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“Oh, my poor baby girl!” She flings herself across the room, a flurry of expensive wool and disheveled, blonde hair, and tightens her arms around my neck before I can fully process the flutter of relief expanding in my gut.
I groan softly into her shoulder and cling to her as tightly as she does to me. The scent of her perfume envelops me in its vanilla warmth as comfortingly as her arms.
“Mom,”I croak, swallowing thickly when my throat closes up. I have to fight to keep a sob from escaping, but right now, I’ve never been happier to see her. Never needed her more.
“We were so scared,” she whisper-cries into my hair. “So, so scared. If your dad hadn’t found you, I don’t—”
I look up from her messy strands as she chokes on another sob, and only then do I see my father.
He’s standing in the doorway, a hand against the frame as he stares at me. His face, usually so stoic and unemotional, is drawn with grief.
THREE
AX2
General Thompson uploads directions to his home directly to AX2’s chip, then tells his driver he is excused for the night.
If the beta is confused about the dismissal, he doesn’t show it.
“Yes, sir,” he says, before turning to leave.
“You’re not too tired to drive, soldier?” the general asks quietly, his gaze locked on his wife, andher.The blonde woman has her arm looped through her daughter’s, supporting her as they cross the parking lot.
“Sir, I can operate at full capacity for thirty days before I need sleep,” AX2 answers.
Herface is tight, and AX2 feels her discomfort through the barbed wire lodged between his ribs. Every cell in his body hums out of tune with the urge to cross the distance between them and carry her back to the vehicle, sparing them both the pain.
He doesn’t. Her command tostaystill fizzes along his nerves, agitating instincts awakened when he buried his teeth in her nape. For three long years, she has been in control, and he has been made to be obedient—roles she clearly intends to preserve, despite what has happened between them. What she ordered him to do.
But for him... For him, it’s never going to be the same. Because as much as the thought sickens him, there is no changing the fact that he is her alpha now.
“Thirty days? Christ. It’s no wonder she thought you weren’t human, eh?” General Thompson mutters. He glances at him, then briefly puts his hand on the other alpha’s forearm. “Thank you.”
The touch, as much as the unexpectedly hoarse note to the older alpha’s voice, makes AX2 look from his hated mate to her father.
“Without you, we would have lost her,” he says, too softly for the two women to hear. “You keep her safe, and whatever you need from me, for the rest of my lifetime, all you have to do is ask.”
The drive to the Thompsons’home is silent, save for the hum of the engine.
The general sits in the passenger seat, the women in the back, intertwined.
She sleeps, on and off. AX2 feels her consciousness drift in and out of focus as he maneuvers the car out of D.C., down the interstate, and finally onto quiet country lanes. Only when she sleeps does his aching mate bond ease, its presence in his chest turning soft and almost… pleasant.
The general’s house is a large Virginia estate sat on fenced acres of land in the middle of the countryside. The sun has long-since set by the time they arrive, but AX2 clearly sees the armed guards patrolling the grounds.
“Everyone’s been vetted,” General Thompson explains as they pull up to the gate. “For now, until Addie’s been debriefed and we’ve assessed what kind of resources the enemy might employ to return her, you’ll stay here.” He rolls down his window and allows the guard at the gate to scan his retinas.
…Return her?
“You can continue.”
AX2 jerks, but manages to disguise the movement with a flexing of his hands around the steering wheel. Wordlessly he drives them through the gate and up the long driveway, his attention on their surroundings even as his thoughts writhe like angry serpents in his skull.
He hadn’t considered the Russians who grabbed her might come for her again. But why wouldn’t they? He hasn’t been briefed on why she was taken in the first place—and over the past five days, he hasn’t had thought for anything but that aching, new sensation in his chest. While she slept fitfully in her hospital bed, he spent every second staring at her face, the haunting memory of her body softening under his overlaying every echo of torture she ever inflicted on him.
Mating her did nothing to quell his hatred for her. But the thought of someone taking her from him?
Instincts snap and snarl at him to hunker down on top of the sleeping woman in the backseat, the unpleasant reminder that someone mighthurther sending an acid shock through his biological systems. If something happened to her, he would—
