Page 6 of Vicious Wolf Mate

I take a deep breath. Unfortunately, Jax is right. That’s rare for him, but if it was going to be any day, it’d be today.

I take a step towards Mckenna. This time she doesn’t pull away.Good, my inner wolf whispers.Good. Don’t drive her away. She’s–

My own inner voice cuts it off impatiently.Yeah, yeah. She’s important, I get it.

“Okay, what do we do?”

4

MCKENNA

We take another left in the narrow gulley. Hot, dusty, and laden with rocks, the terrain is keeping us good and slow. I want this. I want this to be slow. I want this to be slow and calm. I am leading. Jax and Mace are five paces at most behind. The ochre rich sand and dust has turned our shoes and trouser legs the color of rust.

We make another turn, left this time. The ‘wolf collar’ building is peaking over the rim of the gully, sharp, shiny, and sterile. This place has always made me think of a futuristic prison.

“Nasty,” says Jax. “That some kind of jail or is that what I think it is?”

I am not a fan of Jax. I am also not against him. He is strong, dumb, and a little paranoid, which means he can be dangerous and helpful.

“It is what you think it is, and so much worse,” I tell him. “And that's exactly why we are using this gulley to stay in defilade until we get close enough that I can get us into the camera blind spots. I know all the blind spots.”

“What’s the nickname again?” Mace asks.

“What name?” I respond.

“The nickname Insignys uses for where you’re taking us up ahead, where Insignys tracks the hell out of any of us?” Mace clarifies.

Mace is the cute one, cute as a button. Actually, he's gorgeous, and I get transfixed by his eyelashes and his smile every time he says something or blinks.

“That is the ‘wolf collar.’ Every wolf shifter in the States gets tracked there,” I tell Mace and Jax. “And I really am going to get us inside.”

We switch from a low jog to a quick crawl. We are next to the building now but in a big blind spot for the cameras.

We reach an eight-foot by ten-foot steel, shipping container with two manhole covers between the container and the building wall. I use a small pry-bar to lift one of the cast-iron covers.

Both shifters watch me and share glances with each other. I am not sure if they think I am clever or crazy or both.

Then I motion for Mace and Jax to follow as I crawl inside. I can feel them hesitate, and then they follow.

“Why are you helping us? Seriously. You’ve now gone from getting us here to breaking and entering?” Jax asks, even after I motion multiple times for the two shifters to stay quiet.

“What better way to rebel against my father than helping the ones he hates most?” I whisper back.

What I don’t tell Jax and Mace is that I find Mace as handsome as the morning. A gorgeous specimen of a shifter. I really feel so drawn to him, and it's not my fault. Not my fault that he is tall, tan, and muscular with brown hair and a perfectly stubble-darkened jaw. I love his chest and the tattoos across his broad torso.

“This is a large conduit for forced air, hot or cold,” I tell Jax and Mace. “Insignys leases heat pumps or AC pumps depending on the season. Several ventilation tubes maze their way throughout the building with the best duct-work money can buy. Easy as pie to crawl through undetected. And that is what we will do. ”

I then tour Mace and Jax through seventy percent of the duct-work in the “wolf collar,” showing every camera and blind spot I know about.

I spoil them.

“Okay,” says Mace. “I get it. I think there’s a quicker way here.”

“What do you mean quicker?” I ask.

We are hunched in a wide intersection of duct-work that has a metal grate with big enough grating we can see into the room below, which is clearly an office.

“I know we can do what we came here to do a little faster if I pull up this grate and Jax and I travel at a faster pace. I mean you’ve done a great job showing us the camera positions. Jax and I are gonna do it faster now.”

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