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Of course, Blondie was the one who’d fired the scathing retort back at him, one eyebrow raised. For an instant, Remmus was drooling over her bee-stung lips, wondering what they tasted like.
Ava would have known the answer to her question before she asked, they all did.
The Heat.
The other answer, the trickier one, was why it’d taken five months for his dual sovereigns to feel secure enough to allow him off campus. And that answer wasn’t on the table for discussion.
“Rolling around under the sheets with your honey?”
Ava made it sound as though it’d been nothing but fun and games. In truth, the Heat had revealed that he was incapable of holding and maintaining a significant romantic relationship, and any opportunity to have a mate or children had been dashed. But there was no way he’d tell Ava that.
“Jealous, Blondie?”
To his surprise, her eyes shifted to a lighter shade of oceanic blue as she growled in complete disregard of him and his jabs. Having spent centuries around Aidan on clan lands, he recognized it as her wolf coming to the surface. She must have been more affected by him than she let on.
Well, hello, you beautiful creature.
“I thought you said you could handle one obnoxious Raeth, Ava? How will you handle traveling with him from pack to pack?”
Riaz had noticed the same thing Remmus had. The single note of empathy, clouded almost entirely by humor, made him perk to attention. Why was the alpha feeling protective of the other wolf, when Ava responded to him with open hostility?
The mystery deepened.
“As much as I’d like to explore that fascinating comment, let’s get a move-on,” Remmus interjected. “Door A2 is our entry point and it’s not far. Our nearest guard is still on the other side of the facility—if we move now, we’re in the clear.”
Shifting to get a better view of the facility that was more than a hundred yards away, Remmus stalked out into the open, banking on the darkness to conceal his lack of cover. Behind him, the puzzling she-wolf tailed him, and Riaz and Cortana took a similar route up the left side of a copse of trees. Keying into his psychic abilities, his telepathy hurtled into the building, cataloging each mind with instant clarity.
Human. Human. Human. Another human.
And then—Raeth.
Unfriendly, without a doubt. Aligned with the Citizens. Born of destruction. Angry, bitter, and exceptionally keen. Each trait crashed into Remmus’ mind upon his quick analysis of the male’s psychic signature.
Remmus’ spine stiffened. “There’s a Raeth mind in there.”
Having inadvertently brushed up against the other Raeth’s mental shielding, it’d only be a matter of time before the immortal took action. Building up his defenses, he held up a hand to signal a stop. He glanced over to where he could sense Riaz and Cortana, still moving toward the facility on the other side of the small thicket. They needed a new plan—and fast. With the Citizens Raeth inside, their opportunity to finally get answers was finally here.
The pop of a sniper rifle was his only warning. Mistakenly, he’d thought the cover of darkness would conceal their movements, and he hadn’t thought to secure physical shielding around them. He and Ava were exposed, and he wouldn’t let her get injured on his watch.
He launched himself at Ava to cover her from the side, feeling the bite of a bullet tear through his right deltoid. Intense pain ricocheted through his arm like a flame, scorching through his veins and muscles.
In the split second the bullet had caught his shoulder, his internal mental shield faltered. Searing pain stabbed into his skull, mirroring the agony of his flesh. Remmus doubled down on the psychic shielding, cursing himself for the temporary breach.
Failure.
His compromised limb seized, his fingertips biting into his palm and instantly drawing blood. Gritting his teeth, Remmus cradled the she-wolf’s body into his own as they rolled behind the shelter of the pine trees. When they crashed to a stop, Ava was trapped beneath him.
Her hand was clamped around his throat. Rage-tightened fingers constricted his air supply, stealing his ability to breathe.
His every attention was on maintaining the hasty air shield he’d erected between the four of them and the onslaught of bullets that were leveled against them from the facility.
“Ava!”
Riaz’s angry shout was background noise, but when he could finally breathe again, Remmus registered the fact that Ava had stopped choking him.
His power briefly fluctuated. Not enough to make him lose the air shield, but enough that it told him they needed to leave. Capturing the Citizens Raeth would have to wait.
Without asking, he teleported all four of them into the Great Hall of the werewolves’ den, directly onto the wooden flooring without the usual finesse. Remmus maintained the good sense to teleport Ava out from beneath him, so that he could collapse on the floor without suffocating her, or worse, insulting her.
