CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - BIRDIE
I wake to the sun on my face and soft lips tickling my throat. Hog is slowly tending his mating bite while his packmates watch in envy. Somehow, I managed to catch a few hours sleep, while Axel and Colt both look rumpled and tired, despite their fresh change of clothes.
“Does it taste as good as it looks?” Colt asks, his fingers creeping across my pillow to stroke the tips of my hair. “I swear, walking and thinking is overrated.”
I smirk, because only Colt can pout and look hopeful at the same time. There is still a bruised edge to the bond, but my feelings aren’t quite as hurt now that I have a front row seat to the guys’ suffering.
“Can he have a lick?” I ask Hog, turning my face to brush his lips. Instead of answering, he falls into the kiss, moving our mouths in a sensuous dance that has my toes curling in the sheets.
“Show-off,” Colt mutters, but when Hog grabs the front of his shirt, he doesn’t shove him off te bed, Instead, he pulls him closer to my pillow. “This strangely doesn’t feel like I’m about to be punched…”
“Make her smile,” Hog grunts, shaking him by his shirt, “or I’ll kick your ass all the way to the beach.”
Colt makes a happy sound and scoots over to my pillow. He runs his fingers through my hair, lifting it to his nose before dropping a kiss on my lips. I press a finger against his temple, redirecting him to my throat. “Don’t push it, bad cat.”
His tongue licks my knuckles before I can pull away. “Your wish is my command, little bird.”
He cuddles up next to me, making the most of our shared pillow as his tongue rasps across my throat. He doesn’t come in gently, licking and nibbling until my thighs fall open and my head tips back.
“There’s my sweet omega,” Colt croons, gentling his licks as his hand skims my thigh. “Do you need to be tended anywhere else?”
I push him back with a finger, and he gives me a sly grin as he nuzzles my neck.
“What about him?” Hog asks, casting his pack alpha a narrow glance. “What can he do to make you smile?”
“Coffee,” I say with a cocked brow. “And make that stir stick suffer, Alpha.”
I’m joking – mostly - but Axel slides off the bed and heads towards the kitchen. Colt snickers against my throat. “Servitude is a higher form of suffering.”
“What makes you think your suffering is over, bad cat?” I ask, sitting up and shaking out my hair. It hasn’t escaped my notice that Axel’s careful dye job has a magic of its own. Colt makes a sad puppy dog sound, but I smell coffee, so I swing my legs off the bed, grabbing Axel by his belt.
“You can’t push me away,” I tell him, ignoring the cup in his hands. “I’m his now, and we’re a package deal.”
“I wasn’t pushing, I was… investigating.” He sets the cup on the nightstand but doesn’t try to pull out of my grasp. “I shouldn’t have walked out, but my rage was feeding my rut. I didn’t want the shit in my head to come bubbling all over you.”
I shake my head. “You hurt me anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” He lifts a hand, ghosting it over my cheek. “I need to think with my heart sometimes, instead of my head.”
I get that, if in reverse. I’ve let my instincts overpower my logic plenty of times. “Then how can I convince your head, Alpha?”
He stares down at me, his gaze on my throat. I’m guessing it must be quite a sight after Colt’s vigorous tending. “Tell us more about Reeves. What do you think his agenda was?”
I sit back, trying to ignore the pang of disappointment in my chest. “Well, I don’t think he was trying to fix anything. He’s a sadist to his core, and he wouldn’t even begin to understand your grief.”
Axel’s eyes flash, but he nods for me to continue.
“I remember him injecting something into my scent gland, which is probably why you could smell Charlie during my heat. I’m guessing he wanted it to tear you apart.
Maybe even get me killed, if you tipped into a rut.
That’s the kind of twisted manipulation he gets off on. ”
Hog grunts. “So, the fucker weaponized your heat. I can see how something like that would appeal to the worst pockets of the military.”
“Why?”
“Elite units tend to be bonded packs,” Axel explains. “We can communicate through our bonds, and we’re more committed to protecting each other. If you had a way of blowing that apart…”
Silence settles over us, but the pack bond is simmering with anger. “I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you, but Reeves getting his hands on me again was my worst nightmare.”
Axel steps forward, pressing my coffee cup into my hands. When I take it, he drops to his knee, his gaze holding mine. “That will never, ever happen. And you’re gonna help make sure of that.” I cock a brow at him, and he sits beside me on the bed. “What can you tell us about the lab’s location?”
I take a sip of coffee. It’s perfectly sweet, and I hum my approval. “Not much. When I was outside, they always had me hooded or drugged. But it took around three hours to get to the Paradise Falls’ train station.”
