Page 127 of Guarded
“Shifters,” I echoed.No. It couldn’t be.“Wolf shifters?”
“I’m not an expert, but I’d say so,” Nate said grimly. “Let me run their faces through my recognition software. I called you as soon as I spotted them, so I haven’t had a chance to do it yet.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. Nate might piss me off ninety-five per cent of the time, but there was no denying that he had my back. “Thank you, Nate.”
As he fell silent, the only noise from his typing, Nox urgently grabbed my wrist. “Wolf shifters?”
From the fear in his eyes, I knew Nox had made the connection too. That he knew what Jeremiah had been forced to do.
“I don’t understand.” Mori folded his arms. “I know a wolf shifter. He’s an annoying fuck, but not generally murderous unless the situation warrants it.”
Nox began to explain the backstory to Mori, but that was when Nate spoke. “I got them. They removed the compulsion net on the outskirts of Slough. I’m tracking them west.”
West? Most wolf shifter clans were in the north. Why would they be taking him west?
“I can track him,” Mori was saying. “Do you have an item of his? It’ll be easier for me to pick up his imprint.”
That was right. Once upon a time, Mori had been Hell’s resident tracker.
“I’ve got them,” Nate said triumphantly. “God bless the UKs bizarre obsession with cameras on every corner. Okay, they’re…”
His voice faded away. “Nate? Where are they?”
“Fuck, Noah.” He exhaled noisily, unable to hide his shock. “They’ve taken him through the portal to Hell.”
Numbness washed over me.Hell.They’d taken my Jem to the one place he was most terrified of.
His recurring nightmare, the one that chased him so often from sleep, was literally coming true.
I hung up on Nate without saying anything else. I had to get to him. Now.
I’d vowed I wouldn’t let him be imprisoned there ever again. That I’d destroy Hell one circle at a time until my mate was returned to me.
Jeremiah was about to discover that I was an arch of my word.
My rage condensed into an icy blade. One I’d wield with deadly accuracy.
The others were in the middle of a hurried conversation, but I spoke over them. “We don’t need you to track him. I know exactly where he is.”
Micah turned to me with a frown. “Where?”
I didn’t answer him, my gaze going to Nox. I don’t know what he read in my eyes, but he took a single step back, his hand going to his throat as he begged me. “No. Please. Don’t tell me he’s back there.”
His sorrow and fear echoed my own. We both knew what awaited Jeremiah in Hell. He’d successfully escaped Lucifer and tasted the freedom he’d been forbidden from. Lucifer couldn’t execute him, not with the deal they’d all made. But he could punish him. From the stories Jem had told me, I knew Lucifer had no shortage of ways to make someone suffer.
Well, he wasn’t doing that to my mate. Not now, not ever again.
“I’m going to him.” I was already summoning thepower I’d need to go to Hell. “I’m not wasting time going to the portal.”
“I’m coming with you,” Micah said, lightning crackling around his hands as he readied himself too. “You’re not facing this alone.”
A different kind of fear went through me. Fear for Micah. For the Seraphim. “No, not via lightning.”
Micah shot me a quizzical look, so I hastened to explain. “We’re only supposed to use it in an emergency. Don’t give Gloria any more ammunition against the unit.”
“But thisisan emergency.”
I hated to say this with Jem’s life at stake, but I had to protect them too. “No. It’s an emergency for me because he’s my mate. She won’t allow it for you.”
