Pierce

His heart soared as he charged down the hallway, the words Mila had spoken ringing in his ears.

I love you too.

Perhaps, against all odds and all semblance of sanity, perhaps there was a hope for him and Mila after all. If the person he’d met, ate with, laughed with, and made love to was the real Mila, then he could learn to look past her actions. Once they escaped and things calmed down, she could explain everything to him, and he could perhaps come to terms with it. He knew he wanted to.

As long as the person he’d met was the real Mila, and not a façade designed to get him to fall in love with her. If she’d been real, then she was still someone he could love. Someone he did love.

Right now though, he needed to focus and go about securing the opportunity for that future.

“Left right split!” he bellowed.

His brothers, recognizing the call, moved to the side as he came storming through. They took their opponents with them, which left a very unprepared shifter in the center. Pierce hit him like a runaway freight train. The impact of two massive bodies coming together in a brutal hit echoed out through the hallway with a meaty thwack. The unsuspecting attacker took all of the force of Pierce’s momentum into an area about the size of his shoulder.

The big body went flailing back down the hallway.

There was no time to rest though.

“Shit,” he swore, ducking below another blow. The small confines of the hallway meant only two shifters had been engaged against his brothers at any given time. Which left four—now three—shifters to turn their attention to Pierce.

He avoided one blow, then another, desperately holding off. His brothers had heard his call, seen him go by. Which meant that any second now…”

“Gotcha!” Kean gloated as he dove through the opening between Maximus and Kassian and went after one of Pierce’s attackers.

Right behind him was Gavin, and the pair took the pressure of him almost immediately as they tackled their men down. Pierce searched for the fifth attacker.

A fist snapped one of his ribs as it hit him from behind and to the side.

Found him.

The pain lanced through his body, but Pierce had been hit harder. He simply spun with the blow and lashed out with a back kick. The move seemed to take his foe unawares, and hit him right in the face. Blood sprayed everywhere as the solid rubber of his boot broke the nose in several places.

Pierce wasn’t done though. He brought his leg down and beckoned for his foe to come forward. With red blood streaming down his face, bubbling as he opened his mouth to try and breathe through it, the now-enraged shifter charged Pierce.

Which was exactly what he wanted him to do.

Pierce spun out of the way, and the crazed shifter slammed right into the attacker facing Kassian. The pair went down in a heap, and Pierce delivered two swift blows to his face.

A hand grabbed his upraised fist as he went for a third blow, and Pierce relaxed.

“Okay, I get it, he’s down,” he said, turning to see which of his brothers had stopped him.

The only thing he saw was a black-gloved fist rushing at his face. Pierce managed to yank his head to the side in time to avoid having his nose broken, but the blow sent him tumbling backward, taking out the legs of Maximus until he came to a halt. It also split the skin on his face, leaving a huge gash from just below his right eye all the way across his cheek and down to the bottom of his ear.

Enraged, he sprang to his feet just in time to meet the charge of yet another of their attackers. Pierce ducked low, arms out wide, and wrapped the man up in a huge, aptly named bear hug. Then he squeezed.

Hard.

Ribs popped and cracked and the shifter yelled in pain as he tried to worm his way free. When it became clear he wouldn’t escape that way, he started to rain blows down on Pierce’s head. In response, Pierce simply flung his man down to the ground. The attacking shifter dented and cracked the tiled floor as he hit and then rebounded. Before his foe could move, Pierce then delivered a brutal kick to the side of his face. Teeth went flying as his jaw shattered into several pieces under the impact.

Pierce dropped to the ground, his knees landing on the other man’s chest, driving the air from them. He rebounded back up from that and swiftly delivered a final steel-toe clad boot to the man’s temple. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he went limp.

Pierce spun, looking for another person to fight. Blood sprayed from his face, leaving a gruesome splatter mark on the wall as he did.

“Enough!”

The voice rang out through the hallway, and all the shifters came to a halt.

Following the voice, he saw the old director holding the barrel of a very real-looking gun to Mila’s head.

“One more move, and I’ll blow her brains out,” he said, his voice steady, only the slightest hiccup in it to indicate that he was nervous.

Around him several more humans struggled to their feet, one obviously fighting off the effects of the tranquilizer dart as he blinked rapidly, trying to stand. Two others seemed ready to go, moving to flank their boss.

“No you won’t,” Pierce replied calmly as he took in the situation.

“I will too.”

He sighed. “If you do that, then there is precisely nothing to stop us from ripping you into pieces,” Pierce said with exaggerated simplicity, as if explaining the situation to a toddler. “So you had better not kill her. What you should have been doing was taking her with you while you left. That’s the only way to make this work.”

The old man glared at him. “I was getting there, you young idiot,” he snapped. “First I had to make you stop fighting like a bunch of savages. It’s called a progressive plan. You start with step one and work your way up to the conclusion. Now, if you act like a pretentious ass one more time, I’m going to blow a hole in her pretty little cheeks. Not a fatal wound, you understand. But it will hurt quite terribly, and rather disfigure her for the rest of her life. However long that may be.”

Pierce’s muscles twitched with rage.

“Try it,” the director goaded, pressing the barrel of the gun right to Mila’s temple. “I dare you. You won’t get to me before I pull the trigger.”

“Perhaps,” Pierce said, not as confident of that assessment as the old man seemed to be. “Perhaps not.”

Triumph entered his eyes, and the director began to back down the hallway, taking Mila with him.

“You’re forgetting one rather important thing though,” Pierce said calmly, crossing his arms and leaning against one wall.

Behind him he heard his brothers shuffling to protect his exposed back. Once the director was out of sight, or Mila was freed, the remaining Institute shifters would likely go on the attack once more. Pierce wasn’t sure how many remained, and he didn’t want to look over his shoulder to find out.

Right now his only concern was Mila. Her ponytail bounced gently as she walked backward, her arms at her sides. He was worried for her, of course. But there wasn’t a trace of fear in her mocha-colored eyes, and even the red flush of her cheeks showed more embarrassment at her predicament than anything else.

“And just what is that?” Director Burnatawiz asked, sarcasm dripping from every word.

Clearly he thought he had the situation well under control. It was time, Pierce decided, to disabuse him of that notion.

“That the woman you think you’re holding hostage was the leader of one of your elite strike teams. Do you really think she’s that helpless?”