Kean

He slid down the slight embankment into the ditch moments before the guard team sprinted around the corner of the building. With just his eyes peering over the top, shaded by the forest above him, Kean watched them slow to a halt, fanning out so that they wouldn’t be clumped together if the shifters hit them again.

The guards had quickly learned that clustering together was a bad idea when two shifters with a ridiculous amount of dart guns festooned around their body came upon them. Squads of the unconscious soldiers littered the grounds. The bodies became thicker as the five of them had retreated.

Not everything had gone their way, though.

“How is he?” Kean asked, glancing past Pierce, to where Gavin lay unconscious between Maximus and Kean.

“Asleep, but otherwise fine. Didn’t break anything when he fell.”

Kean nodded. Gavin had been caught by surprise as he tried to retreat, stumbling into a squad of soldiers who had been setting up an ambush for them. He’d arrived before they were ready, but one of the soldiers had gotten lucky and hit him full bore with a dart in the side.

Thankfully the shifters had regrouped by then. Maximus and Kassian had, to his relief, grabbed up Gavin without having been told, and the five of them had continued to beat a hasty retreat. The pursuit was getting fast and furious by that point. They’d made it out of the worst of it, moving around to the side of the horseshoe where the women had gone in.

Just now Kean had moved forward to inspect the fence where he could see the slit cut into it, when the squad had clattered forward, making enough noise to warn him off. Now the five of them sat in the little ditch, hidden from sight as they waited.

“The women can’t make it through that,” Pierce said, bluntly assessing the situation.

“I know,” Kean replied unhappily. “But if we do something about it, they’ll know where we are, and it’ll draw a lot more men down upon us.” He paused, thinking it through. “Thoughts?”

“We should get Gavin out of here,” Maximus said immediately. “He’s a liability.”

Kean wanted to snap at his oldest brother, but he couldn’t. The logic was sound. With Gavin unconscious, and his sheer bulk requiring two of them to move him around at anything resembling a quick pace, he was a serious liability to their ability to evade the guards. It just so happened that in order to get Gavin clear, both Maximus and Kean would have to go with him. After all, it wasn’t like he could leave either of them behind and trust that they would actually do anything to help Maddy and Mila.

“Fine,” he said shortly. “Get out of here. Wait for us at Madison’s SUV. We’ll be along shortly.”

Without hesitation the two brothers hoisted Gavin between them, and then, in a low crouch, duckwalked backward until they were obscured from view by the forest. Kean watched them go, expelling his breath angrily as they disappeared from sight.

“Easy,” Pierce said, laying a hand on his shoulder as he turned back around to continue surveying the facility. “Everything will be all right.”

Kean looked at his brother, nodding firmly. Of course Pierce would be just as nervous as he was. Kean wasn’t the only one with something at stake. Mila was inside as well. Both of their women were now in the most danger they’d been in all along, and there was nothing either of them could do to help.

“How long do we wait?” he asked at last, knowing that his brother’s patience would likely be wearing as thin as his own.

“Not much longer. They’re either captured, or more likely on their way out by now. We need to keep an eye on this squad, in case they show signs of seeing someone coming from the other direction. We need to be ready to help.”

The brothers hunkered down, and seconds turned into minutes as they watched. The squad had fanned out, taking cover behind what little there was between them and the gate. The building that the women would have gone into first upon entering the facility served as the backdrop to the soldiers.

“They aren’t coming,” Kean said at last. “Something is wrong.”

“Movement,” Pierce hissed.

Kean had seen it too. Several members of the squad had turned their heads to face behind them, as if they heard something.

“Now or never,” Kean said.

“Right behind you,” came the nervous response.

Kean knew his little brother wasn’t worried about what they were about to do. It was what was going on behind the guards that he knew had him worried. Mila and Maddy were in trouble. There was no other explanation that came to his mind. Which meant it was time for him and Pierce to do what any shifter whose mate was in trouble would do.

Attack anything that moved.

The two brothers were up and over the edge of the ditch in the blink of an eye. Less than half a second later they had cleared the distance between them and the fence. Instead of slowing to go through the hole the women had cut in it, they went over it.

With a savage yell Kean launched himself upward, his massive legs flexing powerfully as he flung himself more than fourteen feet in the air. He cleared the razor-wire with inches to spare.

A ripping sound as he descended told him that perhaps his estimate of inches wasn’t quite accurate.

