Gray

It was against the rules.

Blatantly.

So much so that if caught and captured, it wouldn’t be too much to expect that his captors would likely kill him on the spot. It would be easier that way. No paperwork, no public explanation. No record. Nothing. Then they would likely kill the people he was here to rescue, to save themselves any further trouble, not to mention money. Lots of money.

He didn’t know any of the men guarding the facility, and that alone told him a lot. The world he lived in was pretty small. There were only so many combat-trained bear shifters to go around. If he didn’t know them, that meant they were one of two things. One, brand-new graduates of the program, and thus not only inexperienced, but likely nervous as all hell about their first posting. Or second, they were trained in secret, outside of the normal channels.

If that were the case, then things were seriously, seriously wrong in his homeland. It would indicate a fracturing, and that could lead to bad things happening. Instability and infighting could easily destroy much of the land. When shifters fought in numbers, it generally wasn’t a pretty thing. All that meant was that he was just going to have to do his part to help avoid such a situation. By rescuing the shifters and having them simply disappear, it would remove a large source of discontent for the less savory—and therefore more vocal—part of the population of his homeland.

Doing so undetected wasn’t going to be easy though. They were being held in a facility to supposedly help oversee their recovery, but Gray knew how long they’d been there. By now they would all be recovered and aching to get out and start re-establishing their lives. Oddly though, from what he’d learned, the paperwork to discharge them from the facility kept getting misfiled, misplaced, lost, or just straight up thrown into the shredder.

Hence why he’d come. The reason for it was a long story, but he needed to condense it down into something much, much smaller, so that he could convince the shifters inside to come with him without any hesitation. He had several aces in his pocket to help him with that, but the fewer he had to use, the better. Time would be of the essence. The guard post he was now sneaking up on inside the facility had to report in every fifteen minutes. So once he took down the guard, he would only have fifteen minutes to convince them to believe him, and then get as large a head start as possible. Pursuit would follow them, and it would follow quickly.

Piece of cake.

Mmmm cake. Wonder if that bakery back in town will have any chocolate fudge…

Gray shook his head. Focus. He needed to focus. Thinking about food could cause his stomach to growl, which would give away his position and force him to act early. The last thing he needed on his mind was the delicious chocolate fudge caramel cheesecake…

His stomach rumbled loudly.

The guard’s head lazily turned around, but his eyes widened the instant he saw Gray.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be here!”

“Aw hell,” he swore and dove at the guard before he could punch down the alarm button and bring all of his friends in to the fight. 

He took the bear shifter in the shoulder, the pair of them bouncing off the console and onto the ground.

“You can’t be here!” the guard said as they struggled for superiority.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Gray said, ignoring the words. “I’d be content to just knock you out. But I’ll do what I need to. Just please don’t force my hand.”

He received an elbow to the chin as an answer.

“Very well then,” he muttered through a rapidly swelling lip.

Pulling his head back Gray slammed it into his opponent’s nose repeatedly, stunning the younger shifter. Then he stood up, grabbed him by the neck and rammed him head-first through the wall, taking a stud with it, snapping the two-by-four right over the crown of his head.

“And humans need something electronic to find studs,” he muttered. “I’m a natural.”

By that time the noise had gotten the attention of the patients, who were now poking their heads out into the hallway.

“Come on, I’m here to get you out,” he said, motioning for the four of them to follow him.

“Who the hell are you?”

He waved with his arm again. “There’s no time. My name is Gray. Your leader Harden sent me to get you.”

Which was sort of true. Harden hadn’t actually sent him. Harden was okay with it, but he didn’t have any authority to ask Gray to do something. No, it had been another shifter, and his boss, who had sent him back to their homeland of Cadia to free the shifters and bring them to the human town of Cloud Lake, to help them escape further captivity.

It was complicated.

“Seriously, come on,” he urged. “Don’t look at me like I’m a moron. You guys are being held in a recovery facility, despite being recovered weeks ago. Have you not figured that out yet?”

One of them stepped forward. “And how do we know you’re on the level? Maybe this is just a trap designed to have us officially arrested by making it look like we assaulted the guards.”

