Chapter 5 - Rael
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
Alanis was seated in the passenger seat with bound wrists and a stormy expression.
It did not take a rocket scientist for Rael to figure out she was pissed, and he could not understand that. “You’re angry? Because I rescued you? Because I saved your ass?”
"I'm angry," she said, "because you pulled me out of an operation I planned, that I had handled by the way, and then you left seven whole women in a building with people who are going to sell them!”
He held her gaze and recalibrated. Her jaw was set, and what he was reading off her was not wounded pride.
He looked out the windshield. The structure's concrete columns made shadows across the hood of the car.
His mind was already running the numbers he'd run in the venue—thirty-eight buyers, three handlers on the floor, security at two points.
He'd never done it alone. In every previous operation, he'd had Silas or Javi or both of his brothers, and the decision to move on a venue had always been collective, planned, and resourced.
He thought about the women he'd watched come through that side door tonight. He thought about Alanis sitting next to him, having apparently put herself in a holding facility on purpose for a reason he wasn’t aware of.
Deep within him, Rael knew he didn’t stand a chance.
He could not say no to her, but the problem with the plan forming in his head was that it required him to go back into a venue where he'd just made an extremely visible purchase and leave a trail of freed women behind him, which would alert the network and would cost him whatever remained of the intelligence opportunity.
"Stay in the car," he ordered.
"Absolutely not."
“Alanis, you—"
"I know the layout," she urged, her tone desperate. "I know which of those women are in a state to move fast and which ones will need direction. You don't." She held up her bound wrists. "Also, cut these."
“Fine,” he took a pair of scissors from the backseat and cut the zip tie. “But you follow my every move and do exactly what I tell you. Are we clear?”
She gave him a terse nod. “Crystal.”
They went back on foot, which added eight minutes to the timeline but meant the SUV wasn't in the lot when things went sideways. Rael had learned early that the most reliable variable in any field operation was the exit, and exits required vehicles that hadn't been noticed.
Alanis walked beside him, matching his pace. She'd taken the jacket he'd handed her from the back seat and had it on now, collar up. "The handlers rotate," she said quietly. "Side door guard switches at the hour. We have fourteen minutes."
"How do you know that?”
"I counted the auction timing. Each lot ran approximately eight minutes from presentation to sale, with a two-minute interval between." She paused. "I've been tracking since I came out of the holding area."
They reached the east side of the building and moved along the wall, using the loading bay overhang for shadow.
The building's electrical panel was mounted on the exterior wall, which he'd immediately seen on entry.
It was a habit Silas found excessive, and Javi found useful.
The panel was standard commercial—not sophisticated, not hardened.
It controlled the warehouse's lighting and power supply, including, almost certainly, the hidden cameras he just noticed.
He looked at Alanis. "When the lights go out, you go in and move the women to the east lot. Give them thirty seconds of direction and then get clear."
"What are you doing?”
"Cutting off the power supply.” He nodded at the loading bay. "There's a fuel drum near the rear bay door. If it tips and ignites the loading debris, the response will pull the security from the interior toward the exterior." A pause. "Accidents happen in old warehouses."
Alanis quietly arched a brow. Then nodded. “Alright. As long as you know what the hell you’re doing.”
He pulled out his phone and sent a two-word text to Silas: “Not clear.” Their code for: I moved to a venue, don't expect intelligence output, will explain later. Then he pocketed it and looked at Alanis.
"Thirty seconds after the lights go," he said. "Not more."
"Understood."
He moved to the loading bay.
It took four minutes to position the fuel drum and another ninety seconds to rig the loading debris in a way that would catch fast and look like a chain reaction from an unstable stack.
The drum had been sitting against a wall on a cracked base—anyone examining it after would conclude the base had given and the drum had rolled into materials that shouldn't have been stored adjacent to it.
He moved back to the panel, and the lights in the warehouse went out in one pull.
Inside, he heard the immediate response—voices from the floor, the scrape of chairs, the handlers calling to each other. Then the fire caught, faster than he'd calculated, and the alarm triggered.
From the east side of the building, he heard the rear exit door open.
He circled the perimeter at a run, reached the east lot as Alanis came out with three women behind her, speaking in a rapid, low voice, directing them toward the lot's north exit. Two more women came through the door behind the first group. Rael counted. Five. Then six.
