Page 23 of Ascension of the Pack

I laughed, threw my arms around him and gave him a cuddle. ‘We’re going to be all right.’

His eyes softened. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed weakly.

‘Come on, it’s go time,’ Greg said. He turned to the dark seraph. ‘Take to the skies but be discreet.’

‘You fucking heard the man,’ Sara barked. ‘Mack, Jacob, go high; Alfred, Robin, stay low. Mack north, Jacob south, Alfred east, Robin west. Go!’

With a whoosh of wind that took my breath away, they leapt into the air. Sara hovered above us using the tall trees as cover.

Greg shouldered a large rucksack full of all things explosive and incendiary. ‘Let’s synchronise our watches,’ he said to everyone who was still on the ground. He had insisted on getting us all military G10 watches. ‘We need to make sure both explosions happen at precisely the same time otherwise the brethren will realise there are two attacks rather than one. It’s now 20:05 and thirty seconds. When the minute hand reaches the twelve, stop the second hand by pressing on the pusher.’

We did so.

‘Everyonepress the pusher again in – three, two, one, push!’ he instructed sharply. There was a collective beep as we all pushed again. ‘It is now 20:06 and fifteen seconds, anyone got a different time?’

We shook our heads.

‘Great. Let’s go, Lucy.’ He and I were going into the tunnel first to set the charges.

I took his hand and propelled him towards the tunnel entrance. ‘Close your eyes,’ I instructed. ‘I’ll take you through the illusion.’

Obediently his eyes slid closed and my heart warmed a little at his instinctive trust.

I led him forward. In my human form, the tunnel was on the small side. ‘You’ll have to bend over a bit,’ I told him. ‘The roof isn’t very high.’

He ducked his head and folded his body; he’d done this sort of thing before. ‘That’ll be fine,’ I assured him as I pulled him into the tunnel. When I was sure we were in deep enough, I told him to open his eyes.

He blinked into the darkness and we paused to let him adjust to the total darkness. ‘All right,’ he murmured after a minute. ‘Let’s keep going.’

It was nice that he was still holding my hand even though he didn’t need to. We moved forward, bent uncomfortably. The tunnel was far longer than I’dexpected; it was incredible how deeply the dwarves had dug, and so quickly too.

‘Five minutes,’ Greg muttered. ‘We’ll need to leave a little more time between explosions than I’d expected. The tunnel is lower, which makes it slower going. Damned dwarven height. I want to make sure we get far away enough before we start the carnage.’

I cringed at the word. ‘Distraction,’ I corrected.

He flashed me a grin. ‘Right. That’s what I said.’

We reached the end of the tunnel. Greg handed me a torch and I held it for him while he set charges against the wall in front of us. The dwarves had kindly helped us to identify the correct place by spraying in red spray paint:Bang-bang! Explosives go here!

‘Wise asses,’ Greg muttered.

He dealt quickly with an intimidating tangle of wires, then set the timer for twenty minutes. There would be five minutes for us to get out, then five minutes for Tarkers, Ben and me to return to the tunnel to hit the hoard as soon as the small explosion created a hole. Then we had another ten minutes to give Greg plenty of time to set up another really big explosion to coincide with our little one. Simple.

Before Greg pressed the button to start the timer, he hesitated and turned to me. ‘Lucy, Esme. Stay safe, okay? In and out. Grab the hammer and the orb, get backthrough the tunnel to the car park, get in one of the cars and peel away. The seraphs will extract us from the distraction zone when you give the all-clear. No heroics. You hear me?’

‘We hear you,’ I said firmly, though if I thought Greg was in trouble it would be a cold day in hell before I left him. We would go down together in a blaze of glory.

He read the thought on my face. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘You’re not listening.’ With a muttered curse, he kissed me in the dark, cramped tunnel, pushing me against the muddy wall. I wasn’t in the mood to be pushed around so I turned us sohewas the one smushed into the earthen walls. Then I leaned into the kiss with gusto.

The smell of cold, damp earth was all around us but it faded to nothing with our mutual heat consuming me. His lips moved against mine, his tongue sweeping in and conquering my mouth as surely as he’d conquered my heart.

‘I love you,’ he murmured against my lips. He pulled back and studied me in the darkness. His eyes burned with intensity. ‘Stay safe, Lucy. I mean it.’

‘Back at you,’ I said firmly. ‘We have a future together, one that I’m fully invested in. Go forth, distract the enemy, then come home with me.’

‘Yes my Queen,’ he promised with a tender kiss.

I prayed it wouldn’t be our last.

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