Chapter 8 Lucien
EIGHT
Lucien
One minute, I was lying in a shitty bed, eating my third giant steak of the afternoon and rehearsing what to say to my mate.
The meat would help my wolf regenerate faster, but unfortunately, it wouldn’t help me convince her that even though I was an asshole, I didn’t want her to leave me for Alaska yet, even though I should send her away for her own safety.
The next, an alarm was going off, and I was hobble-running toward the back gate.
As the conversation unfolded, horror filled me. Petró clearly found out I was gone from their torture chamber. But how the fuck did that translate into him being here? Did they track us without us knowing?
I glanced over at Samuel, and his expression told me he was wondering the same thing.
“Were we followed?” I asked in a whisper, and he shook his head.
“No fucking chance. I used every trick in the book to make sure that wasn’t possible.”
I nodded, falling silent as I considered the possibilities. Before I could suss out how the Hungarians had found us so quickly, though, we were running through the back gate, climbing into unmarked SUVs to make our escape.
It galled me to run, but this wasn’t the time to make a stand. I was still weakened from the torture, and we had both a pregnant female and an omega female with us.
Not to mention my omega-sealed mate.
Olivia was magnetic, and I found myself climbing into the farthest-back seat to be next to her, ignoring her visible shock as I yanked the door shut behind me. Samuel and Elodie were in the seat ahead of us, while Reed drove, Fiona taking shotgun.
The rest of the pack was in the first SUV, leading the way down the craggy path off the mountain. I felt each bump through my sore, half-healed body, but it paled in comparison to the wave of mixed emotions coming off my mate on the bench seat next to me.
I turned to look at her, and she snapped her gaze away as if I’d burned her.
“I won’t bite you.” I murmured the words meant only for her, even though in a car full of wolves with exceptional hearing, they probably still heard. They seemed distracted in their own discussions, though, and I took the moment to just breathe her in.
She slowly turned to face me, arching one regal eyebrow before answering. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
Fuck.
Sweet and innocent she may have been, but my mate had fire in her, and I’d be damned if I didn’t like it.
Too much. My blood heated in my veins, and whether she knew it or not, she was basically waving a red cape in front of a bull. Or a juicy piece of meat in front of a starving wolf, because in that moment, my instincts to chase her down flared to life.
All my earlier protestations about how our wolves were confused meant nothing, not sitting this close to her heat and delicious scent, not when she was challenging me. There were no more righteous thoughts that she deserved better than a scarred, ugly fucker like me.
I slid closer on the bench seat, closing the gap between us as we continued the bumpy path down the mountain.
“We should talk.”
“Now? You’ve got to be kidding.” The exasperated look she sent me should have been a warning, but I didn’t heed it.
I shrugged, ignoring the pull in my stomach wound as I did so. “We’re not driving. What else are we going to do until we get to the airport?”
She pursed her lips like the sexiest librarian in the history of books, and I hated the fact that I could feel her not wanting to give me another chance.
It was everywhere: her expression, her scent, the tense set of her shoulders.
That only made me more determined. But I couldn’t get the sounds of her muffled sobs as she’d run away from me out of my mind.
She might not want to talk to me, but I hadn’t meant to hurt her. Not really. Everything was messed up since I got captured, since the torture. And she didn’t deserve to deal with my shit.
“Hang on!” was all the warning we got from Reed as he hooked the SUV around a tight turn, sending us all sliding—I practically flew over the back seat, slamming into the car door with a grunt a split second before Olivia smashed into my other side.
My brain must have glitched as her curves pressed into my side, her hand flying out and landing on my chest as she tried to catch herself. That was the only logical reason for the fact that I let the next words fly out of my mouth.
“If you wanna climb in my lap, baby, all you’ve got to do is ask.”
Olivia blinked up at me in surprise for a moment before shoving herself away in disgust. “Is this all just a sick joke to you?”
“No, of course not, I—” It was at that exact moment that I became acutely aware that we had a captive audience, both Samuel and Elodie, staring at me with angry looks on their faces. They hadn’t forgotten to buckle up.
