Chapter 47 Marcus
MARCUS
Marcus couldn’t get out of Florida fast enough. They had infiltrated the base during the early hours of the morning, parachuting in and getting the lay of the land, and once they knew where Warren and his sister were being kept, they struck.
It was a surgical operation, won before the first shot was fired.
Max’s brothers tried to muster a defense, but they were utterly unprepared to face members of their own species.
Unlike Max, who could suppress the instincts of his wolf with variable rates of success, Max’s brothers didn’t seem to have any defense against the will of a more dominant alpha.
Putting them down and forcing their submission was easy.
While Odin and his team secured the base and detained the human soldiers who resisted, Marcus had been free to go get his mate.
Marcus had very nearly lost control when one of Max’s brothers had tried to stop him from getting to Warren, and only the realization that the man was trying to protect his mate had saved him.
Framed like that, the actions of the alpha, while misguided, had Marcus’s wolf shift from rage to approval.
Then Warren was in his arms, clinging to him and asking to go home.
His mate was hurt. Rage like fire coursed through his veins, and Marcus very nearly delayed the execution of the idiot general in charge of all this – wanting to rip him apart himself and make him scream – but his duty to his people won out.
They might be in a safe zone, but Marcus knew that he was invading the territory of something that would kill him and his pack with ease. They couldn’t linger a moment longer than absolutely necessary.
He gave the order to kill the general and headed to the airfield.
“Go, go, go!” Odin shouted, slamming his hand on the side of the helicopter and shutting the door after Marcus and the unit he had led climbed inside. Marcus put on his headset before handing a pair to Warren and helping him settle them over his ears.
The helicopter lifted up and shot into the sky at full speed, climbing up and up until they hit ten thousand feet.
Marcus relaxed, but his hold on Warren stayed firm.
Braxton, Odin’s second in command and most likely successor, nodded at the empty seat on Marcus’s right.
It was the seat reserved for Warren.
He was ballsy for trying to correct Marcus on how to behave with his mate, but he was right. Warren's safety trumped Marcus’s need to hold him on his lap.
Shifting Warren onto his own seat, he buckled him in and draped his arm across his shoulders instead.
Warren looked dazed, his eyes unfocused, no doubt due to the large bump on his head.
“Vivian?” he asked, looking around the interior of the helicopter. His voice was picked up by his microphone and echoed across the shared channel.
“Here!” Vivian said from down the row, leaning forward so that Warren could see her. “I’m okay.”
Despite this pronouncement, she promptly burst into tears.
Warren looked devastated and guilty, and Marcus almost regretted not taking the time to tear Harvey Taylor to pieces himself.
Vivian quickly pulled herself together, wiping her tears and smiling tremulously in Warren’s direction.
Warren returned the smile and leaned back, resting against Marcus’s side and closing his eyes.
Bending his neck, Marcus lowered his nose into Warren’s hair and breathed in his scent, comforting himself that his mate – while hurt – was going to be okay.
“ETA until we cross the border?” Marcus asked.
“Team Alpha, estimated crossing in forty-four minutes,” the pilot of Marcus’s helicopter answered.
“Team Delta, estimated crossing in forty-six minutes,” the pilot of Odin’s helicopter, following behind them, chimed in.
Marcus counted down the minutes in his head, centering himself and forcing calm by focusing on Warren’s scent and body next to his.
After about thirty minutes, Marcus felt something poke at his wolf. He froze, and his reaction had every other werewolf on board immediately alert and ready.
The thing was large.
His wolf bristled and prepared to attack, but then the thing poked him again and Marcus realized that large was an inadequate descriptor.
The thing was colossal. Marcus might as well have been an ant, he was so small in comparison.
The mental poke was clumsy, as though touching something as little as Marcus’s wolf was a challenge.
“Higher,” Marcus grunted, and within a second of issuing the command, the helicopter was lifting up.
“What’s going on?” Warren asked.
Marcus felt the thing poking at his wolf shift its attention to Warren. His wolf went ballistic, broadcasting his distress across his bond with Max and Harland and launching itself at the mental projection.
It was like attacking the side of a mountain. Marcus could only damage himself, and the mountain barely noticed his presence.
The colossal entity examined Warren. Wrinkling his nose, Warren reached up and scratched the side of his head, but other than that he didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.
