Chapter 54
RIDGE
I stare at the back of Brylee’s head as she strides ahead of me down the hallway at our current outpost, a base that’s about three hours from the capital. Her walk is pure feminine confidence.
My dick gets a little stiff staring at her ass in her fatigues, just as it always does, but there’s also something about her that fucking melts my heart like plastic cheese.
It’s an emotion that I would have labeled weak and pathetic once upon a time.
Something I would have scoffed at other alphas over.
I used to hate the men on the field who would turn down hanging out so they could go call their wives.
To me, there wasn’t anything more important than battle, and there wasn’t anything more alpha than winning.
Who cares about winning a war if you have nothing to protect? What do you do after the battles are over and the fights are done? Why did you fight in the first place if not to have a home to go to where your mate awaits you with freshly burnt bread and the prettiest fucking smile you ever saw?
But I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Youth is for fools.
Now, I know this feeling is a feature, not a bug, as Luka would say. It’s part of the design.
We were made to protect her. Meant to adore her. And I’m so proud every damned day when I think back on how far she’s come.
She was a defiant little shit who was weak as hell when she posed as her brother at Eros.
But now she’s had a year of Krav Maga and a year of one-on-one training with Kylian, which (when they didn’t devolve into sweaty mattress-wrestling fuckfests) have actually made our pretty little mate into a physical force to be reckoned with.
She can throw a man across the room. Just threw me yesterday actually, my back reminds me with a twinge.
And as for dedication? Forget it. This woman is a bulldozer in the best of ways.
She’s had to take so much shit in the ranks for coming out openly with us. So much mockery and disdain. But she’s learned to bite back.
My newest favorite is: “Wait. I’m not an alpha?” She’ll turn to one of us with this mocking, shocked look widening her gorgeous blue eyes. “Bring me my bathing toaster!”
By the time the idiots figured out what she meant, she turned on her heel and strutted off.
It’s all I can do not to slam her up against the nearest wall and take her when she does that.
But they don’t deserve to watch.
“Ridge. Ridge?” Luka taps my arm as we near the end of the hall, breaking me out of my thoughts, and I turn to him. His brow is furrowed, and he’s got a map pulled up on his tablet. “You packed those omega scent grenades?”
“Yeah.”
His jaw saws side to side. “I don’t love this location.
Very remote. See the hills on every side?
” He points to some squiggles on the terrain map that show higher elevations.
“The lab is supposedly tucked down in the middle. We get there and we’re easy targets if they’ve got even a single sniper hidden in the surrounding trees. ”
Nerves start to buzz beneath my skin, but instead of anxiety, I get a rush of anticipatory euphoria as I grin over at the other alpha. My heartbeat speeds, and the thrill I normally only get from battle or riding my bike or fucking my mate crests inside my veins.
“Well, today just got more interesting,” I say.
His lips purse. “I don’t like it.”
Luka never likes it these days. Bringing Brylee with us makes him stress harder, plan twice as much. He wants to cocoon our mate in bubble wrap.
But he knows that she won’t allow it.
And I know she’s got what it takes.
My sweet omega pushes open a set of double doors ahead of us, smashing them apart before calling out over her shoulder, “We’ve got a half-hour drive this time. Make sure we have some smoke bombs and lots of flashlights.”
Colter runs over to a supply cabinet in the corner of our current outpost and fills a bag with the items she requested.
Meanwhile, Kylian struts over, hands in his pockets. He looks casual, but as he stands beside me, I can tell there’s something slightly off with his scent. He’s actually nervous.
“This better be it,” he mutters under his breath.
I nod, knowing precisely what he means without him having to say it aloud.
The hunt for the scientist that the queen kidnapped has been fucking hell.
The woman knew how to cover her tracks, and apparently, quite literally, trusted no one with information.
We’ve been sent on at least half a dozen snipe hunts trying to unearth the lab for Project Harpax and find the scientist who can unravel that fucking nightmare.
If today’s mission doesn’t go well…
The princes are running out of time.
Doctor Tamara is barely managing their symptoms. All infected alphas, including the royals, have been moved to our outpost, far from the city and any population centers.
Those alphas are bombs ticking down.
The ride isn’t long, but once we exit the city, it’s all dirt roads that send up clouds of dust, announcing our presence as if we were blasting our music. At least it’s nearing sunset, so we’ll have the cover of dusk soon.