The wall beside Gray shuddered and drywall crumbled and fell to the floor. The shifter still didn’t move, held in place and blissfully unconscious for the time being. That wouldn’t last though. His kind healed unbelievably fast, and soon he would wake up very, very angry.

“Good question. You don’t. All I can tell you is Harden sent me to come get you. He went to the Shifter Ball, found a mate, and wanted nothing more than to bring you with him. You’re all that’s left of Kronum. You don’t belong in here. You belong out there, making a life for yourselves.”

Gray saw his words start to have an effect on them. It was true. They were the last five survivors—including Harden—of the now-defunct shifter territory of Kronum. A territory that had been devastated as part of a large human corporation’s assault on his kind. Gray thought it unbelievable how his homeland had treated them, but it would seem that with the end of the war and Cadia’s newfound spot as the undisputed power among shifter nations, some of the politicians had developed grandiose ideas of their own importance.

The four of them were looking among themselves now, as if trying to decide what to do. Gray wanted to let them decide, but the decision was taken out of his hands. The alarms began to ring as the unconscious guard failed to press the check-in button.

“Now or never. Come on, let’s go.”

None of them looked happy about it, but they all came after him.

“This way,” he said, darting down the hallway.

Behind him he heard four sets of feet come steadily onward.

“Which one of you is Flint Kieremeyer?” he asked softly as he came to a halt at an intersection of hallways.

“I am,” said a large man with the scent of an Arctic wolf, the largest of its kind. He stepped forward and crouched down at Gray’s side.

“Harden said you were the eldest after him, and most likely to be in charge. Is that accurate?”

Flint shrugged, looking over the shoulder at the others. “Sure, I guess. Not much to be in charge of.”

One of the others punched him in the shoulder.

“All right. Well we’re gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way. I’d hoped to be outside the building before the guards got to us, but this exit is likely to have two of them ready and waiting.” He paused. “We’re going to have to fight. Can you handle that?”

“Harden sent you?” he asked, looking for confirmation.

“Yes. Sort of. He didn’t exactly send me; he doesn’t have that kind of power over me. But I’m here on his behalf. We had to make him vanish from the grid, thanks to the same shit you’re going through here. So we decided it would be best if you all joined him. It would be safer for you that way.”

Flint gave him a hard stare, his eyes living up to his namesake. Gray met his gaze and didn’t flinch, letting the other man look into his soul, showing that he was telling the truth. The tall lanky shifter held it for a moment, inhaled sharply, and then nodded.

“He’s telling the truth.”

Gray couldn’t see the reaction of the others, but judging by the professional silence, he took it as a good sign. Behind them shouts sounded in the hallways, coming closer. That was a bad sign.

“Come on,” he said, peeking around the corner and taking off to the right.

Their feet slapped against the floor, all pretense of secrecy gone now.

“Big boys to the front,” he said as they approached a set of doors. “We go through. We don’t slow down.”

In response, two other bear shifters moved up alongside him. They had to be Bryce and Owen, if his memory was correct. Both were thickly built like himself, and a head or more over six feet tall. The hallway was almost too small for the three of them to run abreast.

Gray was in the middle and he accelerated as the door got closer, leaning a shoulder into it. On either side of him Owen and Bryce did the same without speaking, their faces set. He almost wanted to grin, feeling bad for the shifters on the far side. They would never know what hit them.

The metal doors shrieked and tore from their hinges as almost a thousand pounds of determined shifter slammed into them, exploding outward like lethal projectiles. Gray felt more than heard the impact as the doors warped around the bodies of the guards, picking them up and taking them with them as they bounced and flew across the ground to land thirty feet away. Gray wanted to stay and admire the handiwork, but there was no time.

“This way!” he called, taking off toward the forest that came up to within a few hundred yards of the facility. The others followed, their feet powering them forward at speeds no human could match, practically flowing over the ground instead of running upon it.

They’d just made it to the cover of the trees when shouts erupted behind them. Gray paused, hiding behind the thick bole of a tree. The guards milled about for a moment before they picked up his scent, but the wind was blowing heavily, and it would be tough for them to follow.

“Come on,” he said, and the quintet took off deep into the forest. There was a river less than half a mile away. Once they could lose themselves within it, they would be free.

Then it was just a quick journey to the border and into the vehicle he had stashed away there. He’d done it. They had done it.