Chapter 10 #2
“Halfway there,” I reported ten minutes later, my arm screaming from the exertion. “I’m under the chain link fence.”
“Excellent.” She lifted her head and yawned at me. “That’ll do nicely. No need to keep going.”
Heart beating loud, I studied our next obstacle. “What about the privacy fence?”
The hole was a tight fit, but she wiggled through and shook herself off on the other side.
Then it was my turn, but I made the thing, so of course I had no problem popping out either.
“We use it as a barrier to disrupt their line of sight while we locate the area where your friends are being held. Then we’ll reassess and determine the best course of action.” Her tail swished me in the face. “I’m proud of you, Ana. You’re doing great.”
“I dug a hole, not the Panama Canal.”
“Accomplishments are proportionate to your body size.” She lifted her nose in the air, took a long sniff to her left and her right, then set off without a hitch in her stride.
“We don’t have far to go. I chose this entry point because it’s easier to breach their defenses, but it’s also nearest to the barns where they’re keeping the salon employees. ”
We ran along the fence for ten or fifteen minutes before Fayne signaled we had reached our destination and marked an X where she wanted me to start digging.
There was nothing I could do but what she asked, so I began another round of tunneling.
The burn in my arm caused me to lose strength on that side, but the ground here was softer, so the process went faster.
This time, when I stuck my head out of the hole, I was greeted by the darkness of a vast, enclosed space.
Once my eyes adjusted, I could make out four distinct lumps lying on a pallet made of sleeping bags.
Filling my lungs with air, I breathed in the familiar scents of Pampered Pooches—a mixture of shampoo, detergent, and animal—and slumped with relief.
Tempted as I was to check on them first, I backed out and returned to Fayne, who grinned a doggy grin.
“Found them.” I grinned back, the expression silly on this face. “They’re inside, but they’re not moving.”
“The pride most likely drugged them. Paras aren’t in the habit of revealing themselves to humans, if the humans are intended to live afterward, so unconsciousness is a blessing. It guarantees they don’t know enough to cause problems for the pride later.”
Regret I hadn’t examined them closer sent me into a panic. “What if they’re not drugged?”
“A dead hostage holds no value.” She gentled her tone.
“They’re not going to harm them unless Sartori gives them a direct order, and even then it’s dicey for them to execute humans in their own territory.
” She bent forward, stretching out her back.
“Besides, Sartori will have his hands full with the coup.”
Unable to think about that without diving into a whirlpool of twisting emotion, I locked down those worries and reminded myself the pack’s problems weren’t mine to solve.
They never had been. Now, they never would be.
That ought to come as a relief, but it was a bittersweet revelation because I had never been given a place within the pack.
Not a real one. I had been honorary more than anything.
Hard to grieve the loss of something I never had, but somehow I was managing it.
One thing was for certain. I was done being a Sartori.
I just had to work up the courage to snap the bond that had been present ever since I could recall.
Do that, and I was free. The thing I had always wanted to be.
But, I had to admit, the Walshes had given me a different perspective on how free looked inside of a functional clan.
“Another indicator they drugged your friends?” Fayne stepped into the hole.
“There are only two guards on them, and they’re posted at the barn doors.
Part of that could be typical shifter bias against humans, but I’m guessing Sartori has held this region in a chokehold for so long that they believe we’ll be too afraid of retaliation to move against them. ”
“I trust your instincts.” I trailed behind her, emerging again in darkness. “They’re over there.”
To my surprise, Fayne trotted off in the opposite direction and ducked behind a stack of hay bales.
“What are you doing?” I padded forward a few steps. “Should I stay put or…?”
Seconds later, white light bathed the back half of the barn, but the hay did a decent job of masking it from the front where the sentinels might notice.
With straw in her hair, Fayne hustled over in her human form to where the employees slept.
She gave them a quick vitals check, then nodded to me they were fine.
“This was not outlined in the plan. The plan you explained to Rían, and me. The plan that did not involve you shifting while in enemy territory.” I was dancing on my paws with anxiety. “If you get hurt, Rían will never forgive me.”
“This was definitely part of the plan,” she answered, still in my head despite her shift. “A critical part. How did it ever slip my mind?”
Her mind was as sharp as a tack, which meant she had concealed this knowing Rían would never allow it.
I wasn’t sure if the rest of the clan was as blasé in their dealings with the magnus.
Given the respectful bowing I had witnessed my first day among them, I thought not.