Kean ignored that thought. He landed on the other side, his feet sinking into the ground under the force of his landing. There was no pause though; he bounded forward once more. The guards were just starting to react to the abrupt presence of the two of them in their midst.

It was far too late by that point. Darts flew out from their guns. The two brothers were moving so fast that their aim wasn’t exact. Darts flew wide of their targets as they hurtled across the remaining distance. Kean’s guns both clicked dry and he simply dropped them, ripping two more from where he’d secured them to his body, pulling the trigger as fast as he could until those were dry as well. Another set went dry after that one.

Then he was among them, and he didn’t have to aim. Kean ducked under the closest guard’s barrel, drove his own gun into the man’s gut and fired once. Even as he came up out of his slide, he flipped up and over the next guard, dropping one hand until the gun was inches from his back. He squeezed firmly once.

Kean landed, whirled, both barrels ending up pointing at one guard. The man staggered backward and dropped as two bolts hit him in quick succession, the six inches of steel imparting a lot of force into his body.

He let his forward momentum carrying him into a roll. Coming out of it his legs twitched and he did a delayed dive roll over another guard, his arms out wide. The guns recoiled once each and two more soldiers collapsed. Even as Kean flipped end over end, he sent two darts into the back of the man he had leapt over.

Coming to his feet out of the dive roll, Kean spun, looking for any remaining targets.

There were none.

“Good job,” Pierce said as he approached, having taken out the men on his side as well.

There was a clatter of metal behind them. Kean swung, his arm coming up and around, to point at the back of a fleeing guard, who was running for his life.

“You want him?” he asked his brother.

“Nah, you take it,” Pierce replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t miss though. That’s our last dart.”

Kean growled, closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. Opening them, he watched the guard go flying forward, his arms splaying out to the sides as he fell face-first into the ground just before he would have escaped around the corner. Gun empty, he tossed it aside.

“You know I don’t miss,” Kean snarled. “Come on, inside.”

The metal door crumpled and flew in as Kean barged through it, not bothering to slow down. He looked around quickly.

“Some sort of storage warehouse,” he commented.

There were huge crates stacked everywhere, forming rows that led toward the far side. In the center of them was a larger row, approximately twice as wide as the others.

“Do you think they’re—”

Pierce’s voice was cut off as from deeper in the warehouse a woman screamed. He looked over at Kean, and without comment, the two of them took off at full speed into the depths of the dark and poorly lit storage building.

They ran down the center aisle, desperate to reach the source of the scream.

Without warning a steel beam swung out into his path, catching him right in the chest. Kean’s upper body stopped abruptly while his lower kept going, and he slammed down into the ground, his tailbone bouncing off the cement before he went through an uncontrolled backflip and then crashed to the ground, spinning slightly until he landed against one of the racks holding the crates.

Stars swam in front of his eyes, and it took him a long moment to realize the groaning sound he heard was actually coming from him.

“What the fuck?” he gasped, trying to recover.

Footsteps approached.

“Pierce,” he said hoarsely. “What the fuck hit me?”

A hand reached out of the darkness, grabbed his neck, and hoisted Kean into the air with an ease no human could match.

Shifters.

“Sorry, Pierce isn’t here right now,” the dark figure said laconically.

“Figures,” Kean muttered with his limited breath, his throat tight from where the shifter gripped it, “that fucker is always out partying.”

The hand holding him shook slightly, and it took Kean’s addled head a moment to realize it was from his assailant laughing.

A groan came from nearby and below him. Pierce must have been knocked out cold. Kean saw a second shape materialize out of the gloom and pick up his brother.

“Come on!”

Kean went rigid as he recognized Maddy’s voice. There was the clanging of shoes on metal as somewhere above him people ran by.

His adrenaline spiked as Kean’s bear realized his mate was alive, but in trouble. The voice had been full of nervousness and anxiety. Something was going wrong.

No shit. You just got knocked the fuck out by a shifter. A shifter you knew was on the premises, and didn’t take into account.

His vision cleared and Kean felt himself come fully alive as the adrenaline spiked a flow of blood, which in turn ramped his healing abilities up to eleven.

“Don’t even try it,” his foe said, slamming Kean into the storage racks, trying to stop him. But it was too late.

Kean’s foot took the other shifter in the thigh. The suddenly weakened leg gave way and the two of them toppled to the ground. Kean rolled away and then to his feet, his eyes now easily able to see in the dark as his bear surged to the surface. In their hurry to get to the women, neither he nor Pierce had taken the time to adjust their eyes to the darkness. That could have been a fatal mistake.

