Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
DAMIAN
I was going to die to the sound of Arabella’s voice.
No, seriously, I had almost just gotten myself fucking shot because I was distracted by her voice over the radio.
Not that she realized that and not that I would ever tell her that.
No, my cherry blossom would feel far too much guilt about that possibility, and it was my own damn fault that I didn’t have any fucking control when it came to her.
Instead, I had narrowly avoided the guard in question, glad that the perimeter of this base had been relatively unmanned.
For such a large base, the security was somewhat relaxed.
I wouldn’t lie, it made me a bit nervous to deal with less obstacles than more because this type of thing always had the potential to be a trap.
I didn’t think that was the case here, but I wanted to get back to my cherry blossom—I had made a promise I would.
We had decided that instead of waiting for night, we would do this mission early in the day, when they would be least expecting it.
The building we were trying to access wasn’t used very often as it was, and all we needed was access to the computer inside for less than five minutes to get everything we needed.
It would hopefully be a very simple in-and-out type of situation.
Only minutes ago, we had parked in a nearby nature preserve a mile or so away from the base perimeter.
Things had gone smoothly so far, and we made it over the initial perimeter wall easily—when I hesitated for just a second.
Arabella’s voice came onto the line to warn us of security coming up, and all I was able to focus on was the worry there, the concern she had for us—for me.
I was glad that the others heard it as well, and Blackwell tugged on my arm hard enough it nearly dislocated it—asshole—to pull me out of sight of the guard coming around the corner.
In theory, one guard seeing us wasn’t a problem. They were easy to kill, and their bullets didn’t do shit. But if the base alarm went off… Well, that would be a larger problem. Still probably wouldn’t die, but we wouldn’t be able to finish our mission.
As we walked along the shadows cast by the morning light against the wall, I checked on all my teammates, glad to know that both Amun and Cy were with Arabella in the truck.
The first, while powerful, had no formal training.
Even though I still didn’t like him very much, I knew he would kill for Arabella without a thought.
Cy was a good choice because he would make difficult decisions for Arabella’s safety if necessary.
If for some reason he had to leave us here to get her to safety, he would.
Although, none of that explained why Ashur was with us.
Don’t get me wrong, he was insanely powerful, so I wouldn’t complain about having his help, but I would have expected him to want to stay with Arabella.
Instead he had simply said he was coming with us, and now he was here.
I suppose I should have been thankful that he wasn’t with my girl.
It was odd, because there was something about Ashur that had allowed him to quickly gain acceptance with the group, even from Saint.
I think it may have been how honest he was.
Not blunt like Saint, but just honest in what he said.
Especially when he said he didn’t want to take Arabella from us.
I wouldn’t have let him, but even I could admit that Ashur was more powerful than me. It was complete bullshit, but I also hadn’t been alive since the dawn of fucking time.
“There are guards to your three. They’re walking along the top. Stay in the shadows until you turn right up ahead,” Arabella warned, tension ringing in her voice.
I hated that. I wanted to talk to her, to assure her that everything would be alright, but I knew the best way to do that—the only way to really do it—was to come back to her in one piece. Which we always did. This time would be no different.
As we followed her guidance based on the access she had to the cameras throughout the base, my mind wandered to the topic that had been swirling around in my head for the last day or so—Arabella.
Yeah, that wasn’t surprising at all, but it was more about having her as my mate and what having a mate meant to me in the long run.
Honestly, considering my upbringing, I had never fully gotten a grasp on even choosing a mate or if I ever wanted one—until I met my cherry blossom.
After all, why would I want a family when my own had rejected me?
Then I met Arabella, and all of those thoughts disappeared because the idea of keeping her forever was a prominent, impossible-to-ignore desire in my head.
Yet, despite my conviction, I knew there was one element I was insecure about, one part of all this I didn’t know how to handle.
I knew how to love Arabella. I knew I could be a good mate to her now that I could physically love her and show her the affection I wanted to surround her with.
But how did I do the rest of it?
How did I become part of a family? I suppose I had a family with the team…but what if I became a parent? I didn’t know the first thing about being a parent. My chest squeezed as I thought about the concept of having a baby. An innocent, completely vulnerable-to-the-world baby…
Panic had my heart nearly stilling in my chest. While my nightmare instincts demanded we claim Arabella like that, something I couldn’t deny was so fucking appealing it was unreal, the reality of it filled me with a deep insecurity I’d never experienced before.
What if I fucked all of this up? What if I couldn’t be what she needed?
What if I couldn’t be what our future child needed?
Fuck.
I wanted to be more than the broken being I was—I wanted to be more for her.
I inhaled, suddenly glad she had several mates, because while I would always try my best, I knew I wasn’t good enough for her.
But all of us together? I felt like we could manage to be everything she needed, from mates to partners in starting a family.
At least that was my hope.
“Guards coming from your south, don’t move,” Arabella suddenly hissed, jolting me out of my thoughts.
All of us remained relatively calm, not wanting to stress her out more.
I almost would have found it cute how nervous she was over us if it wasn’t for the pain it was causing her.
While slaughtering this entire base wouldn’t be easy, it was possible, and if worse came to worst, I would rather cause a mass level of violence and chaos than not return to Arabella.
After a few seconds, we were cleared to move.
I crouched down, locating and using a small maintenance passage, more of a crawl space, to access the inside of the perimeter, through the second wall.