Olivia wasn’t having my apology. She’d already scooted herself back to her seat, clicking her seat belt into place with cold finality as she sent me a scathing stare.
Yep, I had fucked it up again.
She wasn’t some girl I was going to screw in a club bathroom and never think about again. She was my fated mate, and I didn’t know how to handle a relationship that was serious.
Life-and-death, grow-old-and-gray-together, meet-the-family serious.
Not that I had any family left for her to meet, but I imagined she did somewhere, and I didn’t need a crystal ball to know they wouldn’t approve of me.
I ground my back teeth as I clicked my seat belt into place, giving her the space she so clearly wanted. As I stared out the window, I replayed the whole scene over in my head, kicking myself.
Why did I always default to asshole when I could have just helped her sit back up and kept my mouth shut? Samuel would never have pulled that shit.
Self-sabotage was the clear answer. I didn’t deserve her, couldn’t make her happy, and I knew that. So, I was going to keep shoving my foot in my mouth to prevent myself from ever having a real chance.
That was depressing as fuck.
But the more I thought about it, the more I saw a pattern. I didn’t go for nice girls very often. One, because, believe it or not, I wasn’t a monster who thrived on breaking hearts. It was just easier, cleaner when the woman knew up front I wasn’t planning to stick around.
Two, because any time one got too close, I’d push her away before anything serious could develop. If I ran my mouth, they’d eventually get sick of my shit and leave. Every time, over and over.
The sex kept the darkness at bay, and pushing them away kept me free, hovering about my issues closely enough to feel the threat of madness but not sink into the depths of my trauma.
But that wasn’t going to work this time, not with a fated-mate bond dragging us together at every turn. We didn’t have to fall into bed—or a relationship—but I could at least treat her with respect.
I owed Olivia an apology. As soon as we got a minute alone, I would give her one. Even if I had to corner her on the airplane to do it.
With that settled, my mind began to wander, the greenery passing by outside my window blurring with our speed.
When our tires finally hit pavement a while later, realization hit me.
“Hey, Samuel?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s the likelihood they planted a tracker in those cuffs?”
He went still for a moment, then turned halfway in his seat so he could see me.
“Given that they showed up on our doorstep with reinforcements less than forty-eight hours after we got there? Pretty damn good.”
“So, you don’t think it’s under my skin anywhere?”
“Brielle and I weren’t looking for anything like that when we were treating you, so it’s possible a tracker could have been overlooked. She was pretty exhausted just from helping fight the effects of the wolfsbane.”
I was both surprised and pleased when Olivia spoke up, clearly wanting to help the pack, despite her well-deserved fury with me. But that raised a new concern. If there was potentially a tracker under my skin, wherever we went, they’d just follow.
“How can you check for that?” I asked her, willing her to see the apology in my eyes.
“Well, there are several ways. Scanners, physical exam—while they’re small, some can be felt under the skin. With most of your…” She cleared her throat, shooting me an apologetic look before continuing. “With most of your scars healing cleanly, we should be able to feel the tracker under the skin.”
After what I’d just said to her, she was still trying not to hurt my feelings by pointing out that the biggest, ugliest scar was never going to heal.
Damn, I was a fucking lowlife.
“When we get on the plane, we’ll have them check you out. If there’s still a tracker on you, we can destroy it in the air,” Samuel offered.
On me was the nicer way of saying embedded under my skin, where they’d have to cut it out of me.
Joy.
“Don’t worry, buddy, we won’t let them track us to the centaurs.”
I nodded tightly, keeping my eyes on the road as we raced toward the airport. Somehow, instead of smooth black pavement, all I saw was Dominik’s laughing face as he loomed toward me, wielding a knife.
Time moved strangely when you were running for your lives. We were less than an hour out from the enclave when Galyna got a call from one of the maidens that Petró’s people had arrived, and they were going to give them the runaround and keep them busy as long as possible.
After that, it was calm. Until we were about ten minutes from the airport, and Reed startled me from my haunted staring at the road slipping by beneath us.