A third shifter appeared from out of the racks, swinging for Kean’s head. He ducked low, then drove his shoulder up into the man’s chest. He added his hands to the upward force, and launched the other shifter into the air. Then Kean abruptly reversed his motion, bending his legs, and fell to his knees. His hands were now above his head, still gripping the airborne shifter. Kean flexed powerfully and pulled his hands down. The shifter went head-first into the concrete. Bone snapped and he lay still.

Kean hated having killed one of his kind, but it was the only surefire way to ensure they stayed out of the fight.

A hammerblow struck him in the back, sending him forward. Kean rolled with the force, spinning on the toes of his feet as he came up into a crouch, arms up in front of him closed into fists, ready for anything. The other shifter had kept coming at him, and now Kean pushed off to meet him. The pair collided with bone-rattling force.

Kean growled. There was no time for normal fight rules. He stepped on the shifter’s instep, then bit down on the hand that was trying to gouge out his eyes. His mouth filled with the taste of iron as blood spilled from the wound. He pulled back his head and head-butted his opponent.

“Ow,” he complained, stumbling back slightly as stars appeared in his vision.

Recovering first, he delivered a lightning-quick one-two combination to the shifter’s face, pivoted on one foot, and then dropped him with an elbow direct to the temple. Something gave way and the other man simply dropped, all muscle control gone.

Panting, Kean looked around. “Pierce?” he called. There was a third body on the floor, but Pierce wasn’t anywhere to be found.

A grunting noise from between two racks caught his attention. “I’m coming!” he shouted to his brother, moments before there was a clang as something bounced off the rack, then a stomach-turning snap.

Kean went still. “Pierce?” he called.

A body came toppling out from between the two racks, hitting the floor and rolling slightly before coming to a halt. A moment later Pierce stumbled forward.

“Damn, that one hits hard,” he commented, gladly accepting Kean’s offer of assistance.

“Come on, the women,” he snapped, shaking his brother as they followed the sound of footsteps above them. “MADISON!” he bellowed.

“Kean?” came the startled cry. “Where are you?”

“Ground level, between the racks, center column.”

“Stay there, we’re coming down.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Mila replied instead as someone started to descend what sounded like a ladder.

He and Pierce followed the sounds until they came across the trio.

“Well isn’t this cute.”

A light flicked on at the far end of the warehouse, illuminating a familiar figure.

“Director Burnatawiz,” Kean scoffed.

Behind the director could be seen dozens of soldiers pouring inside. Kean halted his advance on the director. There was nothing he could do now.

“You’ve lost!” he called instead, backing away toward their exit, which Kean was now surveying to ensure it was clear.

“Have I?” the old man asked. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because we got the prisoner. You can’t stop us,” he shouted back.

“Yes, that is annoying. But you’re too late. It’s already started. You can’t stop it now,” he all but cackled.

“Stop what?” he asked, surprised enough that his voice barely carried down to the other end. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?” the director asked, laughing once more. “Well perhaps you should ask your comrades then. She knows. I wonder why she hasn’t told you?”

The old man then said something to a soldier at his side, and far more men clad in black than Kean felt like taking on began to advance on them.

“Time to go!” he half-yelped, ushering them all outside.

Once there he snatched up Maddy while Pierce hauled Mila into his arms. Raven, with his long legs, would have an easier time keeping up and moving faster.

Together they ran for the forest at the best pace Raven could muster. The tall man had more reserves than Kean had initially suspected, and his black hair flew as he charged ahead across the open field. The two shifters quickly caught up. They would flank the former prisoner just in case he faltered. But until then, they would let him run while they held the shorter-legged women.

Pursuit boiled out of the building behind them, but they were too far behind now. They had done it. The mission was a success!

But Kean kept being drawn back to the old man’s comments, and the now-mysterious presence of the women at the facility. Just what the hell was going on there? He suspected the answer wasn’t going to be something he liked.

Still, Madison was safe, and that was what mattered.

“When we get back,” he said, speaking into her ear so the others wouldn’t hear, “there’s something I need to tell you.” He couldn’t wait to tell her how he felt. That he knew he was in love with her, that she was his. His mate. Hope soared through his breast, though his face stayed impassive as he focused on running.

Madison looked at him, her eyes full of shame and sadness.

“There’s something I need to tell you first.”