“Clever girl,” Axel says, making me preen. “And to Booth’s house in Carson City?”
I pause to think about it. I was hooded, but strangely clear-headed. Probably because Reeves wanted the general to believe I was broken but still consenting in some small way. “Not long. Less than an hour, I think. But we went through some traffic. We were definitely close to a bigger city.”
“Reno?” Hog asks.
I shrug. “I was hooded. But we started and stopped a lot, and it just sounded different to the highway.”
“Hooded.” Hog tips his head back, the cords on his neck pulsing in agitation. “Guess we’ll see how Reeves likes the plastic bag version.”
I blink and Colt crawls up behind me, his head resting on my shoulder. “Can’t this wait?” he asks, sounding a little forlorn. “We should be cuddling, not conspiring to suffocate her enemies.”
“We can do both,” I tell him with a soft smile, twining my fingers through his hair. It’s tempting to just fall back into his arms, but the specter of Reeves is hard to shake. “Look, even if we find the lab, Reeves has a ton of security. I won’t risk you guys like that.”
“Come here,” Axel says, patting his thigh, and after a moment of hesitation, I crawl onto his lap. He’s back in a pair of jeans, and I mourn what could have been. But Axel sweeps my hair back, his nose nuzzling my throat. He’s not kissing my scent gland, but he’s close. “Damn you smell good.”
I’m pretty sure the tingling in the bond is coming from me. “Like Charlie?”
“No, like saltwater taffy.”
I smile and brush my thumbs over his face. He’s back to the stoic soldier, and I hate that my situation put some of those grooves around his mouth. “Why don’t we use the general? Get him to call a meeting with Reeves.”
Axel’s gaze turns thoughtful. “There’s no going back if we do. Booth will be a witness, and he’ll have to court-martial us all.”
“He can try,” Hog grunts. “But I don’t like his chances of doing much with a Winchester Magnum parked in his temple.”
“Use him,” I clarify, since taking out Booth can be our backup plan, “but let’s be sneaky about it.
As far as Booth is aware, we’re still at the cabin, right?
” Axel nods and I chew my lip, a plan forming in my mind.
“Then we feed him more false intel. Get him to tell Reeves that you survived my heat and have already deployed. You used me as a pack chew toy and then abandoned me to go do your duty.”
The guys stare at me, and I let them see it all: my hatred for Reeves, and my desire to see him pay, and my fear of falling back into his hands again.
“He’s the devil,” I whisper, my throat catching.
“He always wanted to own my pain. Razor said he had plans for me, and after this was over, he was going to make me his personal pet.”
“Fuck this!” Colt surges to his knees. “We grab Booth and shake him until this doctor prick falls out.”
I reach up and grab his hand, giving it a squeeze.
“We don’t have to. He’ll come to us. I’m his experiment, remember?
It backfired and you all walked away. He won't be able to resist finding out what went wrong and my guess is he’ll want to see it with his own eyes.
If he knows I’m alone, he won't bring much security, either.”
Axel leans forward and kisses me. It’s over in a heartbeat, but his mouth is hungry enough to leave an imprint on my lips. “It could work,” he says. “Bait Reeves to go to the cabin and take him out. But Booth has to own up to his part. I want to look him in the eye and tell him that he owes us.”
Colt flutters his lashes at me. “You’ve got a pretty amazing brain, Baggage. These assholes don’t stand a chance.”
I twist to look at Hog. “What do you think?”
He cocks a brow at me, his lips curling up. “I think that Colt was right, and we need to cuddle some more.”
We put our plan into action almost two days later.
That’s how long it took for Axel to show General Booth the error of his ways. He requested an emergency video call, and then brought me out as soon as the general denied any knowledge of the Broken Wing program.
“I still remember the stench of your whiskey,” I tell him, settling on Hog’s lap, my mating bite on full display.
“Remember how Reeves made me crawl on my knees to you?” Hog’s hand tightens on my waist, his dominance filling the living room like a dark fog.
“When you asked how he’d keep me silent, you didn’t seem all that disturbed by the device in my throat. ”
Axel glares at the screen. “That alone makes you complicit, General.”
Booth’s chest puffs in outrage. “Anything I did, it was in the interests of your pack!”
“You don’t get to decide what’s best for my pack!” Axel roars, the pretense of the stoic soldier stripped away. “You manipulated us, but worse, you saw an omega in need, and you threw her back to the wolves.”
“I sent her to you, Captain.” He gives him a smug smile. “And based on that bite on her neck, it looks like it worked out for the best.”