Page 7 of Vicious Wolf Mate

This is when handsome Mace pulls up the ceiling-grate we are kneeling around so he and Jax can drop down into the room below and travel faster.

Wrong.

I try to stop him. Shifters don’t like to listen, and don't like taking orders.

As soon as Mace grabs the grate and pulls up, the lights dim to almost complete darkness, and alarm sirens start bellowing.

I climb down into the room below and motion for the two knuckleheads follow me.

“So here’s the deal,” I tell them. “You two wait here, I am going to shut that alarm off. I have less than ten minutes. If the alarm stays on one second longer, the main guard house is notified. We don’t want that.”

“I’m going with you,” Mace tells me.

“You and Jax stay put,” I tell Mace, even though I would love for Mace to be with me, and only me, in a darkened building full of risks. “I can reset the current station pretty fast.”

“Absolutely not!” Mace replies. “This was caused by my doing, and I am going to fix it.” Then Mace turns to face Jax and tells him, “Hang here, doggo, until we get back. Stay out of sight and mind. Any guards come through, do what you do really well.”

“That’s what you want, that’s what I’ll do,” Jax answers.

Even though Mace and myself are on a total alarm-shut-off, damage-control mission, I am excited to be alone with him. He is so gorgeous and fearless. As soon as he told Jax to stay behind, I got butterflies just thinking about being together one-on-one.

5

MACE

The lights are down, and the alarm is screaming like a banshee. I am having trouble not thinking about all the things that make McKenna an absolute doll.

Not only did she get Jax and I to the “wolf collar,” she got us inside the “wolf collar” and a complimentary tour of all cameras and camera blind-spots.

“I owe you for this,” I tell her. I mean it, too. “We reset this alarm, and I will find a way to make this up to you.” We are skirting down a darkened hallway, alarms are blaring and emergency lights are flashing.

McKenna is leading, and I am in-tow. Jax is still back at the office in which I had clumsily tripped the alarm.

The hallway makes a sharp left, straightens out for a few feet, and then goes right. I follow right behind beautiful McKenna.

This is when McKenna stops so abruptly I run into her back with a silent thud. We have come to a junction where the hallway we are scurrying through intersects with another hallway. Right in the middle of this intersection is a desk. Sitting at the desk, his back to us, is a well-armed, torqued-up guard. The kind of corn-fed, tough-guy type Jax would pick a fight with if they ever encountered each other in a bar.

After freezing in her tracks, McKenna back-steps, turns me around, and leads us to a small alcove with vending machines in it. We are in a spot that will keep us hidden if the guard or anyone else were to walk down the hallway we were traipsing through.

“Okay. We’re safe. Thank you,” I gesture to McKenna with my rudimentary version of sign language.

“Stay put right here,” McKenna gestures back.

Then she throws me for a loop and bolts off down the hallway toward the guard we saw. I stay frozen in place out of sight behind a vending machine.

My first impulse is to chase her down.

Yes. Chase her down. Stop her. This gal is crazy.

But I don’t move. Then I hear her confront the guard we saw.

“Jeff, Jeff, thank you for being here. This is terrible,” I hear McKenna tell the guard. I can hear trauma, fear, and tears in the words and between the words. Not only is McKenna coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs, this girl can act. “I don’t know what happened,” she continues bellowing to the guard. “I was taking care of something, and the alarm went off. Why is the alarm going off, Jeff? This should not be happening.”

“No kidding,” Jeff tells her. I can hear how stiff and urgent his voice is. “You are absolutely right to be worried. Something’s way out of whack right now.”

I love what an actress McKenna is. She makes whatever emotion she is trying to convey contagious. She’s that good. I am beginning to believe, however, that her roof simply isn’t nailed tight anymore.

“You wait here,” Jeff tells McKenna. “I’ll go scope out the area.”

---