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“My trackers are fucking good,” Adryan said as he stared at the map. “But even still, if they could crack the numbers and pinpoint where they’re at, that means it’s not the endgame. The Assembly is smart enough to give us the runaround. They have been hidden for decades, if not far fucking longer, so they aren’t fucking dumb.”
“They’re underground.”
Adryan nodded slowly and lifted his head to look at me. “I don’t even know if they are in this state, let alone America, but my gut tells me they are.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe a rural location.” He looked over at a few of the vampires by the computers. “Check large parcels of land, commercial and residential that may have been purchased in the last hundred years. If you don’t find anything, go back further.”
The vampires started checking, the click-click-click of their fingers flying over the computer keys loud.
I stared down at the map again, thinking about how Adryan had soldiers lying in wait at that warehouse. “So what are we waiting for?” I looked at Adryan. “? Why hasn’t the hub been taken down?”
Adryan lifted a brow and smirked. “Wolf, who do you think you’re talking to here? I’ve had a team at that abandoned warehouse since the moment I got the information about the location. We don’t go half-cocked into shit like you Lycans obviously do. We plan, wait, then attack. Fuck, man.”
Before I could ask him why it hadn’t been taken down, he started speaking again.
“We don’t want to let them know we know where they’re at. The ultimate goal is to find out where the main base is. That abandoned building they’re using right now is just a one-off. We need to find out where they keep their little fucked-up petting zoo. If we took down the warehouse and the humans inside, sure, maybe we could torture the information out of them, but I have a feeling they have safeguards in place to keep that information under lock and key if one of them is captured.” He looked back at the map. “These people are loyal, Cian. They’re not going to willingly tell us—the creatures they want to exploit and hurt—simply because we peel off fingernails and cut out tongues.”
He looked back at me, and his grin was slow, his fangs lengthening as he silently told me that yeah, that’s exactly what they’d do to them. And so would I.
“Even though it’s quite fun to do all of that whether I get information or not, I’m not here to play.” His expression grew serious after that. “This isn’t just about you and your mate. This is about the vampires who have found their females, the children, the fact that this organization needs to be taken down in order to ensure all of us aren’t threatened.”
I grunted in agreement.
Adryan and I didn’t agree on most things, but what I could be 100 percent on board with was that taking down these fuckers and ensuring the Otherworld was safe was a team effort. If anybody was going to take our kind down, it was going to be the good old-fashioned way where we battled each other, not become a sideshow attraction because of some humans with a fucked-up sense of righteousness and authority.
“We may have a hit,” one of the vampires said. “Two-hundred acres of residential farmland bought back in 1947. Another purchase for fifty acres of commercial-zoned land purchased a year after that.” The vampire looked over at Adryan. “And funny thing is,” he began, but I could tell by his smile he was eager to tell this part, “both properties are in the same state, and even more interesting is… both are in the same city.”
Adryan grunted in acknowledgment. “And let me guess, the land has just been sitting there? Nothing being built on it?”
The vampire grinned again and shook his head slowly.
I felt my wolf grow even more anxious at that revelation. It may be nothing, but the chances…
I looked back at the map, getting ready to really dive into how to correct the situation with these fuckers, when Adryan’s phone chirped. I was vaguely aware of him pulling it out from one of his pockets, but it was the instant change in the air, the frigidness and tightness in his body that I saw in my peripheral that had my wolf immediately rising.
Before I even looked at him, I knew something was wrong, and his expression solidified that. There was a look of disbelief, shock, and then pure unadulterated rage that covered his face as his eyes flashed red with sadism.
“What?” I ground out, not bothering to hide the distorted quality of my voice as my wolf rose up in protector mode.
Adryan’s eyes were still glowing red, a sign of intense emotion for his species. “The alarm was triggered.”
At first I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, my mind moving slower as my humanity faded. It was then I realized what he meant by the alarm. The alarm that was supposed to keep my mate safe. My Evie.
I already had my cell out, already calling Odhran, then the number to the phone I’d left Evie. No answer from either.
In my head I kept hearing Adryan’s words about the alarm being triggered, but something else nagged at the back of my mind, too low for me to grasp, because I was more animal than human.
Everything else faded into the background as I tipped my head back and roared out hard enough I heard the computer shake against the wall. The violence and danger swirling around me had the vampires taking a step back.
I roared out again, and then I was gone. Nothing else mattered except getting to my mate and slaughtering whoever had just threatened her.
22
Evelyn
Iwoke with a start, my heart pounding as I shifted on the couch, the book I’d been reading slipping from my lap and hitting the floor with a thump.
For a moment panic set in because I wasn't oriented enough to know where I was, but as consciousness seeped into me, I remembered everything in a horrifying rush of awareness. I felt the heavy absence of Cian, and it was strange to sense this gaping distance for someone so shortly after they’d come into my life.
I sat up and grabbed the book, one of the few “props” that had been in the house. The story itself had been boring enough to put me to sleep, or maybe I was just so mentally exhausted that my body took over for me and shut things down.
