Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Stella drifted in and out of consciousness on the concrete, losing track of how long she’d been there.
When she came back to full awareness, she heard shouting somewhere in the building.
The drug was working its way through her bloodstream, and the bear was close enough she could feel her.
She heard banging. Boots scuffling past. A gunshot.
Something fluttered in her chest. It was a knowing that came up in her body before her mind found words for it.
Blaze.
He was in the building. She knew it the way she knew the shape of her own hand.
He was coming for her. The fog burned off like a fever breaking.
Her senses came back. The smell of the concrete sharpened.
The sound of shouting clarified. The cold of the floor against her cheek went from numb to sharp.
She turned over and pushed herself up on her hands and knees. Her bear came up to meet her, and the shift overtook her fast. Her spine lengthened. The bones of her shoulders rotated forward. Her arms thickened and her hands flattened against the concrete, her fingers thickening into paws.
Fur came up in a wave from her shoulders down her back and along her flanks. Her hind legs lengthened and her clothes tore at the seams, falling away. Her massive body filled the room, pressing her against the locked door.
She raised herself up onto her hind legs and threw her weight against the door. The frame buckled on the first hit, concrete dust coming down from the ceiling. She backed up and hit it again. The door tore off its hinges and crashed into the corridor.
The fluorescent lights were too bright in the hallway. She could smell guards running ahead of her and behind her. She could smell the women in the holding room down the corridor, frightened and drugged. She could smell Blaze moving toward her.
She turned her head and saw his wolf rounding the corner at the end of the corridor. Gray fur. Blue eyes. Blood on his muzzle that wasn’t his.
Mate.
He came to her at a run. He didn’t slow down until he reached her, and then he pressed his shoulder against her ribs and stood there with his side against hers. The mate bond passed between them, solid and warm and alive.
The bear and the wolf moved down the corridor side by side.
He flanked left, and she held center. A guard came around the bend ahead of them with a pistol up.
The color drained out of his face when he saw what was coming.
He got one shot off into the ceiling before Stella hit him. He went down and didn’t get up.
A door cracked open to her right, and another guard tried to slip out.
The wolf was on him before he cleared the threshold.
The guard went down without a sound. A third tried to surrender at the next corner.
His hands went up and his weapon fell to the floor.
The wolf circled him and pushed him against the wall, teeth closing around his forearm.
Footsteps came up the corridor behind them.
Stella turned her head, and the wolf turned with her.
Hunter and Siren.
Hunter kneeled and zip-tied the surrendered guard’s hands. Siren stepped forward with her sidearm pointed down. She met Stella’s eyes.
“The women?”
Stella turned her head toward the bend ahead.
“Take me.”
Stella started off to the holding cells, Blaze beside her. Siren followed, weapon ready. Hunter stayed behind to handle the zip-tied guard. Around the bend, the holding room door was locked from the outside with a heavy slide bolt.
Stella rose up onto her hind legs, came down on the door, and the door came off its hinges into the room.
The women inside scrambled back against the far wall.
Their eyes had the dull look of people who had been drugged.
One of them screamed when she saw the bear.
Siren stepped past her into the room with her hands open and her weapon holstered.
“You’re safe. We’re Steel Protection. The police are right behind us. Stay where you are. We’re going to take care of you.”
Stella turned in the doorway and faced out toward the corridor.
The wolf stopped beside her. Behind her, Siren’s voice was low and steady.
She was moving around the room, checking each woman, asking quiet questions.
Stella heard her ask one of them when they’d last had water.
She heard her tell another that medics were coming.
The screaming stopped. Someone started to cry, quietly.
Hunter came up the corridor behind them and stopped at the door. “Building’s almost clear. Dom’s at the south door with Andre. Medics are staged outside.”
“Copy,” Siren called back from inside the room.
Hunter turned and went back the way he’d come.
Stella held the doorway. The wolf held it with her.
The corridor in front of her was empty. The doors along it were open or broken.
Moments later, Stella heard voices coming down the corridor.
Dom led a group of medics and Portland PD toward the holding room.
Stella and Blaze stepped back from the door so they could get past. The medics went in two at a time, stretchers folded under their arms. Siren met them in the doorway and started briefing them.
The first medic crouched in front of the women and asked their names.
Asked if they could walk. When they brought the first woman past Stella in the doorway, the young woman’s eyes lifted.
She looked at the bear for one long beat.
Her hand reached out, and Stella lowered her head.
The young woman’s fingers brushed Stella’s muzzle before the medics helped her down the corridor.
When the holding room was empty, Siren came out last. She stopped in the doorway in front of Stella.
“You did good.” Siren reached out and put her hand flat on Stella’s shoulder. Then she dropped it and walked past them down the corridor, following the medics out.
Stella turned her head and looked at Blaze and they shifted back together.
In moments, both of them were human again, naked and bruised, his arms around her.
The medics had left blankets in the holding cell.
They pulled them around their shoulders and made their way through the building to the parking lot.
Red and blue lights rotated across the cinderblock walls of the building from the Portland PD vehicles. There were five ambulances. A van for victim services. And dozens of paramedics moving across the asphalt.
Siren sat on the bumper of an ambulance beside one of the survivors. The next one was being checked by a paramedic inside. The others were in blankets, being walked to another ambulance. Pierce was in the back of a squad car, looking like a man who had just lost everything.
Officer Andre Holt stood with two Portland PD officers. He saw Stella and nodded. She nodded back. They’d finally found them.