Chapter Forty-One
Espie
Ipull the gag out of her mouth as I reach her. “Espie. It's a trap. He wanted you here, all of you, you have to go—”
“I'm not leaving you in this tunnel.” I grab her face in both hands and make her look at me. “I am not leaving you.”
“You have to. I'm stuck.” She looks up at the cuffs. I take in her ravaged skin. Fresh blood trickles from the wounds. “I can't get out.”
Voices boom behind me. I swing around to see a stream of modified betas swarm through the archway.
My heart seizes. Kev is already charging the nearest one, his shoulder down, driving the beta back into the wall.
Ezra is right behind him, fists up, throwing himself into it with everything he has.
Lex has Aubrey by the back of his jacket and is hauling him away from the fight, putting his body between Aubrey and the betas, and Aubrey's face is white and his feet are barely finding the ground and I cannot breathe.
“Go.” Sera's voice drops. “Please. Espie, please, just go, get Aubrey out, come back with—”
“I'm not going anywhere without you,” I scream.
I step back and look at the cuffs. Metal bolted directly into the tile, one on each wrist, each with a heavy padlock through the ring.
The kind with a thick shackle you'd need bolt cutters for, but the gravel between the rails is right there, chunks of it the size of my fist. I grab the biggest piece I can find and swing it at the padlock.
The impact goes up my arm to my shoulder. The padlock doesn't break but it shifts in the cuff ring. I hit it again. Metal shrieks against tile. Sera flinches.
A shot fires, the crack of it enormous in the enclosed space, and my ears ring and I keep swinging the rock.
The left padlock breaks on the fourth hit. Sera drops her arm, rotating her shoulder fast like she's been holding that position for hours. Maybe she has.
“Give me a rock.” I shove one into her hand and she goes to work on her other wrist while I smash the lock at her ankle.
More shots on the platform. Not one or two.
A volley, then another, overlapping, and underneath it the low guttural sounds of a fight at close quarters.
Levi's voice, hard and clipped, calling out for help.
I don't turn around. I hit the padlock again and it cracks open.
Sera has her hands free and she slams the last lock, smashing it open with a crack.
Sera wraps her arms around my shoulders and grips hard, digging her fingers in, and I lean into her weight. Then I get my arm under hers and pull her upright and we face the platform.
One of the SWAT officers is holding his own against a male three times his size. Levi has one pinned against the far wall—
“Not that way. It's not safe. Not yet,” Sera says. We lean on each other as we head deeper into the darkness of the tunnel.
“But—”
“I'll get you out, then I'll go back,” she says.
She's going to go back to fight in her condition? One look at her face tells me that's exactly what she intends to do. I let her take me into the darkness. We stumble over the rails when a maintenance door ahead opens in the tunnel wall and Wallace steps out, two beta guards flanking him.
“Ms. Durant.” Like we've run into each other somewhere pleasant. “How fortunate.”
Behind me, more modified betas flood onto the platform. Too many. The sound changes immediately, heavier footsteps, shouting, bodies moving fast. Levi yells something and Ronan booms his reply from further down the platform.
Sera tightens her arm around me and pulls me back a step. She takes in Wallace, his men, the distance to the archway.
“Espie! Sera!” I turn to see Ezra standing at the platform edge, his face wide with terror. He raises his gun and jumps off the platform, charging toward us.
“Ezra, stop!” I cry out, but he doesn't stop.
A modified beta comes in fast, bringing his arm down in a hard sweep. The gun spins out of Ezra's grip and skitters across the ground. The beta drives his shoulder into Ezra's chest and they go down hard together. Ezra's head cracks against the rocks and he goes limp.
The gun stops three feet from where I'm standing. I'm already moving.
“Stop her!” Wallace screams.
The second modified beta cuts across my path. I drop my shoulder and go under his reach and grab the gun. I spin with the gun raised.
The modified beta is right there and I put the barrel into his chest and he goes very still. His weight shifts back, one slow inch, then another, his gaze moving from the gun to my face and back, working out whether I'll use it.
“Back up,” I say.
He takes two steps back and keeps his eyes on me the whole way.
