Page 26 of Hide or Die

Patel’s jaw snapped shut, and the muscles in his neck jerked like he had to stop himself from showing throat to us. It should not have been as damned distracting as it was.

“This way. Quickly,” Beckett said, and took point. The three of us surrounded our charge and headed for the storage room we’d cleared on the way in.

“There’s a scent trail,” Alex said. “We may be able to track where they were taken that way.”

Beckett gave her a terse nod of acknowledgement. I took Alex’s word for it. She had the sharpest nose in the pack, and what was nothing more than a muddle of pheromones to me, might well be more to her.

We left the terrified attaché in the unlocked storage room with orders to stay quiet unless he was discovered, and yell like a banshee if he was. It wasn’t ideal, but we’d seen no evidence that any of the terrorists were still here. He would probably be fine, and we couldn’t afford to have him unarmed, untrained, and underfoot if we ran into resistance while extracting Jax and the ambassador.

Jax. The annoying bastard had better still be alive. If he was dead, I’d kill him.

“We’re following your lead, Alex,” Beckett said.

Alex gave a tight nod and led us back to the corridor running in front of the holding cell. We stayed back to avoid further confusing the olfactory landscape, and let her do her thing. Our luck held, in that the place really did seem to be deserted. So far, there’d been no sign of booby traps, either—just rooms full of dusty supplies, makeshift cots, rickety tables with maps piled across them, and lots and lots of rocks.

It was a warren, but it was easy enough to tell which parts were being used and which parts weren’t by following the electrical wiring snaking along the walls. We took a couple of wrong turnings and had to backtrack for Alex to pick up the scent again, but eventually even I could smell it like a beacon pointing the way in front of us.

Jax’s normal woodsy scent was heavily laden with musk. The omega had gotten to him, and I hoped to hell he’d kept enough of his wits about him to keep from getting dead. Not that I could really blame him too much—that sweet honey and orange blossom perfume was intoxicating as all fuck, and he’d been trapped in an enclosed space with it for god knew how long.

Ahead, the corridor we were traversing ended in a closed door. Like the one on the holding cell, it had a barred window at head height. Beckett stood to one side, poised to open it, and counted us down silently with his fingers.

Three... two... one...go.

We swept inside in well-practiced choreography, accommodating the lack of our fourth as effectively as possible. I swung my AK-47 around in a smooth arc, clearing my quadrant of the room. The others did the same, ranging out to check any possible hiding place.

It was empty except for two figures lying unmoving on bare medical tables. In the absence of active threats, I lowered my weapon and let myself look at them properly.

Alex cursed, short and sharp.

Jax was out cold, though a heart monitor on a cart next to him beeped out a slow, steady rhythm. An IV bag hung above the table, dripping fluid through a tube attached to his arm. Alex was at his side in two strides, pulling the needle out. I watched him long enough to confirm the rise and fall of his chest before my gaze was drawn to the second figure like iron filings to a magnet. Leona McCready’s heat-scent slammed into me like a freight train, knocking every single thought from my head except one.

Mate.

Her long red hair was sweat-soaked, and her skin was pale except for two feverish spots of color on her cheekbones.Jesus Christ—her skirt was stained in front where she’d dripped slick onto it—presumably while she was on her hands and knees, presenting for sex.

The mental image felt like a bomb going off in my brain. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, I knew that both of these omegas were meant to be ours. A figure approached her, and a growl rumbled up from my chest. I took a step toward the medical table without consciously deciding to move.

“Flynn!” There was nothing subdued about Alex’s alpha bark this time. It slapped my instincts upside the head, and I froze, blinking.

The figure standing near the ambassador resolved into Beckett. He was watching me closely, though without a hint of fear.

“Come help me with her,” he said, ignoring the fact that I’d just snarled at him.

I strode to the table and looked down at the battered porcelain doll lying there.

“I’m reasonably sure she’s been sedated as well,” Beckett said. “Not a bad thing under the circumstances, assuming they used something safe. Take her pulse and count her respirations for me while I help Alex with Jax. Then you’re going to need to carry him out of here. Alex can take the ambassador.”

I could do that. With a nod of acknowledgement, I took the excuse I’d been given to lift one delicate wrist. My hand dwarfed it. I was only vaguely aware of Beckett stowing the IV bag of whatever they’d been pumping into Jax’s veins inside his pack. Then, he and Alex efficiently disconnected the heart monitor leads from Jax’s chest.

“Pulse and respiration’s depressed, but not dangerously so,” I reported, not immediately letting go of Ambassador McCready’s wrist.

“Good,” Beckett said tersely. He started rummaging through a mini-fridge in the corner of the makeshift lab, checking labels. A few moments later, he straightened with a couple of vials in his hand. The vials and a handful of syringes joined the IV bag already stashed in his pack.

The creamy skin beneath my fingertips felt too warm, making me think the ambassador’s body was trying to climb toward its next heat-peak despite her unconscious state. A tiny whimper slipped past her full lips, and in that moment I would have thrown down with Alex for dibs on carrying her, despite Beckett’s orders.

That was stupid, though. While Alex could probably lift Jax into a fireman’s carry if circumstances required it, his weight would interfere with her ability to move fast and use a weapon much more than it would with mine. My instincts grumbled in discontent, but I lowered the ambassador’s arm gently to the table and turned to the others.

“Ready?” I asked.

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