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The two lab assistants, Charles and the older nurse, Maydene, had been working for nearly a year for Engalls and Brandenmore. But they had been smart where selling the information was concerned. They slipped it out, but then refused to supply the code to unlock it until they’d received full payment.
Something they would never see now.
“Does Alaiya know?” Mercury asked.
“She knows,” Elizabeth breathed out heavily. “But she isn’t accepting it yet. She swears Mercury is her mate and that I’m the one altering the tests. She will be best avoided for a while.”
“I don’t have time to avoid her.” Ria slid from the small cot and glanced at Mercury. “I’ve already told Leo. I’m not returning to the main offices when the two of you leave. I’ve taken a position here, with Sanctuary. They need someone they can trust in Security Control, someone who can understand the systems they have and how to monitor any further attempts to break them. Leo’s going to turn one of the newer satellites over to Sanctuary control, and Dane will never rest if one of his babies isn’t being watched over.” She grinned at that. Dane loved technology. Especially Vanderale technology.
“I already assumed that.” Elizabeth smiled gently. “Leo and I will be staying awhile anyway. I want to continue to watch over Ely. She’s coming along nicely, but once the drugs are out of her system, she’s going to have a hard patch to overcome.” She glanced at Mercury. “You’re her friend, you know. She’s desolate over what she nearly did.”
“She’s still a friend.” He nodded sharply. “I’ll be assigned permanently to Sanctuary now. I’ll be heading the security detail we’re reworking for the labs and for Ely. She’ll be taken care of from now on.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “They may have destroyed her. Bringing her back from this won’t be easy.”
“We’ll bring her back.” Mercury was arrogant, certain of himself. Ria grinned in pride.
“So, mate, ready to go home?” she asked him. Their cabin was prepared, one within Sanctuary’s secured walls, but also within the heavily forested mountain that surrounded the estate.
Mercury’s gaze fired, artic blue eyes that burned. She loved those eyes.
She loved him.
With a smile, he escorted her from the labs and to the main floor, urging her to walk faster as he whispered in her ear exactly how he intended to please her.
“All night,” he growled as she fought to restrain her laughter. “Couch. Chair. Floor.”
“We have a bed,” she reminded him.
“I was getting to that.” He nipped her ear in retaliation as they entered the foyer.
And Alaiya stepped in from another room.
She wasn’t in uniform. She wore cotton leggings, flat boots and a T-shirt. She was ready to fight.
“Keep going,” Mercury growled when Ria came to a stop.
Running had never been the answer. Ria had run her all her life—from who she was, from what she was. She wasn’t running any longer.
She read the challenge in the other woman’s face, in her eyes. Alaiya hadn’t accepted that she had lost Mercury. That he wasn’t her mate, and that he never would be.
“You don’t want to do this here, Alaiya,” Ria warned her.
“Better here than anywhere else,” Alaiya sneered, glancing back at Mercury as he growled his warning at her. “Is your false mate going to protect you? Does he fight your battles for you? Does he know you’re nothing but Dane Vanderale’s whore?”
Ria backed into Mercury as he moved to intercept Alaiya, anger tensing his body. Ria turned her head, glaring at him.
“It’s my fight.”
“The hell it is,” he snarled. “I warned her.”
“You warned her, but only I can convince her.”
Animal to animal. She turned back to Alaiya, hissed, and they charged.
Ria was a Breed. She had trained with the strongest, the most merciless Breed ever created or trained, and she was fighting for everything that had ever belonged to her.
Mercury leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest and fought against the overpowering urge to step in and shake the hell out of Alaiya.