Then again, Burdock wasn’t afraid to throw Rían under the bus either. The more I learned, the less I knew.
Wary of her proximity to the victims, I moved in closer. “What exactly did you forget to mention?”
“You’ll see.” She cupped Tara’s cheeks, the same as she had done to me earlier, and in seconds the woman had vanished, leaving behind a small brown mouse. “Much better, don’t you think?”
Saliva flooded my mouth, so, no. Not much better. In fact, it was much worse. “Um.”
“They’ll be easier to carry out this way.” She moved on to the next. “Honestly, you didn’t think we could sneak them out the back door on two legs, did you? Four of them? All at once? Without getting caught?”
A hard flinch at her harsh words left the hair raised down my spine, but I didn’t back down for once.
“You’re calling my intelligence into question when the problem is, I trusted you.
I heard your plan, agreed to participate, and I have carried more than my fair share of the burden to get this far.
” I could blame the scrappy dog in me, since dachshunds moved through their lives acting like they were Great Danes, but I had reached a breaking point.
The brunt of my anger wasn’t at her but at Carmichael, but she was here, and she was steamrolling me.
“Don’t gaslight me into blaming myself for not thinking ahead when you engineered the situation to unfold like this. ”
“You’re right.” A stricken expression crossed her features, and she tipped her head back to stare at the ceiling.
“You’re not an operative. You’re family.
I shouldn’t have treated you like a rookie sentinel in need of correction.
I do keep things to myself. It’s a bad habit, but it’s kept me alive this long.
You don’t do the job I did, that Liam does, with clean hands.
Still, I should have taken into consideration my behavior could damage your faith in me.
I’ve been antsy about the potential leak, and I’ve been trying to zig when I say I’ll zag to compensate, but that’s no excuse. I apologize, Ana. Truly.”
“We’ll work on it.” I offered the concession since she had made so many for me. “Right now, we have to focus on getting these people out of here.”
After a deep breath, she moved on to the next person and the next until a neat row of unconscious mice were lined up on the edge of a sleeping bag.
She lifted two, which two I wasn’t sure, and held them out.
A heartbeat passed before I connected the dots in my head.
Still tender from earlier, I didn’t ask her what she wanted from me.
I just opened my jaws and let her set them gently on my tongue.
Mice in my mouth made human me want to vomit but also dachshund me want to gulp them down whole.
This tug of war between brain and instinct was giving me a complex.
As often as I had imagined embracing my inner wolf, I never pictured me fighting with her not to swallow a mouthful of former coworkers who smelled tastier now that they were furry and bite-sized.
Dragons were even larger predators, armed with ancient instincts.
How much harder would it be to rein in those impulses?
“You’re going to be fine.” Fayne shifted again and collected her pair with expert ease that confirmed she had spent significant time in that form, probably long before I met her. “Just don’t swallow.”
Easier said than done.
On the way out, Fayne nudged me to go first, sweeping the area before joining me.
Halfway through the hole, I jolted as light spilled across my back.
“Where did they go?” a commanding voice demanded. “I thought you dosed them.”
Perry Nelson. The Springvale alpha. I recognized his voice from the video.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
“No way the humans left here on their own two feet,” another man growled. “They were taken.”
Fayne headbutted me in the rear, jarring me out of my shock, and I scrabbled faster.
“Did you hear that?” Perry grew quiet. “There’s something in here.”
No sooner had I burst into the space between fences than Fayne rushed out behind me.
“A hole,” the second man confirmed. “Some kind of animal must be trying to get at the cow feed again.” He stuck his arm through until I saw his hand. “The prisoners didn’t escape through there. Too tight.”
“Raise the alarm,” Perry ordered. “We have to locate them before Sartori finds out.”
“On it,” the second man snapped out, his footsteps fading as he left.
High-pitched whining filled my ears, a siren designed for shifter hearing frequencies.
“Run.” Fayne danced in place, eager to go. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Thanks to the fresh scent trail, even I couldn’t get lost on such a short route.
Fear coating the back of my throat, I put my body through its paces, stretching my legs until my stomach brushed the ground with every stride. Fayne kicked up leaves behind me, but I hoped the shifters would write off the noise as small animals and not the infiltrators they were looking for.
“Go, go, go.” Fayne bumped into my hip. “Get under the fence.”
This hole was a tighter fit, but I squeezed out and scanned for signs of where Rían had gone.
A long shadow fell over me, and I hunkered down, making myself smaller.
“Well, well, what do we have here?”