Page 46 of Her Eternal Mate

With the number of soldiers that were patrolling the buildings, I could use Will’s alternative to diplomacy right now.

The vents. That was my only other recourse. A facility such as this had to have very extensive ventilation. Blair might not have maintained these buildings to camouflage them better, but from what I’d seen so far, I knew that he had kept several aspects of them purposeful. He may be a madman, but there was a method to his madness.

Those chutes at the top of the roofs had ribbons attached to the railings. The ribbons were moving against the wind, signaling the functionality of those vents.

More screams erupted from outside the facility, turning my suspicion into surety. Will was out there. I had to make my way into the facility before he’d find me. If he were to see me here, he would try to convince me to go back with him. And to have come all this way without confronting Blair? I could not let that happen.

I snuck out from behind the thicket of trees and hopped up on one of the smaller buildings nearby, all the while avoiding the soldiers’ lines of sight. I wondered how it was possible that I’d gained access to the facility too easily. Could it be that Blair was secretly observing from hidden cameras, making a game out of it, wondering how long it’d take me to get to him? I knew how sociopathic he was, and I wouldn’t put it past him to do something exactly like this.

Once I’d made my way to the nearest vent, I took off its metal railing. It wasn’t going to be possible to just slip into it with the fan still spinning at its top speed. Jamming the fan would create such a loud noise that it’d attract every soldier’s attention.

If I were to do this, I’d have just a few seconds during which I’d jam the fan, slip into the vent, and then escape everyone’s notice.

I took a deep breath, picked up a thick branch of a tree from the roof, looked around me one more time to see where each soldier was, and then jammed the branch into the fan, stopping it while the branch held. It created a loud bang, just as I had suspected. Before anyone could come to the top of the roof, I dove into the vent and slipped from out of sight. Just as I had made my way in, I pulled at the tree branch inside. The fan resumed spinning, covering my tracks, hopefully.

Now, inside these old vents, I utilized my sense of direction and began crawling toward the main building. Every now and then, I peeked from the open ducts to see what kind of operation Blair was running here.

The evidence of Blair’s illicit activities was on display in every room that I looked into. The fuming beakers with neon-colored fluids and the scientists hunched over, tinkering with these dangerous chemicals, were proof enough that he was cooking up mutagens that the soldiers were being injected with.

Speaking of the soldiers, several of the rooms of this facility were converted into a makeshift mess, where, from the looks of it, they slept, ate, and spent their downtime.

I lost count of the rooms that I could see from the vents. My speed had considerably picked up as I was descending a steep slope. I did not know where I was being led, just that it was somewhere deep and underground.

I came to a sudden stop with a lot of inertia, crashing into a dead-end.

Before I had a moment to get my bearings, the vent gave way from below me, and I fell through, crashing on my back in a room full of soldiers. Here, there were plenty of screens on the walls, all of them showing the camera feeds from several dozen cameras around the facility. Some of the cameras were even showing footage from inside the vents.

“Fuck,” I muttered, getting up to my feet as tens of rifles were aimed at me.

“Fuck sums it up so perfectly, doesn’t it?”

There it was, that familiar voice that made gooseflesh appear on my skin. A chill ran down my spine as the soldiers stood aside, letting Blair, all donned up in heavy armor, pass through and come stand in front of me.

“Blair,” I said, nodding.

“Alexis,” he nodded back, smiling maliciously at me. “I don’t think that this is a coincidence, is it?”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Because it would be sloppy, to say the least, if this was your and your mate’s attempt at an ambush.”

“Will’s not here,” I said defiantly. “I just came here alone. To talk to you.”

“Oh really?” Blair scoffed, pointing at one of the monitors that showed Will sneaking around on the roofs of the facility.

“In my defense, I had no idea he’d follow me,” I said, rubbing dirt off my hands and my face.

“Since you’re defenseless and you haven’t attacked any of my men so far, I am assuming that you have really come here to talk and nothing else? Not even a round of fisticuffs, for old times’ sake? We both know how much you like to shift into your wolf form and go berserk.”

I was more concerned about Will and what trap Blair had sprung for him.

“No fight. Just talk,” I said, keeping my eye on the screen that showed Will leaping from roof to roof.

“Don’t you worry about him,” Blair said. “He already killed an entire squadron on his way here. I am sure he can hold his own.”

“Please, keep him out of it. I just want to talk to you about all of this craziness,” I said, trying to make him see reason. I needed to make sure that I’d exhausted the route of rationality before Will, the werewolves, and I retaliated.

“Craziness? What craziness are you talking about? I have tried time and again to kill Will. You very well know the reason why I’m so motivated for that to happen,” Blair said, sneering at me.

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