My head stays on a swivel as we get closer to our destination, a hand on my rifle. Colter maneuvers the jeep off the road and around some bushes, so at least the vehicle isn’t a blazing eyesore from the road, in case someone’s looking.
Hopefully no one’s looking.
But a prickle on the back of my neck and a hook in my gut both tell me that’s wishful thinking.
We climb out, and I lift my weapon immediately, scanning our perimeter before I let the guys open the back doors so Brylee can exit.
“Clear,” I call, scouting forward into the trees.
They all clamber out and get the gear from the back.
After scaling the nearest tree, I lean against the trunk and do another scan.
I can see the building nestled in the valley.
A double-wide meant to deceive innocent passersby into believing there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about this place.
A trailer with peeling brown paint that will make people avert their eyes from poverty.
The tromp down the hill is slow and arduous but uneventful.
“Stop here.” My little mate has her devious face on, an expression I don’t even know she’s consciously making, but it’s one that I know means she’s about to pull the rug out from under us.
She turns to Colter, who’s shucking most of the gear so that Kylian and I can patrol ahead and Luka can use infrared goggles to search the area for traces of heat.
“Can I get those smoke bombs and flashlights, please?” she asks, polite and sweet as can be.
Colter hands over the flashlights, and Brylee takes them, kneeling on the ground.
She pulls a tube and a compact from her pocket, quickly twists up a lipstick, and scribbles the red wax onto the lens.
She picks up another and does the same. Then she opens the compact, revealing an orangish base color.
Blush? What do women call that shit? I don’t fucking know…but it gets slathered across the next flashlight.
“What are you doing?” Luka asks, pausing his scan of the valley to pose the question we’re all silently thinking.
Brylee glances up and waggles her brows as she grabs two flashlights, one smeared red and the other orange.
“We’re going to start a fire.” She presses a function button that makes the lights strobe on and off, creating a pattern of color as her head jerks in the direction of a smoke bomb. “Light that. Let’s see if we can smoke out whoever’s in that cabin.”
Clever. Little. Minx.
My pants are suddenly far too tight, and I have to adjust myself before I grab a smoke bomb. Each of the guys grabs a bomb and a colored flashlight. Then we fan out among the underbrush and await our omega’s command.
“Colter. Kylian. Luka. Ridge.” As she says our names, we each set off the smoke, and slowly thick gray plumes start to rise from the foliage.
The scent burns my nostrils, but I ignore it—I’ve ignored far worse—and slide my night vision goggles down over my eyes, rifle poised at my shoulder, gaze locked on the door of that trailer.
Waiting is always the hardest part. Anticipation feeds your mind all kinds of horrors. And as the sun slips behind the horizon, we have to wait for what feels like an eternity.
But finally a curtain flickers in one of the tiny square windows, revealing a splash of light from inside the building.
“Someone’s home,” I say into my comm, dark delight rocketing through me.
“We have a winner,” Kylian comments, the grin clear in his tone.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Luka cautions.
“Just watch,” Colter advises.
Another round of waiting begins, but this time, it isn’t long before the door cracks open, and two shadowy figures spill out of the house, running around to the far side.
“Fuck! Yes! We’ve smoked them out!” Kylian’s glee is too damned quick, because as we smash through the underbrush racing for our targets, the rev of a motor sounds.
A motorcycle peels out from the other side of the double-wide, tires squealing as it kicks up dust and debris, two people perched on the seat.
“Fuck!” Luka hisses. “I didn’t see any damned vehicles on the drone scan.”
Colter radios back to base for backup, though we all know that’s a lost cause. I sprint toward the double-wide anyway, because if this trailer really has been serving as a lab, maybe there’s still data left inside. Maybe we can cobble together enough information to—
BOOM.
My hopes blow up in my face as the trailer explodes into a mushroom cloud, flames and black smoke rolling up toward the moon. Heat blazes across my cheeks, and I have to squint as flecks of ash and debris spray out.
“Fuck!” I stop running and slam my fist into the tree trunk to my right, frustration a churning vortex in my gut.
But my mate steps into the moonlight serenely, her face brindled by the wild light of the blast. Brylee turns to us and lifts her chin, and I swear, she’s never looked more like a queen than in this moment, confident and calm with the world burning behind her.
“We’ll get them,” she declares.
And she’s absolutely right. We will. If she wants this damned scientist, we will find them, because Alpha Team X would go to hell and back for this woman, loving every single step through sulfur and brimstone as long as she’s at our side.