“Shit! We’ve got company. Somebody call Gael, in case he hasn’t seen them.”
Before we could dial, though, Reed’s phone was ringing. Fiona picked it up and put it on speaker, so we could all hear.
“You’ve got somebody on your tail.”
“Yeah, I noticed. They’re not exactly being subtle. I changed lanes, and they practically fishtailed to stick to my bumper.”
Gael growled, the sound low and menacing enough to raise my own wolf’s hackles. “Do you feel comfortable trying to lose them, or are we going to deal with them at the airstrip?”
“I somehow don’t think they’ve got any doubts about where we’re heading. I’m more concerned about them ambushing us with more people at the airstrip.”
Gael was silent for a beat, and then Kane’s voice came over the phone. “I’ll contact my security guy at the airport. Hang on.”
The line went dead as he put us on hold, and tense silence permeated the vehicle as we waited, the single minute he was gone seeming to last ten.
“The airstrip is clear right now, but security will clear the private entry gate before we get there.”
“Got it,” Reed said, grimacing as the car behind us tried to zip past, get between us and the rest of the pack in the first SUV. They left the line open, but tense silence descended over both vehicles as we continued evasive maneuvers.
“These idiots are going to cause a crash,” I muttered under my breath, to which Samuel nodded his agreement.
“I think at this point, it’s highly likely your theory about a tracker is correct. We had a hell of a head start, but they’re on our bumper. There are other airports in the area that would have been more obvious choices for us to leave the jet.”
“Fuck me. Should we try to dig it out now, or…?”
“Absolutely not,” Olivia snapped, surprising me yet again with her vehemence. “Digging something out of your body in the back of an erratically moving car is irresponsible. We could do more damage and set your recovery back significantly.”
Her words were punctuated by the whole SUV shuddering and then jolting as Reed slammed the brakes and maneuvered around the sedan, the driver of which was doing their best to separate us from our pack.
“Point taken. But we’re going to need it out as soon as the plane is airborne.”
She nodded tightly, not pleased, but also with no trace of fear for what I could only assume would be a grisly task. “I will find it and get it out.”
“Thank you.” I held her gaze until she looked away, and I noticed her white-knuckled grip on the handle overhead. Taking a risk, I unbuckled my seat belt and slid into the empty middle seat, leaning in close so only she could hear me. “It’s going to be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She froze like a fawn as my breath washed over her ear.
When she turned to face me, it was slow, as if she was uncertain about what she was going to see when she looked back.
The raw vulnerability in her eyes cracked something inside me, and all my protestations about how our wolves were just confused about being mates felt incredibly stupid.
I could see the question. The Can I trust you? that she was too proud to voice.
Goddess help me, I wanted her to be able to trust me. I wanted to be that man for her.
Could I be?
It was a dangerous question.
Kane’s voice over the phone speaker silenced my internal war for the time being.
“Those are the gates! Every male, be ready to bail out. I want the females to stay in the vehicles until the area is cleared, and then it’s straight to the jet.
Our females are the targets and should all be presumed in danger. Is that clear?”
Echoed responses of “Yes, Alpha,” filled both cars.
Fiona hung up the phone after that, pensively tucking it into her own pocket.
“When I slide out, I want you to get into the driver’s seat. If things don’t go our way—” Reed started, and Fiona shook her head, cutting him off.
“If you’re about to ask me to leave you, you can knock that shit off.”
He snorted, shooting her a smirk before refocusing on the quickly disappearing road between us and the gates to the airstrip.
“Yes, ma’am. But remember before you refuse me, it’s not just you we’re protecting.”
Fiona nodded tightly, and I saw the moment her eyes landed on Olivia, and her stance softened. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”
“That’s my Stormy Girl.” Reed looked her way just long enough to run his fingertips over her cheekbone, and I felt dirty for intruding on the tender moment.
But it was over as quickly as it began, because the tall, razor-wire-topped gates were beginning to roll back, and we had an enemy hot on our heels.