He held the door for the seventh, who came through last, looking over her shoulder at the noise from inside. He put a hand briefly on her arm and pointed north, and she went.
Alanis appeared at his shoulder. "Go," she said. "I'll follow—"
"You're coming with me."
She turned to face him. "I need to follow them out and make sure—"
"They will be fine.”
“And I’m supposed to take your word for it?”
“Yes. If you would like me to tell you the truth about why I spent that crazy amount of money on you.”
Alanis nibbled on her lips, clearly looking torn. Finally, she murmurs, “Let’s go.”
After driving north for twenty minutes, Rael checked the mirrors at every interval and didn't pick up a tail. When he was satisfied that no one was following them, he turned onto another path and slowed down a bit.
Alanis had said nothing since they freed those women. She sat angled slightly toward the window. Her hands were in her lap, the red marks from the cable tie still visible at her wrists. The jacket collar was down now, and her hair whipped around in the wind.
Rael’s wolf had been running at a low, constant hum since the moment he'd cut her ties in the parking structure, and the proximity was not helping.
She smelled like the warehouse—industrial cleaning fluid and recycled air—and underneath it, faint but unmistakable, she smelled like herself—like peaches.
Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, Rael thought about how a year’s worth of work that had inched them closer to a network had just gone to ground again, all because of a woman. Actually, no. Because of his mate. Just like what happened to Silas when he bought Elle, his mate at an auction.
He had told himself, at the time, that Silas had lost the mission for a woman. So, his case was understandable. Right?
Beside him, Alanis finally spoke. "Where are you taking me?”
He gave her a quick glance. “Somewhere safe.”
"And then."
"And then we talk about what comes next."
“Which is you letting me go.”
He stayed quiet. Then Alanis shifted in the seat to face him more fully.
"Rael. I have somewhere to be. People who are expecting to hear from me.
A mission that I have not completed." She shook her head.
"Look, I'm not asking you to apologize for tonight—I understand why you did what you did.
But I need you to understand that pulling me out of one situation doesn't mean I need you to manage what comes after. "
He kept his eyes on the road for a moment. Then: "You’re my mate, Alanis, and I’m not letting you go like I did the last time."
"What?”
Shit. He did not mean to say it like that—in a moving car, in the middle of a night that had gone in at least three different directions.
A shocked laugh filled the car. “Run that back.”
Inhaling deeply, Rael shoved one of his hands into his hair. It was now or never. "My wolf recognized you the first time we met. I am an Alpha, and yes, I know this sounds crazy. Me talking about wolves and mates, but I promise you I can explain. “
“You don’t have to,” Alanis whispered and sank into her seat.
Rael’s brows furrowed together to form a frown as he glanced at her. “You’re a shifter? But I—”
“I am shiftless. So, what you’re telling me is you knew I was your mate when we slept together?”
Noting the way she casually said she was shiftless, Rael nodded. "I had my suspicions, and I confirmed it tonight."
"At the auction."
"Yes."
Alanis sighed loudly, pushing her hair behind her ear.
Rael desperately wanted her to say something, especially now that he knew she was a wolf like him, too, but he restrained himself.
With the limited interactions he’s had with her, he knew that pushing her had never worked, and it was not going to start working now.
He could feel the weight of what he'd just said settling into the space between them with the gravity of something that was going to take time to resolve.
He was not ready to say it. He was not sure the timing was right or that she was ready to hear it, wasn't sure he'd done enough to deserve the right to say it at all, given how he handled that night.
But he needed to tell her something to make her stay.
To prevent her from walking into a city where the network was still operating, with no backup and a cover that had just been burned, and he had run out of reasons to wait for the right time that felt more solid than his wolf's flat, non-negotiable insistence.
He was an asshole in that hotel room. He'd told himself it was the mission, but on the way back to his apartment, he knew he fucked up, and he sure as hell wasn't making the same call twice.
"I'm not keeping you against your will," he said. "That's not—I'm not doing that." He sighed and glanced at her. "But I'm asking you to come with me. To give this time, which I know I have no right to ask for, and I know why." He looked back at the road. "I'm asking anyway."
"You have terrible timing."
"Yes."
"And your bedside manner is genuinely awful."
"I know."
"And you ruined my plan." She exhaled through her nose. "Just so we're clear about what we're working with here."
"Clear," he said.
It wasn’t a yes, but she also did not say no, and his wolf became relatively calm.