Page 76 of Owned By Shadows

The room beyond is a complete contrast to the wholesome nursery. It’s more like a holding cell, completely empty apart from a bare bed that even has cuffs on the head and footboard. There’s also one of those machines that is used to extractbreastmilk, and a flash of Iris cuffed to the bed, hooked up to that machine, has me seeing red.

I cannot hold back my inner demon, no longer want to, and spinning on my heel, I stride through the nursery and back into the incubator room.

“What the—” The guard doesn’t get to finish his sentence before my knife has slit across his throat, covering me and the medical equipment in crimson. I briefly register the Russian style tattoos I’ve just ruined. So he was one of the bastard’s men. Good.

He drops to the floor, and the second guard barely has time to raise his gun before I’m on him, snarling as I stab, and stab, and stab. All I see is red, and I taste copper, but I don’t stop, not even after he’s stopped moving.

“Fuck’s sake, Rowan!” Nik shouts, dragging me off the now dead man. It’s only then that I hear the alarm blaring and register that the space is bright with light, as all the overhead lights are now on. “We need to move!”

He all but drags me back through to the nursery, which only increases my bloodlust for the man who I really want to tear apart. Sergi fucking Petrov. Just as we exit, four more guards come running down the corridor.

Without thinking, I throw my knife, and it finds its mark right in the eye of the one in the lead. He goes down, the others stalling, but then a shot sounds out next to me, making my ears ring. I glance at Nik, gun in his hand as he dispatches two of the others with cold efficiency.

The last guard ducks behind a dark shape, a nurses’ station maybe, and a piece of the plaster to the side of Nik flies off the wall with the shot the man just fired.

“Best make sure you don’t get shot, Niky boy. Iris will be pissed,” I joke, a manic laugh falling from my lips.

Nik pulls me around the corner, both of us breathing hard as we hear multiple sets of boots come from where the remaining guard waits. I catch a word or two shouted in Russian, and it takes everything in me not to charge back into the fray and kill every last one of them. Might also be because Nik has a tight grip on my vest. Arsehole.

“Let’s save the jokes and get the fuck out of here,” he hisses, and I pout.

“But I didn’t get to finish killing them,” I whine, and his eyes widen before he shakes his head.

“You’re fucking crazy, you know that?” he asks as I rummage in one of the pockets of my tactical vest. I really should wear one more often. They have so many pockets which are really fucking useful.

“Aww, you’re too kind,” I coo, pulling out what I was looking for with a triumphant smile.

“Ro— No. Absolutely not! You cannot throw a fucking grenade at them. It’ll blow us up!” he whisper yells, though I don’t know why because that alarm is loud enough to wake the dead.

I pull the pin. “Oopsie.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“STRAIGHTJACKET” BY BOHNES

ROWAN

Nik’s so shocked his grip on me loosens, which is lucky because I lean around the corner and throw before they even fire a shot. “Best run fast, Niky!”

With another manic laugh, I grab him this time and head for the stairwell, which is at the end of this corridor. Gotta love having options. We make it through the door just as an ear splitting boom echoes behind us, throwing us forward and down the first flight of stairs.

“Crazy fucking psycho!” Nik thunders as he lands on top of me, and I giggle.

“But it’s kinda fun, right?” I huff, pushing him off me and getting to my feet with a groan. The blood from the two guards is sticky on the skin of my face that my balaclava exposes, and I use the back of my hand, which isn’t much better, to wipe at my eyes.

“Alarm triggered all sector protocols,” Dima’s voice cuts in, tense but controlled. “Local authorities diverted. You haveapproximately six minutes before private response team arrives. Moving to extraction position now.”

Nik just curses in Russian, grabbing his handgun from the floor next to us, checking it, and then with another rant in Russian, he walks down the stairs.

“Jeez, you were the one that wanted to send Sergi a message,” I comment, following behind, palming another of my knives. I’m too pumped to use my gun. I need to feel my kills tonight or blow them up completely. I don’t have any more grenades though. Sad times. “And I couldn’t leave that room standing, Nik.”

He pauses in front of me, his shoulders rising and falling. “I know.” He sighs audibly. “Just make sure when you blow shit up in the future, we’re far away. I think I cracked a rib.”

He continues down the stairs, that fucking alarm still blaring, which isn’t helping us to hear if we have company or not.

“Silver lining though, Niky,” I muse, looking around us and back up the stairs to cover our backs. “At least you weren’t shot, so you still get Iris’s pussy.”

He huffs a laugh as we reach the bottom of the staircase. “How many of those charges did you bring?”

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