A flash of movement on one of the feeds has me grabbing his wrist and stopping him from pocketing the cell phone. “Torin!”
There’s enough alarm in my tone for him to take me seriously, and he stops, turning back to the cell screen. Several unknown figures in black flash across the security feed in the parking garage.
Torin sucks in a breath. “Fuck.”
“We were wrong.” Mathis seems to grow taller. “They’re already here.”
Chapter 20
Mathis
The scent hits me before the first sound does—sharp, acrid, foreign. It’s not right. It doesn’t belong.
They’re inside the building and close. The screen shows only one small part of the puzzle. While Torin has his nose glued to the security feed, my suspicions are confirmed.
My wolf rises as I whirl on Ren and Flora.
"Get somewhere safe. Now!" I bark.
My hackles lift and a snarl peels my lips away from my teeth. I’ve already marked the entrances to this room, all three of them, and I scan them again.
Flora freezes, her hand hovering near the stove. But Ren? Of course, she doesn’t listen.
“What’s going on?” she demands.
Her head swivels like she’s trying to catch the same scent. She knew something, though, before she forced Torin to check his feeds. She sensed it the same way I did, a thickening in the air, a reek, an energy that wasn’t there seconds before.
Torin bares his teeth. “Move!”
Ren jumps off the countertop, but that’s as far as she gets.
Flora grabs her by the arm, dragging her toward the door. “Come on, you heard them!”
Ren fights her every step. “I can help! Let me go! Whatever’s happening, I want to help?—”
“Go!” Torin and I say in unison.
“Let’s let the alphas handle this one.” Flora doesn’t give her a choice. “We should warn the others. Make sure they’re safe.”
She hauls Ren out the opposite door and into the hallway, Ren practically kicking and screaming the entire time. I don’t breathe easier, though.
The moment they’re out of sight, I pivot back to Torin, who’s moving some kind of square box on the wall to reveal a control panel for his mechanics. He presses one of the buttons, and a shrill alarm blares overhead.
The light extinguishes from the overheads and wall sconces, and a single red strobe blinks from the corner, casting the room in an ominous crimson glow.
My gut plummets.
Torin doesn’t spare me a glance as he punches at his phone. “I can’t believe they got inside. How the hell did they sneak past my security?”
“I’m telling you,” I grunt, bristling at the way he ignores me, “Andras is smart. Smarter than you think?—”
“Impossible,” Torin interrupts with a snap. “My systems are top-of-the-line. All movement in or out of this building, I know about.”
“Are yousure?”
I brought my pack here under the assumption that the Steel Claw building would be safer with their technological advances, and still Andras’s pack broke in easily.
How am I going to trust Torin now?