Page 49 of Running on Empty

I wandered out of the room, wondering just that, when I found I had two shadows on my heels.

“You should eat something,” Jax said, staring intently. “You haven’t eaten a bloody thing all day.”

“I can’t.”

My stomach felt cavernously empty but the mere thought of eating had my mouth filling with bile.

“The wait is always the hardest part,” Ronan said. “What about the nesting room? Could you lie down in there?” His eyes were almost brown when he asked the next thing. “We could keep you company.”

“We…?” Jax voiced my concern, his brow creasing as he looked at Ronan then me.

“We,” Ronan replied, right before he picked me up in his arms and walked us through the complex to the nest.

But when we got there, we had someone waiting for us.

“Ollie!” I jumped down and rushed over, the dog having curled up in my nest very comfortably, those brown eyes watching the three of us as his tail thumped. But when I got close he sniffed me all over, then shoved his head under my hand. I scratched at his ruff, sinking my fingers into his fur as the dog wriggled over until his muzzle was lying on my thigh.

“So that’s what it takes to get cuddles from the omega, huh?” Jax kept his tone light, but the words were painful ones, for both of us. Before I could answer, he jerked his shirt off, then stripped the rest of his clothes off, before shifting mid strip into his wolf.

Ollie’s tail was wagging furiously now. He didn’t surrender any ground to the massive black wolf, but Jax just padded forward, sniffing at the air warily before I reached out for him. When we were in wolf form we never had the issues we did in skin. We knew exactly who we were and what we meant to each other, so when I reached up for Jax, he pushed his head into my palm. I felt that butter soft fur, felt the rough pants of his breath before another wolf joined us.

Ronan.

Jax wolf’s lips peeled back to reveal his fangs, but Ronan wolf just nudged him with his shoulder. The two of them sniffed at each other for just a minute before taking up place around me, one heavy furry body, then another, feeling like they pinned me to the bed. And as I lay there, patting two wolves, then one dog, a wave of tiredness I hadn’t expected to feel rose up and swallowed me, tugging me down, down, down until now.

“Wake up, beautiful.”

My eyelids fluttered, the gloom of the room making it hard to make out the speaker until I saw Ronan’s green eyes gleaming phosphorescent bright. He grinned then, tilting his head my way.

“It’s time to go.”

Chapter29

Ash

This was a bad, bad idea.

My dads all milled around in the bunker garage, checking gear, making sure every fucking round of ammunition had prints wiped from it. No one would get us on evidence lost. But me? Rather than planning this mission down to the last minute as I usually did, I watched my brother place his hand above our mate’s head on the black SUV we would be taking, leaning in to talk to her.

Fucking Ronan.

I didn’t want Stevie with us. We’d taught her how to shoot, how to defend herself, but that wasn’t the same as this. We were about to infiltrate Snake’s mansion, a place I’d had to locate by watching for background shots in the videos he’d collated until I was almost sick, so we didn’t have time for flirting. I grabbed a bulletproof vest and strode over to Stevie.

“If you’re coming, you need to put this on,” I said.

No greeting, no how did you sleep? I seemed to lose the ability to communicate like a normal human being around her, and Stevie’s eyes narrowed as a result. She reached for it though, without asking questions, but when she grabbed it, I didn’t let go. Her eyes became slits when she tugged it again, and I still kept ahold of it.

“Put your arm out,” I ordered, telling myself I was doing this to make sure it was done right. Yeah, sure, I couldn’t even convince myself of that. I caught sight of Ronan grinning as I slid the body armour up one arm and over her head, then tugged it down, checking it for fit before doing up the side straps.

“It’s too tight,” she complained, then checked her range of motion.

“It needs to be.” I rapped the chest plate. “It's there to keep you safe.”

“And what will you be doing?” she asked me, peering up into my eyes.

I’ll be on you like white on rice, I thought to myself.I don’t give a fuck about Snake, just you.

“Ensuring we get out of this alive. That little stunt Ronan pulled?” My brother looked totally unrepentant, again. “We should’ve contacted the Spencers senior just before we left for Snake’s, not advertised what we were about to do.”

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