The entity stopped looking at Warren, its attention shifting to something back down on the ground.
It felt like a shark descending into the deep. It was still there, no matter that you couldn’t see it, and you weren’t safe until you left the ocean.
“Odin, give me your status,” Marcus growled, his heart pounding.
“Following you to twenty thousand feet, everyone safe and accounted for.”
“Update every twenty seconds.”
Odin didn’t question the order, but as they headed north, Marcus could feel his wary confusion.
“Crossing into known safe territory,” the pilot announced.
A few seconds later, Odin confirmed his own chopper’s safe passing.
Marcus slumped back, his back drenched in sweat and his heart pounding.
When the colossal entity had noticed them, they had been in the air.
The poke against his wolf had felt curious, and the mental tendril had felt like whatever was making contact was stretching itself.
It had seen them, but it hadn’t decided that they were intruding.
Had they been on the ground when it noticed them, Marcus was sure they would all be dead.
“Are you okay?” Warren asked.
Everyone had been staring at Marcus, tense and on edge and wondering what was happening.
“We were noticed,” Marcus said, his voice shaky.
“Could you tell what it is?” Odin asked.
Every werewolf on the shared channel knew what they were talking about.
“No,” Marcus said, remembering the vastness of the thing’s awareness poking at his wolf. “Just that it’s very, very big.”
They landed at a private airfield outside of Atlanta. Max and Harland were on the tarmac, waiting for him and reaching for him across their bonds.
Harland was in his daytime getup, wearing a sleek black motorcycle suit and a black helmet with a dark visor, standing so still that he might as well have been a statue. Max, in contrast, was practically vibrating out of his skin.
A cool breeze ruffled Marcus’s hair as he walked over to them.
“Warren is taking a moment to talk to his sister,” he said as he walked, knowing what their first question would be.
Harland nodded, while Max grimaced. Marcus could feel their impatience across their bond, and he understood it completely.
When he reached them, Marcus embraced them both and gave them a tight, brief hug and a hard pat on the back. The physical contact settled him, all his mates now safe and accounted for.
His men gathered a step away, giving him privacy for his reunion. Marcus could feel their curiosity – the news that he’d found his mates had spread through the pack rumor mill – but they all looked away and made sure not to crowd them.
“What was that?” Max asked as they broke apart. “It was so big!”
“It felt old,” Harland added.
Marcus shuddered at the memory of the clumsy poke against his wolf. He’d wondered if Max and Harland had felt the entity’s presence across the bond, or just his panicked reaction to it. This answered that.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just glad we’re out of its territory, whatever it was.”
Odin’s chopper landed, the noise making Harland’s ears hurt, and before it had even touched the ground, Odin was jumping out onto the tarmac and jogging toward them.
“We in the clear?” he asked, taking off his noise-canceling headset. His voice was gruff and to the point.
Marcus nodded, the chopper forcing him to raise his voice. “It only noticed us for a few seconds, and it felt like it had to stretch to see us. I think we were high enough up that it didn’t consider it an incursion into its territory.”
“That was the thing that kills werewolves?” Max sounded startled.
Odin looked at him, and Max took a small step closer to Harland.
Marcus could feel across their bond how intimidated he was.
Odin was one of the most physically imposing members of Marcus’s pack, and the tactical military gear and fierce look of battle-ready concentration only made him that much more daunting.
“Either that, or Florida is even more fucked than I thought,” Marcus said.
Odin’s chopper completed its landing, and the four of them turned to watch as Max’s brothers were escorted out by the members of Odin’s team.
Even though Max had been warned and knew that his brothers were coming, his eyes widened and his mouth hung open at the sight of them.
Three of the men could have been Max’s mirror image, only the hair and way they carried themselves setting them apart, while the remaining twelve were also clearly related.
Putting his hand on Max’s back, Harland doing the same, Marcus waited for Max to process the scene.
Max’s brothers looked wary and tense as they disembarked the helicopter. At the sight of Max, they froze.
“Max?” one of the brothers asked. He had a scar across his nose, and Marcus could tell that he was the one the brothers deferred to.
“That’s me,” Max said, swallowing.
Marcus sent him a nudge of assurance and comfort across their bond, and he could feel Harland doing the same from his end.