Wallace hasn't moved. He watches the gun in my hand with his head angled slightly, reading it, reading me, and then his gaze slides past me to Sera.
“You came all this way,” he says, not to me, “for an alpha who walked out on you.”
“Don't.” I keep the gun level. “Don't talk about her.”
“She left,” Wallace says. “Voluntarily. While you were sleeping, if I'm not mistaken.”
“She made a mistake and she's allowed to.” I don't look at Sera. I keep my eyes on Wallace. “She's coming home now.”
Sera pulls a breath in sharp beside me and lets it out slow.
“How touching.” Wallace takes a step toward us and I raise the gun. “You won't shoot me, omega.”
My hands are shaking but I keep the gun steady.
“Try me,” I say.
Wallace reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a gun. The beta lunges for Sera. I pivot and fire.
The sound is enormous and close and my ears ring white with it. Wallace staggers back two steps, mouth open. Blood blooms across his shoulder. “You fucking bitch. How dare you!”
He levels his gun at me.
A roar booms through the tunnel. I turn as Kev launches off the platform, crossing the gap between us before I've processed that he's moving. He hits Wallace at full speed and drives him against the tunnel wall, his head cracking back.
Kev grabs Wallace's wrist and slams it against the wall.
The gun drops. Wallace throws an elbow. Kev takes it in the jaw and keeps moving.
He drives Wallace back against the wall with a forearm across his throat, all his weight behind it.
Wallace claws at Kev's arm, face going red. Kev slams an elbow into his temple.
Wallace drops.
The modified beta who went for Sera is face down. She is standing over him with her boot on his neck and blood on her knuckles, holding her ruined left hand against her chest, breathing hard through her nose. She leans down and helps a groggy Ezra to his feet.
Behind us, the SWAT team pours through the archway engaging in the fight. Boots on tile, the clatter and shout of it reaching me. There are too many of them for Wallace's guards to fight, and they are quickly subdued.
Levi and Aubrey jump off the platform and run to us. Kev straightens where he's bent over Wallace and then he is crossing to us.
“Espie. Are you okay?” He takes my face in both hands when I nod, his thumbs pressing into my cheeks, and he looks at me hard. Then he turns his attention to Sera.
He reaches for her, his hands moving over the bandage on her left hand, the bruising along her jaw, her wrists where the cuffs bit in, his hands skimming over every place she's hurt. “You shouldn't have left. You should never have felt like you had to.”
Sera goes very still under his hands. She looks down, away from his face, and two spots of color rise in her cheeks. “Kev—”
“Don't you ever do it again, do you hear me? Never again.” He cups her face the same way I did, tilts it up, makes her look at him.
“He had people everywhere. He knew where we lived. He had—” she says.
“I know what he had.” I cross to her. “We knew the risks. We came anyway.”
The corner of her mouth pulls tight and she shuts it down fast.
“You should have stayed safe. You and Aubrey, you should have—”
“Stop.” My hands go to her face, careful of the bruising on her jaw. Her skin is cold. “Stop telling us where we should have been. We were exactly where we were supposed to be.”
“Espie—”
“You don't get it.” My thumbs press lightly against her jaw.
“You walked out of that house thinking you were doing us a favor.
Thinking if you weren't there we'd be better off, that leaving was the kind thing.” My voice cracks and I push through it.
“You were wrong, Sera. We were terrified and furious and none of us slept, and we would still do every second of it again.”
Her throat moves.
“We came here because we love you. Because you are ours and we are yours and we don't leave our own behind.” I hold her gaze. She is trying to look away and I don't let her. “Not ever.”
She blinks rapidly and presses her lips together.
“You don't—” she starts.
I go up on my toes and press my mouth to hers. She goes completely still before her good hand fists in my jacket and pulls me closer. It isn't soft or gentle. It's two days of a bond gone painfully quiet.
Her mouth is warm. Blood and exhaustion under the taste of basil and blood orange. I want to bury my face in her neck and never leave. When I pull back, her hand stays fisted in my jacket. She studies me like she doesn't know what to do with this.
I rest my forehead against hers and stay there.
“We love you,” I say softly. “All of us.”