I grunted, hating how fucking tall I was, as we managed to come out the other side in a matter of seconds.
Though Blackwell nearly got stuck exiting the small space.
I knew the passage hadn’t been designed for humans to move through, at least normally, but fuck.
Normally I would have shifted at this point, but this was a trip aimed at gaining intel, not slaughtering assholes who thought it was okay to imprison nightmares.
So we were in our human forms, and were avoiding conflict.
This entire experience was very odd for me, especially because we were hoping to go completely unnoticed and just get in and out of the building.
The mission should be relatively easy since most of the humans were watching the perimeter and not the nightmares that had already snuck past. When we finally reached the building, having traveled across the base within the shadows, I opened the door while slipping past the security systems with ease.
This wasn’t the first time we’d broken into an enemy stronghold, and if it wasn’t for wanting to get back to Arabella so badly, I would have almost considered this relaxing.
Like a solid warm-up for a future mission.
After traveling through several empty hallways, we reached the door I knew would give us problems. I examined it and went to go press on the earpiece to tell Arabella which door we needed to hack into—
But then I realized we didn’t need to do that at all, as illustrated by Ashur.
The nightmare approached the electric pad, running his fingers along the screen where we were supposed to either slide a key card or type in the access code—something we had two tries to get right before the alarms went off.
“What is he doing?” Zain asked, looking more high-strung than normal—probably because we didn’t fully trust Ashur’s ability or the part he would play on the team.
“No idea.”
Suddenly, an emerald green glow emanated from Ashur’s hand as a key card appeared between his fingers. He ran it through the scanner, and two green lights appeared overhead before the door clicked open.
Alright, shit. Even I could admit that was impressive.
“Solid.” Saint nodded in approval before moving into the room as Razar explained what was happening through the headset.
“What was that?” I asked Ashur as Blackwell walked into the room next to me, no doubt silently listening.
“We didn’t have the right passcode or key, so I created one that would work for any of these systems.” He shrugged and handed it over to me. “Should be good for any of these machines. I would have thought humans would have surpassed such simple technology by now.”
“The humans have started to reject more modern methods because they are associated with terrors,” I muttered as if that explained it reasonably. It didn’t—it was stupid to stop the progress of your species because of bias and hatred.
“But they are a military branch?” Ashur questioned.
“Sort of.” Zain shook his head. “I refuse to give them the credit of being an actual military institution.”
Fucking fair.
After walking through two more rooms, we finally reached a lab of computers, the air stale as if no one had been in here for some time. Luckily, the system was set up so that if you could access one computer you could access the entire system. I know, it wasn’t smart—but I wasn’t going to complain.
Sitting down at one of the desks, I scanned the key card.
The system immediately started up, causing me to let out an exhale of relief.
Ashur was proving to be way more useful than I would have expected.
Then again, Arabella always seemed to pick people that made our team—made our family—more whole.
Blackwell plugged in an external hard drive, and I began to transfer over everything I could as the others kept watch.
I only paused momentarily on a file that had been labeled ‘coordinated for the institute.’ I transferred the file and then moved onto the weapons ones, knowing we didn’t have much time.
All it would take was for someone to check which doors had been accessed to see the irregularity.
Of course, we were betting on the fact that they didn’t check this very often.
The weapons files seemed excessively large, but when I saw it included instructional guides, it made far more sense.
I always added those because if you knew how to use something, you usually could learn how to disarm it.
As much as I didn’t think human weapons were threatening, I knew they would eventually come up with something that could hurt us.
Finally, around three minutes after entering, we disconnected the hard drive and shut everything down, attempting to leave it exactly as it had been.
As I stood up, I could hear Razar updating Arabella, and I felt a small stab of jealousy.
Usually the others were shifted in forms that couldn’t verbally communicate with the same ease as myself, so I would be the one assigned to talk to her on missions.
I had sort of claimed the job in my head.
Of course, it was a bit fucking ridiculous, but I was finding that I was possessive over everything with Arabella, especially her time and the ability to mark her.
My heart squeezed, loving that she had a permanent heart under her scar and a trace of my power in her eyes. It was a smaller mark than the others’, but I had seen her admiring it whenever we passed a mirror, and it made me want to puff out my fucking chest in pride.
“Be careful when you step outside. Patrol is just switching over, so there is double the amount,” Arabella warned.
Deciding to split up, the others went ahead with the hard drive as Blackwell, Saint, and I stayed behind.
We hid damn well when we needed to, but in the light of day it was a bit harder, especially considering how large we all were.
After five minutes, Arabella gave us the go-ahead, and we easily made our way to the duct, exiting into the space between the second perimeter wall and the first. We retraced our steps, the shadows having shifted, and when we crossed towards the far outside wall, I felt a prickle of awareness go up my spine.
“Shit—” Saint’s curse had me snapping around to see a guard shouting and pointing. Before I could react or shift, something shot towards us faster than anything the humans had before, and it hit me. Hard.
Unlike a normal bullet that felt like an uncomfortable bug bite, this shot extreme agony right through my nervous system.
Black tar-like fire licked up my skin, and my eyes shut as everything in my body seemed to close down at once.
That was the moment I realized my prediction had come true—they had invented a weapon to hurt nightmares.
None of that mattered, though. All that mattered is that I could possibly break my promise to Arabella and not come home to her.