Page 148 of Hawke

“No, you will stay. I feel how exhausted you are, the pup, and you need rest. I don’t want stress put on either of you. I promise to tell you everything in the morning.”

With that, she yawned, and I tilted my head in triumph.

Her nostrils flared as a low growl escaped her, her eyes narrowing in anger.

“Trust me, Sunshine. I’ll get her out of there and whoever else needs help.”

“If I wasn’t so tired, I’d argue some more. But I know you guys will do your best.” Her eyes slowly blinked.

“Good thinking on orgasming her out,”Tyr snorted.

“It was a hardship.”

“I heard that,”Delilah said with a yawn.

Damnit. She was getting good at that.

I gave Locke an affectionate pat on the back. The cigarette flew from his mouth, but the malicious grin on his face never left. The ground was covered in blood, and yips and yowls of laughter echoed in the basement.

Locke, the sadistic fucker, he would be sporting a hard-on right now, if he could. But right now, he just stared at the drain while the sprays of water pushed the dark blood down the pipes.

The pieces of Shane were thrown into a wheel barrow that would be taken to be burned. Except for his head, which was being kicked around on the tiled floor, of course, because I meant what I said. His head was going to hang on our wall where I could stare at the fucker every day.

“Get anything?” I leaned over Switch’s makeshift desk. He looked up at me with his thick glasses, pushing them up with his finger.

“Yeah, Shane’s technology was laced with magic. I couldn’t get past a firewall because of it. Once Grim tortured Shane enough, he squealed that the technology was under control of magic. Tajah and Bram looked at it and broke the connection so I could get in.”

Grim stepped out of the shadows in the corner and grinned smugly while wiping his hands with a dirty rag. His mate was sitting nearby with headphones on, reading a book. He never let her out of his sight, but he also made sure she never saw or heard anything he ever did.

“And the girl is indeed alive?” Locke asked, coming out of his trance. He crossed his arms and stood beside me.

Locke’s outburst from the other day hadn’t been brought up again. We could only assume it was part of one of his psychotic break episodes. A word, a phrase, bringing up any sort of pain dealing with the Moon Goddess, innocent people, pups, or humans always got him going.

Switch dramatically pushed the enter button with his finger and brought up a live feed of a woman in a room meant for a criminal. A single toilet, sink, and cot with the bare minimum for a blanket and pillow. Concrete walls surrounded her. There was only a single door leading into the room. One way in, one way out, with a small slot on the bottom of the door to insert food.

She was sitting up, rocking back and forth on the cot, her lips moving, but we didn’t have any sound. Poor thing looked half-starved and was so damn small with a head full of wild curls and glasses too big for her face. She may as well pass as a child.

“Is she a child?” Switch asked, turning to all of us.

I scratched my beard. “Nah, don’t think so. Delilah said it was a woman. Maybe she’s short, and the picture is grainy. But we need to get in there. But I worry about Idris being there. We need to do a simple extraction. We can’t send a whole team in right now.”

A lot of members were weak now. Traveling wasn’t advised by Bones. We needed to stay together as a pack, especially after the fight with Idris had left a lot of them wounded. They were still healing.

And I wasn’t leaving Delilah, not with my pup inside her.

“Agreed,” Locke grunted, pulling out his phone. He tapped out a message. “I’ve got a few ideas. We can send a small stealth crew in the morning and—”

“Hey, Pres, where do you want me to put the head?” Bear was holding Shane’s head by the scalp, trying not to get any more blood on his clothes.

Bear’s expression showed his conflicting feelings of pride and disgust as he gazed upon the severed head. And when he turned, his gaze hit Switch’s screen, Bear’s heart stopped in an instant.

Literally stopped because we could no longer hear his heart.

The screen was paused and zoomed-in on the woman’s freckled face. Bear dropped the head, pushed Switch out of the chair, and banged his fist on the computer table. The screen flickered, losing the image, and Bear growled.

“Who is she?” Bear asked.

We all stood back from the table, and Journey perked her head up from her book and took off her headphones. She pushed her chair away from the table, and Grim followed behind her and came to watch the growing heated scene.

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