place. The quiet place. The place my body keeps trying to reach before I can stop it.
Xeon.
Nothing answers, of course, and the absence is so stark and glaring that it hurts worse than the smoke. I shove the feeling away and reach across the ground for the pistol I stole from Porter with shaking fingers, risking a shot to arm myself.
Porter.
Before her pack made it impossible.
I already know who it was. I already fucking know.
Damn it, there’s no time. No time to sort through that kind of betrayal. No time for the fact that someone inside Haven Ridge didn’t only open the door, but they fucking pointed right at me and said, “That’s what you’re after, come and get it.”
I rise from behind the crates and fire twice. The first bullet catches a Vector soldier in the chest. The second hits another in the neck and he drops like a sack of shit, hands flying up to the blood now pumping through his fingers.
I don’t even feel bad. I don’t feel anything other than the brutal mathematics of survival.
How many bullets? Three left.
How many men? Too many.
How many exits? One hatch behind me and one service lane ahead. One wall of smoke and Zeds between me and the people shouting for me.
Between you and me, these numbers aren’t looking too hot. They’re actually looking really fucking bad. Very, very bad.
Something small rolls across the ground a half second later.
A canister.
Eyes widening, I kick it right back before it even stops moving, sending it sailing away from me.
It detonates under a Vector soldier’s boots, bursting into a dense cloud of yellow-gray gas.
He jerks away from it, coughing and hacking up his lungs, but the others don’t.
Of course they don’t, because their masks are sealed tight.
Their goggles aren’t fogging like I’d expect.
Their bodies move like they’ve been practicing this exact extraction a hundred times before like some fucked-up apocalypse dance recital.
Extraction.
That word slams into me with all the force of a gorilla on steroids, because that’s exactly what this is.
It’s not an attack or a breach. It’s a full-on extraction that has been planned down to the fine detail.
They’re not here to take over Haven Ridge.
They’re not here to steal food or weapons or medicine or territory.
They’re here for me.
A Zed crashes into the smoke to my left, guided in by the gunfire and that really horrible screaming lure somewhere past the fence.
Its rotting body hits one of the masked men from the side, jaw snapping and hands grabbing.
The soldier doesn’t even panic. He simply drives a short spoke into its temple and shoves the corpse away without even really looking at it fully.
Efficient.
Practiced.
Bored.
My skin crawls as if a thousand ants have wriggled under my flesh. These people have fought Zeds before. They’ve taken Omegas through Zeds before. And it couldn’t be any clearer than it is now.
My stomach churns and the next weapon they lift isn’t pointed at my head. It’s pointed directly at my chest.
A dart gun.
Fuck.
I fire first and the bullet shoots into his hand.
He curses in pain, the gun clattering to the ground.
The sound carries over to me despite the chaos, beating the thundering of my heartbeat in my ears.
I lunge for it, because if they want to drug me that badly, then I’ll absolutely want to know how the hell they manage it.
My fingers brush the barrel before another shock round catches my bad arm.
Motherfuckers.